WRETCHED OLD BONES

This is going to be a rambling sort of rant-thing but it is real and I think about it more than I want to. Here I am an old man, my family is grown, I am loved but nobody needs me, I’ve had about all the fun and good times any man deserves, my health is better than good but I chew on a couple of wretched old bones that I can neither digest nor spit out and that would be for ever and ever Amen.

I was a naive kid and to that end I’ve turned out to be a naive old man. With issues and circumstances that others pick up on instinctively, I am still the last to know or to figure it out. My growing up came in the 1940’s and 50’s when Jim Crow was a proud institution and segregation was the rule, wretched bones.

Jim Crow drove the culture, my parents nurtured southern sympathy and racism was incumbent in that package. Nobody thought they were racist and if no harm was intended then no harm done. “They are God’s children and we respect them but they are sub human, inferior and that is God’s plan.” I never experienced an epiphany, just a long suffering, slow moving sense of OMG, are you serious? I began to understand that parents are wrong sometimes and if I was the last to know then at least I knew. Still, I never had a conversation with or knew a black person by name until I went in the Army. Segregation does what it was designed to do.

Fast forward 70 years: I have been slow to concede to a damning truth that has always been there in plain sight. I don’t have to define Racial Prejudice. It is so deeply fixed in American culture that it often goes unnoticed or meets with tacit approval. “I don’t care, it’s how I grew up.” I suffered through Civil Rights in the 1960’s, through the fire hoses, billy clubs and police dogs at the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, through M.L.K. Jr’s murder in Memphis, TN. He was shot dead in broad daylight. In the last half century killing people of color in the guise of Law & Order or some distorted sense of justifiable homicide has never waned. There have been strides in the right direction but they are always answered with reprehensible reminders that black lives are expendable; Breonna Taylor in Louisville, KY and George Floyd in Minneapolis. There is a serious white supremacy movement underway and it is flourishing. They provoke violence confidently as conservative leaders who count on their support at the poles, they  change the subject and look the other way. 

It is no secret that I have serious issues with the way modern society exploits the weak and defenseless and I struggle with human beings in general. I remember my uncles talking about blacks; “They’re alright by themselves but get 'em in a bunch together and they get crazy.”  That’s how I see our species in general. In small groups (3 or 4) we tend to think first and act responsibly. But get a bunch of humans together and you end up with the KKK or worse. Christians say, “Love the sinner, Hate the sin.”  I hate the self righteous bigot as surely as I hate the transgression. There is no law against wishing someone dead, I could do that. My brother did that in college, wished his professor dead and the old man died before the end of the semester. Later he had mixed feelings about his wish but I don’t think I would. Sad as it is to say, I do hate racists and if they die they die and I can change the subject and look the other away. This makes me sound like a violent person and I'm not, really I'm not. But I feel the same kind of angst they do, just vent it in another way. I am convinced that on our best day we are high functioning mammals, armed with good intentions but without a compass. 

It is very easy, it comes naturally; birds of a feather flock together. We prefer to be with people who look like us, speak like us, resonate in the same culture we do. But we are also curious, creative and compassionate. With those attributes, hopefully, one day it will get us over the top. That part is not so easy. But where there’s a will there’s a way. Anything is possible. I really don’t want to go back to the Middle Ages with a bunch of malcontent knights running around killing peasants. You know; chivalry was not about fair maidens and jousting. It was a code with rules on who you can kill and rules of engagement. But the pattern is pretty well set. Change comes slow, one funeral at a time, lots of funerals, both natural and expedited. 

    I have not addressed White Privilege and I will not, not here, not now. By definition, privilege is an unearned benefit. The recipient does nothing to deserve a reward but still receives it. Others who do the same (nothing) and do not get the reward have, by definition, been oppressed. The two are like two sides of the same coin. One can not exist without the other. But that is another story. I take no satisfaction writing on this dreadful subject but racism upsets me, then I get angry and wish terrible things on terrible people. Our pledge of allegiance pivots on; With Liberty and Justice For All. But it seems a high percentage of Americans have trouble with just how to implement the (All) part. When I’m not here to defend my ideas and values I want there to be something that speaks for me. This little rant may be my only defense.