Octagon, you must have been the response to my prayers. I didn't like what some people were posting in this thread but I didn't know how to put it best, especially because I don't live there so I didn't feel like my opinion would count for much. But it was clear to me that bashing everyone in a whole area isn't the way to fix any problems. You may not be comfortable with the culture and/or the politics, but that doesn't mean that you go down into: "How can those people be so horrible?" It doesn't achieve anything useful or positive. It's much better to think: "I know some nasty things are happening over there, and that only some people are responsible. How can they be stopped?" Even when something is widespread, not everybody is doing it.
Now I feel I am being attacked for my feelings.
It is easy to say that person is wrong but you haven't seen my heart and you don't know me.
Perhaps as an antidote, we should mosey on over to twitter and check out #secondcivilwarletters which are an hilarious response to the conspiracy theory that the Democrats are starting the second civil war tomorrow. Funny AF.
That is, and forever has been the problem with emails, texts, and forum posts. The emotional context is lacking, so if the writer forgets to add an emoticon, you can't tell a wry joke from an insult! ?
People in he U.S. aren't fighting about left/right politics. The fights are about (some people in) the white majority feeling like they are losing power, and adopting increasingly more fascistic ways to hold on to power through their party of choice (the republicans). The republicans, once the anti-slavery party, have been stoking racial resentment for 50 years, and there's a reckoning coming. Will it be an all-out war? Unlikely, but for many of us caught up in the current times, it feels like one.
I'm of the belief that one should condemn the behavior more than the person, but these aren't ordinary times. The current administration has been gaslighting the American people, and I think many of us have had it with niceties. Vile behavior, including racist behavior, needs to be called out and condemned. That doesn't mean that people can't change or make amends, or that all people from an area are the same, but I think it's legitimate to call out bad behavior. I
t's not good for the spiritual development of our fellow humans to see really bad stuff and not call it for what it is. Don't we expect that from the people who love us? Don't we want them to tell us hard truths when we're losing our way?
I watched youtube videos of the Pickett attack at Gettysburg today and realized that we have been a divided country since the Civil War. The north and south never fully integrated and the South couldn't let go of the war.
Sorry if I offended anyone, but I was merely relating my own experiences.
It's only in the South that I have been called the N-word (I am not african-american and do not identify as a person of color). It's only in the South that I was asked more than once "Is your momma black?". It's only in the South where my daughter (who is Asian but dark-skinned, and does identify as PoC) was also called the N-word, was taunted for her skin color at school. It's only in the South that complete strangers walked up to us both when she was little to ask the following questions: "Is she Hawaiian?" "Is she Mexican?" "Is her daddy Mexican?" "Is her daddy an [American]Indian?" "Does she speak Mexican?" "Does she speak Chinese?" "How much did you buy her for?", or to say the following "Oh what nice tan skin she has, I wish I could get a tan like that!" And for the topper, at a truck stop in Arkansas, white lady walks up to my daughter and out of the blue says, "Aloha! You know I'd love to go to Hawaii too someday." (that last one was on our cross-country move out of the South)
Also only in the South where a close relative, who happens to be a Rabbi, was taunted and followed down a street for refusing to donate to a Christian charity and for refusing to let his kid talk to a fake Santa.
Dave Chappelle once said, "Racism in the South...mwah, so delicious."
I never said everyone there is racist or a fanatical, religious nutbar. I have dear friends from the South. A huge chunk of my family has lived in Tennessee for decades. But my experiences over the years, from visiting TN in my youth all the way through living there til several years ago, has taught me that the entrenched mindset of the Civil War persists and seems to represent the way the majority feels.
I had to stop for a while and explore my feelings. The overall feeling I have is that I've suffered a lot emotionally since I have moved here to Georgia.
Octagon, what I wrote in no way should reflect on the wonderful people here on this site. I stopped to reflect on whether I've gone too far and should I just stay off this topic or even this whole site--and why do I feel like leaving so soon...maybe it is ok for me to say goodbye?? I can't seem to see the future very good anyway...
Octagon my father's side of my family is from a small town in West Virginia. I have a lot of relatives there. My mother's side of the family is Oglala Sioux from the Pine Ridge Reservation. I don't want to offend anyone. There is racism and negativity everywhere, you are right. When I married a white man from South Dakota his family were immediately concerned when they heard I was part Native American. I found out about that later after we had been married several years and had already had some children. They grew to accept me so it all worked out ok.
Here in the Georgia I've made some good friends also. People have shown me generosity.
I go to different places here and I basically send out positive vibes to people. I hold them in love, I do.
Once again sorry...
Octagon, posters who have not lived in the States have been horrified by the treatment of immigrants, especially children, and people who have lived in states where racism is more overt are trying to share how insidious racism is in American culture. Writers, like Ta-Nehisi Coates, have been trying to show this for a long time: https://www.theatlantic.com/projects/reparations/. Coates' account of slavery, segregation, and violence against African Americans here is not just located in the South. I just finished reading David Grann's chilling account of genocide practiced against the Osage in Oklahoma in the 1920s: Killers of the Flower Moon. Posters living in southern and border states are trying to convey a deeper historical and cultural context for this horror. To be very crude, how can the zitt that is racism begin to heal in this country unless we help pop it and allow all of its gore to come up and spill out into the light? Moreover, if we're all part of a collective consciousness, don't we have a responsibility to own and share what is unjust in it?