Sixty years ago today, on June 21, 1964, twenty-year-old Andrew Goodman mailed a postcard to his parents in New York City. He had arrived in Meridian, Mississippi, the day before to work with Michael Schwerner, a 24-year-old former New York social worker, and James Chaney, a 21-year-old Black man from Meridian, to register Black voters in what became known as Freedom Summer.
Thank you for highlighting the significance of Reagan’s speech about states’ rights in Philadelphia Mississippi, early in his presidential campaign. Many people do not know about this racist dog whistle that summoned southern whites supremacists to support his candidacy.
Reagan's actions and racist views became even more obvious and apparent when he was elected President. He was against placing sanctions against South Africa to end apartheid, even vetoing the Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986 although Congress was able to override the veto.
Reagan made a very controversial visit to a WWII cemetery in Bitburg, Germany in 1985. About 2000 German soldiers were buried there and 49 of the buried were SS officers which made Reagan's visit offensive to many, especially Jewish people and those that had family killed and terrorized by the Nazi regime. He never apologized for it and it always seemed strange to me. Joey Ramone, a Jewish kid from Queens, and Dee Dee Ramone wrote the Ramones song 'Brain is hanging upside down(Bonzo goes to Bitburg)' because they were as incensed by Reagan's visit as many others were too.
I remember that visit because it was so shocking and inexcusable. It makes me think about how the Reich came to the US to study our Jim Crow laws to see how to segregate Jews and other “undesirables.”
Yes I'm reading Rachel Maddow's book 'Prequel' right now, which is outstanding and very informative but harrowing to realize that these Nazi sympathizers and fascist racists have been part of the American population for so long. The 3 part Ken Burn's documentary 'The U.S. and the Holocaust' was really great too and talked about the ways the Third Reich used the U.S. history of seizing Native American land and confining them to reservations or annihilating them altogether, also using the enslavement and savage treatment of Africans and Jim Crow laws that kept them repressed even when supposedly free.
As she does so well, Heather writes in detail and really shows how horrible the murder of these 3 men In Philadelphia, Mississippi was and how long it took for justice to finally be served in some way. Or that 8 other Black men were found murdered just during the search for them in the months that they'd been missing. That Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were driven by Deputy Sheriff Price down some sketchy road to be brutally beaten, murdered and buried at the dam site by KKK members he was associated with is still too appalling to believe it can happen here in the U.S.
Yet Reagan chose to go to this site for a reason, as well as going to the Bitburg Nazi cemetery. He knew were he was going in these instances and it says much about him.
I was still in high school during Reagan years so couldn't vote yet. But there really is more to I would add to Reagan's historical record. Iran-Contra and working back channel diplomacy to undermine Carter and not let the American hostages be freed until January 20, 1981 the day Reagan was to be inaugurated.
Also crack cocaine flooding the streets of predominantly poorer, black communities in places like Compton/South Central Los Angeles and Oakland/Richmond in the Bay Area during his presidency reached epidemic proportions. His drug war policies and the disparity laws for crack vs. cocaine possession meant the Black people, especially young men, were often given longer prison sentences and more severe punishments than White people for cocaine possession. As I said before his actions and racist views became very obvious as president.
Wow…. THANK YOU!!!!! Trying to think of “any” Republicans (maybe Nelson Rockefeller who lost…) who cared about “the people”…. My first presidential vote was for John f. Kennedy…. And I went to the polls with my Mother to vote for Harry Truman when I was 12.
I ignorantly voted for Reagan that year, also. That was my first time voting. I always regretted doing that! I have NEVER voted republican since then, and never will again.
Jimmy Carter was a good man. When the time comes to separate the sheep from the goats..........he will be part of the flock, protected peacefully...for eternity.
I’m not really for or against anyone or thing, strange as that sounds. We live in an environment formed by a global society that objectively (as objective as one can be which usually isn’t very) is insane. We then elect and blame leaders for not fixing it and think this makes sense. 😵💫
My commitment is participating in bringing forth a world that works for EVERYONE and everything. With no one or thing left out.
I’m clear that it must work for everyone or it works for no one.
Working with a planet full of frightened people is a handful and yet is the greatest opportunity anyone has had the privilege of doing since it has become possible to feed and actually care for everyone.
This possibility of a world that works for everyone has put in its appearance recently. While many will scoff or even take offense at the idea that this idea is an idea whose time has come, it still has arrived.
It’s time to put down the shoving, and buying, and bullying our way along.
There is enough, way more than enough to go around. All that’s needed is the collective political will to make it so.
It starts with each of us standing on our own two legs, by ourselves, on our own and saying, and giving our word, (word like in the beginning was the word, not the printed words here) giving ourselves, the context for our lives a world that works for all of us.
It’s a simple act as it requires no behavior.
Note that from here you can’t prove it. Yet, you can know it and honor it. You can live from the truth of it into the lack of the fact of it and thus make it possible to occur.
It’s up to each one of us. And don’t force it on anyone or yourself either. Look down deep within yourself and see if it is true for you.
If it is, then throw your hat over the fence and honor what is true for you.
Many of us were simply young people following our parent’s lead. When I finally learned the truth I was ashamed of my naïveté and my father’s view of right and wrong. We can be thankful we are open to learning and to change. So many are not.
Lucille, my dad was a R no matter what. While I always voted for Ds for president, he always voted for Rs. I think his view of Ds was influenced by the Chicago machine as we did not live that far away from Chicago and went there fairly frequently. Both my parents and my family of that generation also had all the usual prejudices of that generation. It was OK to use certain words, etc. Fortunately, I had as friends a couple (both teachers) who did not share those prejudices and helped stir me in a different direction. I did grow up in Indiana, home to the most KKK members in the 1920s. See Fever in the Heartland about this. Once I was out into the wider world, I soon started to learn more about racism, etc. i am still learning for that matter. Also i have always loathed St. Ronnie.
My father was a Democrat, the only one of that generation in either side of the family. All his kids are Democrats. Shortly before he died, he leaned close and whispered “Your mother was a Republican.” I was not surprised because she had been skeptical of the Holocaust when I was twelve and when I was 17 she expressed eugenic reasons why I was smart and should have children because “they” weren’t smart and were having lots of children.
My parents had their short-comings, pre-judgements, and biases, as we all do. Six lessons they taught me that mean a lot today.
🙏
1st, you can learn from anyone no matter the other's station in life.
2nd, courtesy is a code of respect; small-talk is fine -- it is kinship in code.
3rd, do not say something behind another's back that you would not say to his or her face.
4th, never try to make an impression; you never know what impression you make.
5th, one answers, ultimately, to that (wo)man in the mirror.
6th, people think *about you one-tenth as much as you think they do and one-twenty-*fifth as much as you wish they would.
⚖️
¿Did my parents falter in practice?
¡All the time!
🤫
Nevertheless, they were more than sufficiently consistent in their behavior to set an example of what it is to be honorable, leaving a lasting imprimatur. And, yes, living as an ageing bachelor, I am acutely aware of how far I fall short of the asymptote of honor each day.
😇
But I keep trying to converge upon that Platonist ideal of honor (¡most likely because I have nothing better to do!). That is where the hard coding of fifty-to-sixty years ago comes into play: my parents never ceased trying to converge.
Well, by the time I was getting plugged in (e.g., junior high), this news was old news. I knew of bad things occurring against African-American but did not know exactly what.
During the transition from analog to digital TV, a subchannel of a local PBS station ran documentary 24-7. Several of them were on the Civil Rights movement. I would see the film on evening news when I was a teen, but seeing some of it again in retrospect was still shocking.
Certainly "a;alternate facts" have been part of human societies for ages. but pre-Reagan, engaged, investigative reporting and what Joseph Welch called "decency" most kept them from overwhelming society. Joe McCarthy was a popular liar, and the Vietnam War was built on lies, but both were taken down eventually, as was Nixon. Racist politicians told whoppers, and a lot of creepy stuff was still going on, but it did seem that a greater portion of the public and even politicians were acting in good faith. What changed? Follow the money.
I suggest the population explosion (the world population has more than doubled from approximately 3.2 billion in 1963 to around 7.9 billion in 2023, driven by improvements in healthcare, living conditions, and other factors influencing birth and death rates globally (Per ChatGPT).
I suggest this has triggered deep unconscious survival patterns where inhumane actions driven by these patterns manifest. We then dance around trying to explain at a more superficial conscious level what the heck is going on.
Where action isn’t inhibited by language development the outcome of over population is handled directly like for example (again per ChatGPT):
Yes, some mammals, including hamsters, may exhibit behaviors such as cannibalism or infanticide when overcrowded or under stressful conditions. Here’s an overview:
1. **Hamsters:** In captivity, hamsters may eat their young if they feel threatened, stressed, or if they perceive a lack of resources (such as space or food). This behavior is often a survival mechanism where the mother may sacrifice some offspring to ensure the survival of the rest or to conserve resources for herself.
2. **Other Mammals:** Other mammals, such as rodents and certain species of carnivores, may also engage in infanticide or cannibalism under similar circumstances. This behavior can occur in response to environmental stressors, competition for resources, or when conditions are not conducive for raising offspring.
3. **Natural Selection:** From an evolutionary perspective, these behaviors may increase the chances of survival for the parent and potentially the remaining offspring by ensuring that resources are concentrated on those that are most likely to survive.
4. **Management in Captivity:** In captive settings, such as in zoos or research facilities, overcrowding and stress can exacerbate these behaviors. Careful management of housing conditions, social dynamics, and environmental enrichment is essential to minimize stress and reduce the likelihood of cannibalism or infanticide.
In summary, while not all mammals exhibit cannibalism or infanticide, some, including hamsters, may do so under certain stressful conditions. These behaviors are complex and often influenced by a combination of genetic, environmental, and social factors.
Interesting. There are certainly too many of us chasing too few resources while things are made worse by climate change which is a factor in many trying to immigrant as well as violence.
Good point: ¿why do we hear so little about over-population? I think it drives global warming and other challenges. We may be living through a grim vindication of Robert Malthus and the Club of Rome.
One is never too old to learn, nor too old to change attitudes. I will take a late learner over one who never learns any day. It wasn't too many years ago when I had an eye opener myself along with a patient of mine who was black. Neither one of us knew anything about Juneteenth and what it represented, but we learned and we continue to learn. May all of us be willing to continue to learn, correct our inadequacies and welcome with humility anyone who is just now joining us on this path.
Pamela: My mother was in her late 70s when I married my late exhusband - who was black. She did not talk to me for two years. However, it happened, once she met him, he was almost her bosom buddy. My son from the first marriage had worked on her. But you are so right. We have the capacity to learn and evolve if we choose.
In 1964, I was 11 and too young to participate in the Freedom March but most likely would have had I been older. By 1967, I had joined the huge anti war March on Washington.
In the north, many white families had a quaint way of responding to race issues. My father was proud of his one Black friend, Art, the bus driver, who was periodically invited over the house for lunch. But much later on, I have wondered why Art’s family was never invited over for dinner. Maybe then I could have played with his children.
Somewhere in 1967 or 1968, during street troubles, my father was heard to say, “It’s not the ones from Hartford causing all the trouble. It’s the ones comin’ up from the south.”
By 1981, I was dating a Black woman and she wanted to meet my parents. You always get a picture of how someone might age when you look at the parents. She had invited me to Thanksgiving weekend that year to stay at her parents house. I liked the way her mother looked and I projected it on how my girlfriend would age.
She wanted to meet my parents and I knew I was in for an experience. When I told my mother, she told me that my friend just wanted to better her social standing by dating me. But I explained that she was from upper middle class and I was from lower middle class. She then mentioned that our future children would be the ones that would get hurt. I then left her with a question; “But who am I.” My mother was Italian American and she married into an orthodox Jewish family. My friend wanted to meet my father and I knew that it would go much worse. I waited for when he was alone in the house and I approached him and told him I had been dated a Black woman and I wanted to bring her over. He launched into the not unexpected tirade belittling me as a failure in life. I waited for him to finish. I then asked quietly, “Are you finished?” I then with equal calmness told him not to expect me to come crying on his deathbed. I calmly opened the kitchen door and gently closed it. A true Shakespearian exit. It was the last time I spoke to him. In one year he was dead of a massive heart attach. I felt relieved.
My heart aches reading your story, which I can appreciate because of my own story. Thank you for opening the door now . . . stories can help people heal and we never know how, when, or where.
Thank you. As a writer with a small “w,” I seek to open doors of memory and experience in my life. One moment, one can find acceptance in a particular subject and the next moment, especially upon politically self-critiquing, an unacceptable attitude materializes. It goes with the clam chowder.
Heather, the ever historian scholar, has 10 primary sources studied for this one story. I read only one — Barry Goldwater’s acceptance speech. Wow. Lengthy. I praise her ability to examine and write. I’m glad I’m just an occasional satirist and fun poker. I could never delve so deep as Heather does.
I married a Spanish man (Puerto Rican) and had a daughter with him. My parents loved him. Alas, it didn't last, mainly because we were both so young. But, reading about racism lately, I feel blessed I had the mom I did. I was born in Louisiana (my dad was stationed at Fort Polk). My mom came home to CT when I was three months old. She hated the south.
The south certainly has its own history and orientation toward Black people, but if you ask a Black person living in the North, Midwest and West they can tell you about about how racism was (is) practiced in those areas.
Oh I know this. My mom hated the weather in Louisiana, and she was homesick. She was just 20 years old. I'm happy she moved back because I like CT. If I had grown up in Louisiana instead, I would have liked it there. I'm not the best at getting my thoughts in the written word. I either tend to write too much, or as in this case, not enough. Thank you for responding.
This is very much an overlooked point. I believe we face the challenge of de-segregation of the heart. My sense, as vicious as Southern racism can be, there is more of a humanity to its regional culture, now diluted by modernity. The South may end up showing the North the way.
Before, and preparing me for, the inevitable cascade of disclaimers and virtue signalling, permit me to say that, absolutely, the right side won The Great Civil War; as a 'ute', I was a Yankee still fighting the war.
Many events define our history, often toward the bereavement of what might have been. For me two of the most consequential, in this respect, are the assassinations of President Lincoln and Senator Kennedy a little over a century apart.
Bill-Racism itself is an insidious dis-ease that infects all of us. It’s longstanding. Like your dad most people don’t even know why they harbor racial prejudice and hate. It’s too bad he let his dis-ease come between you.
Kudos to you for being willing to date someone outside of your “race”.
I agree. It goes back generations. It's just something some people are. I sincerely try to look at people as humans. That is what we all are. We are all born, and we will all die. Some of us are good, others are mostly good; some are bad and some are plain evil. But, you can't tell who is who by race or nationality or the color of a person's skin. It can't be done, yet it's done everywhere. Racism runs deep.
To me, treating racism is like putting the plug in the jug. It is a daily discipline. I will almost certainly not be free of racism; I have accepted that. What I can be free of is giving a voice, a gesture, or an attitude.
In 1964, I was five years old and my mom, my sister and I moved from Windsor to Bowles Park in Hartford. It was referred to as 'The Projects. I lived there until I was in second grade. I played with black kids and white kids. My mother, thankfully, was not racist. I've never understood how one can take an entire race of people and find them all bad people based on pigment. People are so hateful. Horrible way to live.
I lived on lower Laurel St near the Underwood factory which eventually demanded and got from the city homes condemned for Underwood expansion. The south end “projects” were along Flatbush Avenue. I think I will take this story and develop it into my next blog entry today.
Bill I like your story too. Consider editing the part “You always get a picture of how someone might age when you look at the parents. She had…..and I projected it on how my girlfriend would age.” This rings shallow and of small import in a budding relationship. Perhaps a warmer description of her mother’s personality would suffice in the event you expand your story.
I’m convinced but remains unspoken that this was why she wanted to meet my folks. So do I emulate my ole man today? In some ways definitely yes and other ways no. I’m bald-headed and couldn’t hardly help that destination. I’m argumentative for sure. I think he was somewhat a contrarian I certainly am and I consider it one of my better instincts because it helps me to look more critically at issues. I inherited a non addictive personality which served me well in my youth when I associated with highly addictive drugs and when I came to those crossroads, I turned around, ,stopped and never looked back. Lastly, he was a chemist and disliked art so eventually became an art dealer go figure.
No. I have only expressed one part. Even my mother exclaimed her regret choosing him. It was not a satisfying family unit for anyone. Of course I would not be alive had I not been for this union.
My father had a book called 3 Lives for Mississippi…I was maybe 15 and read it secretly. The story horrified me but taught me so much about racism…Stuff like that didn’t happen in Canada where I live…
Canada also is not without sin - study your indigenous history in Canada and the horrors Canadian indigenous children and their families endured. We must all do better.
Gina - NO QUESTION!! Totally agree. My point is - good for Af Ams in Canada but let’s no be selective - racism is still racism and I would hope you would support indigenous neighbors because we are all related. Second, Canada also can do better going forward - and without question the US has much to improve on.
Trump is Reagan writ large and writ vulgar. Reagan dog whistled in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Trump shouted out loud at Waco, Texas. Reagan courted klansmen, Trump wedded the GOP to the violent right wing extremist militia movement.
Tragically, on the Left, rather than Martin Luther King Jr who welcomed white allies into the Civil Rights Movement, we have openly racist and antisemitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan amplifying the racial separatism of the Black Power movement - which has influenced such diverse figures as Clarence Thomas and Meir Kahane (progenitor of the racist right wing religious extremist Netanyahu regime.)
When I was a child, things didn't always work out well until I recognized the issue. I was insufficiently mature. And then my circle of concern expanded until it encompassed my circle of influence, which is to say that I became sufficiently mature. And then things would work out well.
Before he was elected, Reagan was insufficiently mature. Being elected meant an exponential expansion of his circle of influence. Unfortunately, his circle of concern did not expand, which is to say that he was an immature president.
On November 5, one of two candidates will be elected POTUS. One candidate is sufficiently mature. The other candidate's circle of concern ends at the end of his nose.
Yes, it is more complicated, but in addition to being more complicated, it is also just that simple.
He knowingly set the Republican Party on a hateful course which is evident today! And it must be defeated not only at the presidential level but very significantly in both the House and Senate as well! Let's do it for the Senate in AZ, FL, NE, MI, MT, NV, OH, PA, TX, WI; and Gov in NC; and for the House in these "very competitive" CDs--CA 3, 13, 22, 27, 41, 45, 47 and 49; CO 3, 8; FL 13, 27; IN 01; IA 01, 3; LA 6; ME 2; MI 7, 8; 10; MT 01; NC 01; NE 2; NJ 7; NM 2; NY 1, 4,17,19, 22; OR 5; PA 8, 10; VA 2, 7; WA 3, 5; and WI 01, 3!
Summary: 10 key statewide elections for the Senate and one Governorship in NC, and 39 "very competitive" Congressional District elections! Let's do it by registering and turning out every potential voter in support of abortion, IVF and womens' health; overdue gun safety legislation; and aggressively fighting climate change! We can do it---can't we? DAMN YES!!!
"President Lyndon B. Johnson, ...who had pushed hard for a stronger civil rights law since becoming president..., harnessed the growing outrage over the missing men. " The sense of justice of voters is the foundation of American Democracy. I trust that the same will prevail this November.
Thank you, for sharing Robert Reich's story. I agree 100% about he said. That all people must treated with equality regardless of what their beliefs are or the color of their skin. The freedom for women's reproductive rights. Freedom to read the books. Freedom to vote.
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” —Thomas Jefferson
J L, and thank you for the link to Hartmann's piece -- such a superb refutation of those who believe we were founded as a Christian nation. I only wish I could easily copy and paste it for future reference (I don't use bookmarks.)
Here's a quote I saved long ago:
"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so." -Robert A. Heinlein
That opinion was long and hard in coming, and judging by the religious complexion in the MAGA/Republican party, is still being fought against. The NT, not to mention the OT, are inherently intolerant on the basics. You know the history I'm sure. Who knows someday maybe the huge gulf between the rich and the poor will take on a similar hue.... of course, it already has in some quarters, socialism, and more extremely originally, communism, and look at the fight that has dredged up.
What a powerful essay! The so-called Christian nationalists attempting to claim our nation was founded as a Christian country are not Originalists. The founders’ own words, excerpted here, refute that argument. Everyone should read this. Thanks, JL!
I am not sure that the term "originalist" even makes any sense, at least with respect to democratic governance. Newtons laws of motion are still taught because they prove useful on an ongoing basis. Some of the same can be said of the principles of democracy we inherited, and since improved, from US founders. In hindsight, some of the personal beliefs ad decisions of some of the founders are now seen as objectionable, but that has no bearing on the fecundity of some of their thinking. As Stephen Hawking put it, Newton was not a nice man, but he nailed a lot of stuff that still works, as well as spinning some notions we have dropped since. Ever hear of Pangenesis ? It's a theory Darwin proposed that proved inadequate, even if his notion of evolution is still applied.
The person of Newton is not the source of authority for the validity of Newtonian (a subset of Einsteinian and quantum) physics. Species don't evolve just because Darwin said so. Newton's views have been updated, but a lot of his original work still stands. Why? Because we have not found anything better.
Yet, like the Scholastics faith in Aristotle, some see the person as a higher authority than tested principle. When people die, they stop growing, but testable observation and application need not
Fear/hatred of the "other". So many men (all white, in my experience) are so terrified of gay men because (I suspect) they are afraid that someone will treat them the same way they treat women. I suspect that the hatred that the "other" will get to be on the same level as with the same privileges as white men is based in much the same feeling. It is either that or the misguided notion that they are the "top tier" of humanity and all others are beneath them and they cannot stand to see "others" getting the same rights as their "god given" rights.
I think you nailed it here, Ally. My only added comment is that the dynamic you describe is probably universal and more associated with white people in our experience because there are more of us here and we have had the most impact on shaping our society and its institutions. Looking around the globe these days, the "other" syndrome is alive and well in all of the current conflicts. That is why it strikes me Our Great American Experiment is such a challenging endeavor: by main strength and awkwardness, we strive to rise above the fears you describe. It ain't easy, as Heather's relentless history lessons demonstrate. While we are guilty of frequent, often tragic, missteps in our striving, it may be useful to pause and ask;"compared to what? Compared to whom?" The answer does not justify our failures, but it does put in perspective the immense challenge the Founding Fathers placed in our hands. Too many Americans have turned their backs on our heritage (both the rights and responsibilities embedded in what we have been given. And a great many accept the challenge and strive to make good on the promise of America. My sense is that acceptance is what draws most of us to this dialogue stimulated by Heather's fascinating history class.
We do have a lot of work to do; we know that. Doing it is a noble endeavor and, despite endless frustrations and frequent setbacks, offers priceless satisfaction. Our tool, as Ned notes, is sustained engagement. It helps to know you are not alone.
Human beings are still SO tribal. It seems like it takes a certain level of self-awareness to be able to question that tribal instinct's knee-jerk reactions, and it also seems like there are a lot of people that haven't got the first clue as to HOW to be self-reflective. Or why they should be.
Perhaps it is because as children we need someone wise to to world to tell us what to do (like don't run into the street) some are more comfortable being bossed around by dictators than seeing anyone of lesser "status" be given some help toward equality, and often those who live like kings have the most trouble seeing anybody else (who is not working their will) get a leg up. Also I think all of us invest in different ways in the way things are and some are a lot more comfortable than others responding to change. Appeals to return to a largely fictional "good old days" , be it Roy Moore's misty utopian view of the US South prior to the Civil War, or a "Forever Reich" dictatorial "strong men"
promise a return of "Glory Days" that were really no more the gory days.
Ned, the important thing is to live and learn. I learned only a few years ago of Reagan's racist, pandering campaign speech to kick off his presidential campaign. The GOP had been involved in this shit since Tricky Dicky. Now they own it, and there is no way to spin it. States' rights my ass.
States have rights. Societies have rights. Majorities AND minorities have rights. Private individuals have rights, and there are human rights, even animal rights, and arguably planetary rights. They all have to work together for there to be justice. Seems a lot a social and political troubles come from those who want to take rights from others.
I agree, J.L. , but not all of these "rights" are described as such in our Constitution -- the 10th Amendment refers to certain "powers" of states, not to States' rights -- and these powers or prerogatives can be taken back /overruled by the US Congress as necessary. I believe "States' Rights" is a term invented by former slave owners and used today as a racist dog whistle.
All of the political parties in America have “been involved in this shit” since the nation was “founded”. Of course the GOP is a prime example of how to build a party based on racism.
The “Fusion Party” in NC during the 1890s was trying to bring people of goodwill together. The parties remained separate but joined forces to influence certain elections. They were generally in favor of voting rights and education.
Too bad people are so adamant today about choosing sides and never coming together.
How do you come together with racists? You can only defeat them at election time, pass laws they detest, maintain the rule of law and hope their offspring's offspring are subject to better influences and experiences than their parents were. Of course today's disinformation environment makes this nearly impossible.
It is ironic that the party that once defended the proposition that all men (sic) are created equal embraced the tyrants tool of racism after Democrats substantially moved to sacrifice that substantial voting bloc for social justice, a betrayal of historic proportions. Nixon's racism seemed more of a calculation. Ehrlichman is quoted as saying:
"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Reagan's smarmy racism was also couched. Years after his death "to protect his privacy" taped openly racist remarks to Nixon were released;
The two were discussing the Tanzanian delegation’s reaction to the vote, after delegates danced in the chamber. “To watch that thing on television, as I did, to see those, those monkeys from those African countries – damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Reagan tells Nixon, who erupts in laughter. (Guardian)
The remarks seemed to have little impact on Reagan's aura. Now the cult of Trump is numerous enough to drop dog whistles for sirens. I think bullying and phobias of people who are different is persistent because it is part of human nature, which like all innate propensities, manifests in greater or lesser ways depending on what we are formally and informally taught. But those wish to dominate have always had strategies to make use of our "reptile" emotions to exploit and oppress for their own selfish advantage. Check out the shadowy actions of the likes of Leonard Leo, or Harlan Crow, and follow the money.. Even back to the Civil War; who actually gained and who paid the price (even among the white race) for slavery?
Nice comment, J L. Informative, well written, to the point. Your comments are always worth a look and usually food for thought. I hope Reagan's cellmate in Hell is... well, his worst nightmare.
Ned, your "gracias" reminds me that rarely are their comments here that acknowledge the importance of the Hispanic vote in the upcoming election. They are a massive voting block and taken for granted by the Democrats for the most part.
The WH under convicted felon Donald Trump (CFDT) bragged that Melania knew 5 languages. Well, she knows 5 languages about like I do -- which is to understand important words like taco, lasagne, filet mignon and gracias.
Is HCR's newsletter easily translated into Spanish or other languages?
I believe that it is, but I haven't read about it recently. It could also be that these are read in Spanish on one of the YouTube channels.
I have a friend (recent college graduate who was one of the scholarship recipients of the tuba ensemble as he pursued a degree in music) who is Hispanic, and has been working to translate some of the published pedagogy of Arnold Jacobs into Spanish.
There are reports of the G.O.P. making in-roads into the Spanish-speaking community. Hopefully, President Biden will state plainly that the support these citizens is not taken for granted, that we are bi-lingual country and the richer for it.
Hispanics are around 20% of the US population, their numbers quadrupling in the past 40 years. That voting block can make a huge difference in an election. I hope the Democrats pay as much attention to wooing the Hispanics as the Party of Trump.
Ned-Don’t be ashamed. We all have been living the American ways for centuries and it involves ongoing racism that most of us don’t really understand. That’s why education and forums like HCR’s are so important.
By telling a personal story he made his essay powerful. I remember that time vividly, the incident, the discovery of the bodies, the faces of the convicted, Goldwater's speech, my parents Goldwater campaign button, all of it. My parents were shocked by the Goldwater speech and by the many incidents, but they voted for him anyway, he was the Republican. As a vet, my dad loved Ike and so that was that. Perhaps we need to figure out how to get folks like my parents, to think differently. A powerfrul read!
" . . . . murdered by white supremacists — by violent bullies who would stop at nothing to prevent Black people from exercising their right to vote — something snapped inside me.
Yes. The death of the three civil rights workers is what prompted me to go to Mississippi to help federal registrars during a winter break from college.
I live in Boston and Kraków, but I’m from the Mississippi Delta and was seven years old during Freedom Summer. I’m white, and I can swear on a stack of Bibles a mile high that my parents and the parents of all of my friends were 100 percent untroubled by those horrific murders. They considered them a by-product of “meddling” by outsiders. Had it not been for the Warren Court and, later, LBJ, nothing would have changed down there. So it’s a bitter pill to swallow as I watch the current SCOTUS turning back the clock. I grew up in a police state, and I’m afraid I’m going to die in one.
My father was born and raised in Mississippi, and then moved to Chicago as a boy with his family. I never, ever visited Mississippi because of this story. I viewed Mississippi as a terrible place. In fact, the US South in general. My White German mother and Black American father were both very active in the Civil Rights movement, and involved me too. I marched, I fundraised, and I was for the cause of King, the integration of our society. Now I live mostly in Germany and I am always aware of the racist goings on in both countries and elsewhere because of growing up in these times in the United States. I agree that what is going on with SCOTUS, aided by Clarence Thomas, is setting the USA back into the last century if not to the Middle Ages.
Linda, 2 thoughts. First, Germany was the world leader of civilization, until Hitler and reverted to Mean afterwards. I could never understand how this could be, until MAGAs. 'It happened there (Germany), it can happen anywhere', if each generation fails to meet the democratic challenge of its day. Similar thoughts, experience? Second, if if if Trump loses, it will be the beginning of the end of our generation's brush with Facism. After an election loss, all the pending cases against the Orange Clown will catch up to him, he will be convicted. The sordid details will sicken much of America and that POS will spend much of the remainder of his life in jail. If Trump is elected, then our generation will have been the first generation since 1776 to have dropped the torch of freedom, with unimaginable consequences.
A Biden win in 2024 will not end the MAGA attack on democracy. There still the Ferealist Society, Heritage Foundation, Supreme Court and billionaires who think they can buy elections. MAGAs are embedded in local governments and state governments. Our fight for democracy will have to continue well past 2024
It is going to be a long, hard, and difficult slog to keep fighting this battle. It involves hours of hard work, and doesn’t involve violence or riots. One difficulty we seem to face as a country as the late William Greider noted, Americans only seem to make changes in response to overpowering events, like the Great Depression bringing on the New Deal. The Republicans (and a few Democrats) have been gradually bringing on the economic decline of the American middle class, and they lie about Democrats to their captive audiences to get them to believe the worst of us and to attribute to us opinions we do not support. They hope to keep their mobs (and that’s what they are) stirred up against us rather than to think critically about where our problems are really originating.
I agree Patrick, the lesson is the fight never ends. Birch Society, KKK, Neo-Nazi party, Heritage Foundation, Koch Bros., etc. and all the bad guys are always lurking, it's the extent of their following that increases or diminishes. But Trump losing and getting jailed will be like the Allies landing on the beaches in Normandy, the fight continues but the result is no longer in doubt.
Germany "reverted to mean"? The "mean" of Germany (I say this as a person of German descent) was until 1945 an autocratic, militarized state, led by Prussia. First the other states were controlled by Prussia, then Prussia "united" them (under Prussian Kaisers). While there was a liberal political movement throughout the 19th century (one of my ancestors was a member of he Congress of Frankfurt in 1848 and arrived here with a Prussian price on his head after they suppressed the Revolution of 11848), the conservatives held the majority.. Most of the Germans who migrated to America in the mid-late 19th Century were opponents of Prussia (which was ironic when that "narrow minded bigot" Woodrow Fuckwit Wilson turn on "anti-German" campaign to support World War I. However, interestingly, the sons and grandsons of those immigrants - from Eisenhower down - were the ones who smashed Nazism. But then Germany was occupied and divided until 1989.
That was what it took for the Nation of Goethe to overcome the nation of the Kaisers (and Prussia was wiped from the map in 1945 and the Prussians driven out in the years after the war).
So that's what it took to "return to the (nonexistent) Democratic mean."
My daughter, who is studying in Berlin, and I, were just discussing that democracy for Germany was the 15 years of the Weimar Republic and then in the East it did not come again until 1989. So, it is no wonder that there is less understanding of it and people are more vulnerable to Bots that encourage them to vote for the AfD. In the USA, our democracy has not been for all the entire time. Women did not get the vote until the the 1900s, and the Equal Rights Amendment still has not been passed.
David: I read (many years ago) that when the Church executed someone for witchcraft, they got the murdered person’s property. Executions went on until the law was changed and the Church could no longer collect the estate.
Reminds me of laws enabling local police to keep property and cash from anyone arrested for a drug crime (I don’t think they even had to be convicted). What a spree if local arrests that incentivized! Was that a Reagan thing? Seems like something he would do.
Your description of Germany is accurate, but also describes all of Europe in that era, except other parts of Europe had crappier universities and infrastructure, less scientific discoveries and publications, less noteworthy scholarship in the arts and sciences, less insightful philosophers. Today Germany is the cornerstone of the EU. The history of Europe for centuries is one war after another with ever shifting alliances for the sole purpose of not allowing one country to dominate all of Europe, an endlessly rapacious bunch murderous racist plunderers and that was the 'the civilized' world.
Britain’s foreign policy always has been to keep one country from dominating Europe. Farage of UKIP and Johnson of the Tories managed to pull off their goal of getting Britain out of the EU, but it will permanently stunt Britain’s economy in the end because Britain got rid of its biggest trading partner.
TC, thanks for that brief history lesson. I too am of German descent -- about 1/4 -- but know little of my German ancestry (unlike my majority French-Canadian.) I do know my great great grandparents came to Connecticut I believe in the 1840s, but never knew the (possible) reason.
100Panthers, if the convicted felon loses, I doubt we will return to a less-racist/fascist state anytime soon. He has normalized such beliefs and has activated their perceived grievances for their lot in life, when as Dr. Richardson has pointed out so eloquently time and again, the real blame for their troubles lies with a slew of GOP stalwarts -- among them Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, Gingrich, Murdoch and all the rest. The CF45 skillfully created a base of folks who probably had dark notions about race (as he does) and need someone to blame. He started it with his escalator ramble in his ugly twee building, calling out Mexicans who come to take property, jobs and lives. He made it PC among their group to reveal their previously-suppressed racism.
Yikes - my comment was for an earlier post by 100 Panthers about the decline of MAGA after Trump loses and is convicted. Not about some of the intervening posts!
True. But somehow I picture the South as the bulging beer gut of America. (I'm sorry to offend anybody -- it's just the image I get when I think of the swelling population of Southern states vs the North.
I’ll likely offend when I say that trailer trash have MAGAt sensibilities, gullible and admiring of pseudo elites. But they are useful to the ones who want votes, or ones who can intimidate voters when needed. That beer gut thing is likely true too.
I have traveled to 49 states and many foreign countries. On rare occasion I have gone to a place I truly don't wish to return to.
But when it comes to politics, the MAGAs and white Christian nationalists are drive by hate, anger, resentment and misinformation. These all breed fear.
Some of the kindest and warmest people I have met are in the deep South. They are terrified of most Democrats because of the lies they are told in church and by their politicians.
I get hung up on politics and the future of democracy when I read HCRs column and this comment section, but in reality, most Americans don't give a rip or pay attention.
As Americans, we have so much in common with most people -- unfortunately politics is incredibly divisive and it seems like people in certain parts of the country are bad.
There are a multitude of organizations and people in the South dedicated to righting wrongs from the past, they’re brilliant in mind and generous in spirit. Here are just two examples, check them out: www.eji.org/about AND www.opdla.org Montgomery, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana have set the bar high for what can be done to make the world a better place.
I hope DJT784534 doesn't get into office so he and his thugs don't attempt to shut down these organizations which, unfortunately, are so necessary due to ignorance, fear, and hatred.
And, since 1971, the SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center. Based in Montgomery. Offices in Atlanta, Tallahassee, Miami, New Orleans and Jackson, Mississippi.
The word Mississippi always brings to mind Nina Simone and her 1964 song, Mississippi Goddamn. Here's one of several live performances from YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcoKebBg2g
I believe we have a chance to win this election because the majority of us in this country believe in Democracy. Sure , Trump can try to revert this country back but it won't happen because we will prevail and win this election in November.
We mustn't forget voter nullification. At least one state legislature has given themselves the power to nullify a result of they don't like it. Which raises the question: if they are so sure their side is so great, why do they work so damn hard to ignore the will of the people?
Best question ever. Only those who think they are likely to lose a popular vote go to such extremes - all the while accusing the other side of doing what they are doing. Sort of like Putin and others of his ilk. Sadly, MAGAts are on board with a rigged election to get their cult leader. Not only to lead them to hell but all of us.
You took the words right out of my typing fingers. This will not be a fair election. Red states disenfranchising thousands, reducing voting methods, installing MAGAs in positions to refuse to certify a Biden victory, recruiting armed “poll watchers”…..
And the trolls, Sinclair propaganda on local stations, third party spoilers, the SCOTUS undermining voting rights… I no longer believe voting alone can or will make the difference.
As Stalin said, it matters not who votes, it matters who counts the votes. It’s not just Goebbels they have read and follow his strategies. They have mined the words of the worst.
First, don't let's malign the Middle Ages (I'm quite serious, despite all the awful downsides...).
Secondly, let's be precise, he seems to be hankering after a reintroduction of the Holy Inquisition.
In any case, it's all about social control and the power of ecclesiastical authorities -- Church, not Christ.
And I'd rather be mistaken in what I've just written, as religion imposed from above can do (and already has done) serious damage to the misrepresented and forgotten truth at the heart of Christ's religion.
Jesus got thrown under the bus when righteous power became the goal.
I agree about the Middle Ages. My niece is a professor of medieval studies and her books are fascinating. Yep the Inquisition was a bummer. Alito can’t wait.
I'm quite lost, can’t find my own comment or yours, Marge... [Can’t handle the Substack program in such a way as to conduct a cogent conversation…] Anyway, when it comes to blundering around, colliding with one belief, getting tripped by another, putting one's foot in a puddle and sinking in up to one's middle... why... the question is, “Who's sighted?”
At best, we’re like the blind man healed by Jesus who could not at first make sense of what he was seeing... trees or people?
This thing of taking beliefs for truth, taking representations for what they represent, taking ideas for concrete realities... then taking the harmless neighbor—wrong kind of face, wrong color skin, wrong politics, wrong religion (or worse, no religion...) anyway something “different”, something “not one of us...”—then, because you hate yourself, taking the neighbor you’re commanded to love “as yourself” for a horrific Hannibal Lecter demon out to murder you and store bits of you in his deep freeze... and reacting accordingly... Why, that's not just blindness... that's getting turned into a figment of DT's psychotic nightmare...!
So much fear-and-hate-filled madness, so much blindness, turning the land into a smoke-filled labyrinth of dark distorting mirrors...
*
When we look around us, we’ll do well to remember Diogenes carrying a lantern in brilliant Athenian daylight. When asked why, he answered:
I agree with you, Peter, on the idiocy of our national conversation and the difficulty of a substack conversation! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. You have a lot to say.
Also, I can picture a new American Crusade against Muslim countries. Can’t you? Of course they wouldn’t be quite so stupid as to call it that. Or maybe they would…
Thank you Steve. I come from educated priveledge. Not wealthy but academic or professional. In the late fifties, into the early sixties San Francisco Bay area, Black communities were very separate but there were always several Black kids in my Jr high school and high school who were great kids and they were part of the serious groups on campus, but the separation was still real, as much as we all enjoyed each others company, and as much as we were all aware of the issues of race.
There are so many smart and consious people in Heather's followers. We should try to identify the communities we live in and the few nearby should meet up once in a while for coffee or a beer.
RR I would like to point out that skin color is not race, it is a genetic variation of human being, just as eye color, hair color, lobe detachment or attachment, longer first or second toe, etc... Our race is human. That is what I put down, that is what my family puts down in every instance, or we put "other" if there is not an opportunity to put that. After Nazism "race" is not a category that Germans have on their census. Perhaps after Trumpism we can move beyond it in the USA too. I come from educated privilege as well. I live in the community where Barack Obama made his Chicago home, and the number of Black academics and millionaires is ever growing. However, that is despite racism (the idea that color gives you a different race). I am grateful for diversity in appearance. The world would be just that much more boring if we did not have it.
"White skinned" persons (I am one) are the most insecure of creations. ....always looking to elevate ourselves by putting someone else down be it skin color, or where one lives...how one dresses, or where one vacations if one can afford a vacation, ...how many things one has or where one works...sad and tragic...trying to make oneself "above" another.
I was so ashamed to realize as an adult that when the great black musicians I loved to listen to were done after hours of entertaining young white people, they had to plan ahead where they would be able to go to rest, to get a shower and find a place to sleep that night to get a good meal...I, tragically.... had no clue!!!!
The only thing I do vividly remember were the horrible conditions of the bathrooms for people of color at "filling stations".
Racism is dehumanizing....it is one of the most horrible tragedies of mankind.
I keep thinking it will go away but it keeps raising its evil head of destruction.
Indeed! The famous saying, “How many black people live in Africa?” The answer is “There are no black people living in Africa.” There are Nigerians and Kenyans, but Black is a European and American term. It is part of our intrinsic racism. All of us who coined the concept that skin color was a category of human beings. Race itself is the supporting pillar of all Racism.
I agree wholeheartedly and although an old white woman if any paperwork asks me to choose my race I will not fill in a box. I write in bold letters, Human Race—Shame On You. I read Caste-the origins of our discontent by Isabel Wilkerson awhile ago and recently watched Hulu’s portrayal of the book, Origin. It is such an eye opener.
The Navy was "desegregated" along with the other services in 1948, but when I was in it in the early 60s, it was run by a primarily-Southern officer class, like a damn plantation. It took a couple "race riots" and Admiral Zumwalt and his collection of reformers (including my friend the late Admiral Don Shelton) to finally bring the Emancipation Proclamation to the Navy.
I was thinking of the assisted living facility I lived in while my husband was sick and I thought it looked like a plantation. Black staff taking care of white residents. There were exceptions , but that was the “stage.”
Ransom, several of us in Oregon are planning to do just that! Prompted by the Professor’s trip to Portland (OR) in September, we’re getting together for lunch next month, and going together to her presentation in September!
I grew up in the 70s & am VERY glad for what influence I knew from the educated privileged, where education was not a credential purchased but a way of life. I remember 'hippies' being, if not college students, thinking, caring people. Regardless how 'straight' or non-conforming, the liberal, inclusive mindset was POWERFUL. I am glad to be in the company of so many that are smart & conscious!
Steve: Or you may die in a theocracy, which may be worse. I know hypocrisy is rampant but those GOP/MAGITES who scream that Democrats want to impose Sharia Law are polishing their weapons to impose Christianity. And since they seem to have completely missed the New Testament, there will be eyes gouged, people stoned, slavery, polygamy, etc!
Growing up in the 60s, I felt nothing was more important than passing civil rights legislation. All these years later, I know the truth of the saying “You cannot legislate morality. “
If America is ever going to be “one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all,” we are going to need a spiritual transformation… Not more laws. We must find a way to heal the American spirit… To replace hate and fear with love and cooperation. I do not believe this can come from the world of politics. It must come from us… from “we the people”.
Let’s take a lesson from before the xenophobic 1950s, when it was “one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all” and god had nothing to do with it. That would help a lot.
I'm old enough to remember the previous wording. The change prompted me to start thinking about the pledge itself. Better to not mince words and pledge allegiance to the Constitution IMO.
America has never been "under God." The New World was a place where people from the Old World came to make their fortunes. Expeditions were funded by the wealthy, who wanted a return on their investment. Those on the lower rungs of society came seeking opportunities. During the time of European settlement, some areas of the country were penal colonies, places to get rid of the "dregs" of society. There is always the need to hold America to the ideal of "All men are created equal," even though Jefferson had a different interpretation of that idea back in his time.
Yes-Georgia was one such penal colony and look at how today it is a “swing state”. For enslaved Black people Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi were the most treacherous. Most were afraid of being sold to people in those states.
I appreciate your point. Way too many Americans use religion as a way to divide us… to engage in the “culture war”. Three years ago I moved from New York City to a small town on Route 66 in Oklahoma. I joined the local United Methodist Church and found it to be a true expression of the first principal I had heard religion is about as a non-religious child… Love thy neighbor. For this reason, I believe it’s possible to speak of religion as having a positive effect on America. It all depends on which religion or religions you are talking about.
Speaking of Route 66. We lived 3 houses away from old Route 66 in Springfield, IL. One of the great US Highways across the US. It was replaced by I-55 in Illinois, I-44 in MO and OK and I-40 across the Southwest, but so much great history remains along the route. About 1/2 mile south of us in Springfield, the old highway dead-ends into Lake Springfield for about a quart of a mile.
Steve, historically the protests have changed the Overton Window (range of policies acceptable to the majority of the public). Once the Overton Window has changed, laws change to reflect the thinking of the majority. When laws change, and the majority of the people follow those rules, then the Overton Window shifts to reflect the new norms. Unfortunately, the construction of our brains to instinctively fear “the other” slows the progress toward loving all our fellow humans.
I know about the Overton Window. But I also know hate is something we are taught. It has nothing to do with how are brains are constructed. We have be a natural desire to survive. But it’s possible to teach children that the best way to survive is together. It’s also possible to teach that science has known since the 1960s how to feed clothe house and educate everyone on Earth (see: Buckminster Fuller, W. Edwards Deming). Cooperation is the key to our survival … to peace… not cut throat competition… not war.
I don’t think our brains are “constructed to fear the Other”—plenty of people don’t, especially those who live in cities. Even in a small town like the one I grew up in in Ohio there wasn’t much fear of that kind among the young. Our minds can be shaped or reshaped though, by bad information from authoritative sources, or watching bad people attain success and power. FOX News, and the success of Trump, have been terrible for our country.
Mary, I believe that many of us are taught that our innate instincts can be overcome—and others can be taught that we are right to fear those who are different. I grew up in a culture that feared having their children exposed to “those godless communists” in the universities.
Yes, that's what I mean. Your brain wasn't constructed that way, your community was, and its laws confirmed that there was a difference. Someone else here posted that if a White person said they didn't notice when they first met a Black person that the person was Black they were lying, but I remember the first person I met who I was told (afterwards) was Black, a slightly older girl named Shelley. I was struck by how pretty she was, and we played all afternoon. Later I said something admiring about her to a neighbor girl, who said "She's colored." I was puzzled at the word and asked what she meant. I don't think she really knew either, it was just something she'd heard her father say. Shelley's mother did housework for them so she'd been to my neighbor's house and they played. I think my neighbor was just possessive, jealous that Shelley and I were making friends too, so she tried to say something that would put me off her and used a word she'd gleaned was derogatory. Neither of us had a concept of "difference," except that Shelley was pretty and smart and cool.
I'd be interested to know how they define it ("ideas"). My friend in the story--a profoundly, actively anti-racist person I'm still close to at 70--was well past 5 when she tried to nip my friendship with Shelley in the bud by announcing to me that she was "colored." But I doubt she had an "idea" other than "this is something my dad thinks is bad."
You’re welcome. We must think differently if America is going to get out of the crisis it’s in. Passing laws does not eliminate the root cause of our crisis. Laws can help deal with symptoms by making bad behavior a crime, but they can’t eliminate the desire to behave badly.
What a terrible chapter in our history that was, We should have foreseen then that any State that could support the murder of 3 men whose only "crime" was to assist other American Citizens to register for the right to vote, was not worthy of being a member of the United States. I feel the same way today. I think the Civil War was fought in vain. The Northern troops may have won the battle, but the southerners who considered themselves an aristocracy won he war. Even today 159 years after the end of the Civil War, the same situation exists. vulnerable persons, who look "different" speak "different", love "differently" or pray "differently" (or like me have no god at all) are still endangered in the fifteen States. Except now the entire Uniteed States is endangered because these same people - who haven't been give their, way now want to convert all of us to Fascism. Their demented puppet is even planning to build concentration camps in his first year in office - hello, Dachau.
Since so many are reminiscing, I was 31, living in California, and devoted to Civil Rights. I was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Society then, it would be a few more years before I realized I didn't really need a god. The 3 murdered young men, brought horror to our hearts. I had 2 very young daughters (a yearling and a four year old) and no job so I couldn't go to Mississippi or Alabama. And to be honest, while we sent what money we could to the organizations there, we simply did not have the in your face problem s that existed in Mississippi, Alabama and the rest of the deep south. It would be 3 more years before I even became a citizen. But I campaigned heavily for Lyndon Baines Johnson, knocked on doors, distributed posters and even registered voters. (No, they didn't care that I couldn't vote myself, they just needed live warm bodies to go to houses of those who wished to register and help them fill out the forms. And I still mean every word of my post 5 minutes ago.
Fay, all that stuff existed in the North too, just not slavery. "No Irish need apply." "Dogs and Irish Keep Off the Grass" and all the ethnic "jokes" that fortunately don't get said anymore over the past 50 years other than by Republicans. Growing up, Denver was a solidly-segregated city, by race, religion and social class.
True Tom, I first lived in Florida, from December 1958 until April 1961, then I threw a hissy fit and forced my then husband to move to a better paying job in California, and I've never regretted it. Yes there were constant ethnic and gender jokes from the time I first remember until recently, but from shortly after my youngest daughter's birth in December 1962 I was so involved in political campaigns, Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam movements I didn't notice them so much. I grew up mostly in Southern Ontario, during the Depression everyone moved a lot. and I only met persons of color as an adult. The prejudices with which I grew up were mainly directed at Catholics, Irish, German, and Italian and since I couldn't see the differences I guess they never rubbed off. My personal prejudices tend to be against individuals - I have a low tolerance for stupidity, racism, bigotry and gender preference. I know they are out there, I just mostly ignore them.
TC, growing up in Omaha was segregated mostly by region of origin and then by color. Not really so much by religion.
My parents were lower middle class and my mom always worked except for the few months she was home when each of us kids were born. My grandmother lived with us so my parents didn't have to pay child care except on rare occasion. Once we reached 3 or 4 years old, we were only allowed inside when my parents were home and for lunch. By 8 am in the summer almost every kid in our neighborhood was outside playing. And there were literally thousands of kids in our 1 square mile neighborhood. Most of us only put on shoes in the summer to go to church on Sunday. The neighborhood pool was the afternoon entertainment and babysitter from Memorial Day until Labor Day.
There were two schools in the neighborhood, the K-6 public school and the K-8 Catholic school. The kids from each school rarely mixed. But this was post WWII Omaha.
The pre-WWII neighborhoods were Polish, Bohemian, Czech, Irish, Swedish, Danish, German, African American and Hispanic. A few times a year we would eat different ethnic foods but for us kids, it was too weird eating things like Goulash and Chow Mein. My dad would eat the leftovers for days.
I suppose most American cities and towns were the same, people taking care of their own and socializing with their own.
How have we stayed together as a country with such incredible diversity?
By a myth of togetherness. Now we face the dissolution of the myth or making it reality. No other country has the opportunity that we have. So much diversity is strength. No one group has a lock on anything. Unlock the talent and we could show the world what earthlings are capable of. Otherwise we show them the worst of mankind. I remember after the moon landing, it was for all mankind. Elon and Jeff polish their egos with penis-shaped rockets. How sad
That definitely sounds like Denver of my youth. I used to get up with the sun in the summer, make myself breakfast, hop on my bike and spend the day in Washington Park (a pretty big place) ending by swimming in the north lake in the afternoon, then home by dark. A kid on his own all through that, and nobody worried. You definitely could not do that today.
The diversity is the "secret sauce" of America, that and the renewal of the dream in each generation's immigrants.
On August 3, 1980, two counties south of Philadelphia, Mississippi, I was 16, sixteen years almost to the day after the bodies of the three men had been found. I didn’t know then that I was liberal or gay, but I knew this guy Reagan and this small chain Wal-Mart which had already destroyed our small town, were going to be trouble. Little did I realize how much. To this day, it escapes me how non-Southerners romanticize the racist, homophobic, misogynist South, which Trump has revealed hasn’t changed one bit.
It has changed? Fascist President Trump is just warming up. White historians are still hiding. Campuses are still a mess. The GOP is still the party of Reagan and unhinged segregationists. Democrats still blink in the mirror. We have a long way to go. Do we want to go there? Do we care? Mississippi is Mississippi. Arizona is Arizona.
Women, Children, Mules and Other Property is the title of a section of the Oklahoma civil code. It was pointed out in the 1970s as still on the books. The patriarchical oligarchy has pitted the races against each other since the thriving communities of escaped slaves and Irish and English indentured servants over the mountains and into Kentuky were identified as a threat to their power. The priveliges granted to poor white southern people that allowed them to lord it over Black people has kept them voting against their best interests ever since Reconstruction. I believe the Southern Baptist Convention has a powerful hand in keeping this system enforced. They are in the news again today, exposed again, as usual, as the patriarchal misogynists they are.
It actually goes back much further than Reconstruction. The deliberate sowing of animosity between Black and white Americans goes back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 17th century Virginia, when dissatisfied white indentured servants and Black enslaved people rebelled against the royal governor of Virginia, William Berkeley. After Bacon’s Rebellion was suppressed, Virginia enacted its first Black Codes to regulate the conduct of Black enslaved people and to encourage white people to buy into racism.
Yep-and they codified it into law. The major items were stricter punishment for Black people, no interracial marriages, and Black people would be slaves for life while White people would serve their indentured time and then be given severance to start their lives. Racism is deeply embedded in America as you point out so well.
I was 17 years old and living in a lily-white suburb of Detroit at the time.
I was aware of Vietnam distantly -- the recently murdered John Kennedy had sent U.S. military training personnel there, but in the election of 1964 U.S. propping up of the Saigon government did not figure.
Below this comment box, as I keyboard in, I can already see Ransom Rideout's note on Robert Reich's "tribute to his childhood friend, Michael Schwermer" -- 1st comment posted to Heather's today.
Some things went well in the 1960s. Now, 60 years later, much of the old ugliness remains, in ways that hatred and groupthink always seem to linger, and surface again.
Doris Kearns Goodwin has a new book out recently, "An Unfinished Love Story," on her new husband then, and other key players she celebrates from that era. Many of us remember the music from then. Many of the books, films -- even poets, as Norman Mailer would soon write a book, "Armies of the Night," with poet Robert Lowell with many more my age at its heart.
Thank to Heather for recalling this history from that summer -- with decent souls, three in particular then murdered. Always, in history, it's individuals who claim us, our memories -- and we thrive insofar as, like Heather, like Doris Kearns Goodwin, we can remember them. Even if the remembering reminds us we're never really very far from the same seething, roiling hatreds and group stupidities that, background or foreground, morphing just a bit, just continue and continue.
The abuse by the Klan against the “freedom fighters” the summer of 1964 …..while horrible pales in comparison to the collective operational treason of the January 6th ‘players’… and our national potential tolerance in 2024 for the loss of our democracy with the election THIS close is beyond comprehension….we have sunk so low.
Every time this story is retold, it makes me feel so sad. Those "boys" were younger than my kids are currently, and I cannot even imagine their terror and suffering, not to mention the depth of grief their families experienced. The evil of the KKK and that they still exist is true horror.
That is for sure. That is how we are brought up to be. It is deep in our culture. I will ask all of you good European stock to describe you first visceral reaction upon encountering a Black person. If you do not first notice that the person is Black, you are lying. No matter how radically progressive or Christian or whatever you are.
Differences are noticeable, it’s sort of necessary for flight or fight. Maybe we take it to extremes so it defines us, but differences will never be not noticed.
I get tired of seeing the constant trolling and insults lobbed on Xitter at writers like Alessandra Harris. Nikole Hannah-Jones and Tim Wise for their mentioning things some whites don’t want to hear, but need to hear.
In a very white area of eastern Pennsylvania… we had no POC in our schools. Then in 1965 I went to college in the Finger Lakes region of NYS, no POC in the college. Then got my first job at the U of P hospital in west z Philadelphia. I recall it feeling like a culture shock. I’m well past that feeling but not where I want to be.
Which shows once again how much you "know" about anything, you moron. I wrote two books on Vietnam, and the research I did shows that LBJ had an inferiority complex when facing the "Best and the Brightest New Frontiersmen," and that THEY were the ones pushing the war and then pushing every expansion. In fact, LBJ was the guy delaying every decision (which pretty much guaranteed the defeat). And if he was a "racist" why did he sponsor and push through the 1957 civil rights act against massive Solid South resistance, and then the 1964 civil rights act followed by the Voting Rights Act.
Vietnam.. North and South, Laos, Cambodia, the massacres and burning of children, LBJ knew… he was the bully of the Senate, chosen to bring Texas for JFK, and they never got it done… he hid behind public relations, lies, it cost us 58,000 lives, we lost, America’s first loss, and we were changed forever.. LBJ retired in disgrace, chased by the ghost of Sen. Eugene McCarthy for the rest of his life - Great Society was his Texas apology, a start, and we need to remember ten years of Vietnam, those 58,000, and the photograph of Eddie Adams that ended that war, one shot in black and white ended our worst war - that changed America. One shot by a 35mm camera taken a point blank range, in the street in wartime.. one shot.. forced us out of a war… what do we need now?
I’d guess color pictures, front, side and back, of lying President Trump might do it, as he spews his never ending lies knee deep and chest high. One film that captures the essence of the man ought to do it..
Once again, what you think is "history" and what actually happened might as well have been on different planets. Since I was there at the (alleged) Tonkin gulf (non) Incident, and wrote a book that starts with Tonkin Gulf in detail (I was staff of the command in charge of the destroyers) and explains who was "running with it" to use for the war they had been pushing since they came into power in 1960 (Vietnam got stated by that pissant JFK and pushed throughout till they were defeated in 1968 by the "Best and the Brightest" of the so called "New Frontier). My research for "The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club" - now that one can access formerly top secret reports downgraded by the 50 year rule - showed that Johnson was paying no attention in the spring/summer of 1964 when the US military was running provocative aerial operations into North Vietnam and we were sending destroyers to cruise down the "3 mile limit line". Johnson took the "incident" seriously because he was afraid of the goldwaterites using it against him. For 20 minutes after he was first told of the "event", LBJ was the only guy on the planet who had it right, when he exclaimed "Those poor damn sailors were probably shooting at flying fish," which in fact they were. In 2006, it was finally proven that the "Lights in the water" that night were actually the reflections of the moon through the clouds and the lightning flashes from the storms in all quadrants, off the enormous school of flying fish that annually transits the Gulf of Tonkin in the first week of August. What I discovered researching that book was that we were all yelling "Hey! Hey! LBJ! How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?" at the wrong guy. It should have been "Hey Hey JFK - the guy who was NEVER going to withdraw, despite all the dumb lefties who just KNOW that the great JFK was "assassinated because he wanted to get out of Vietnam." HAH!! And again, HAH!!!!
I think both JFK and LBJ were trapped by the inevitability of McCarthy-like accusations that they “lost” Vietnam in the same way that some experts on China were accused of “losing” China. The problem was that neither the Chinese mainland or Vietnam were ours to lose to begin with. In Vietnam, the North Vietnamese viewed us as an obstacle to winning their civil war. Despite North Vietnam’s willingness to accept help from the USSR and the PRC, Neil Sheehan recalled in his book “A Bright Shining Lie” that one young NVA guard holding an American civilian prisoner told him that Vietnam was not going to let the Soviets or Mao’s China dictate to them.
Nixon and Kissinger issued a back door request to the South Vietnamese government to refuse to participate in the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 and LBJ was too exhausted to do anything about it. Nixon and Kissinger lied that they had a special plan to “end the war,” and they pointlessly managed to continue the American war in Vietnam until 1973, and the South Vietnamese government collapsed two years later.
“Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders.”
This could just as well have been written today - 60 years later.
“My fellow citizens, we have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail.” LBJ, 1964 Those words resonate today when the country is divided by a fascist convicted felon and his puppet in congress and the judiciary. WE MUST NOT FAIL!
President Johnson’s “We Shall Overcome’ speech to Congress on March 15, 1965 was, in my opinion, the most remarkable presidential civil rights speech in American history.
He had taken a three month Senate filibuster in 1964 before forcing through the Civil Rights Law of 1964. However, the bill sent to him omitted the voting rights provision.
After a bloody massacre in Selma, Alabama, Johnson, a southerner, gave his over powering historical oration to Congress in which he spelled out why providing ‘Negroes’ full voting rights was adhering to the Constitution.
The result was the sweeping Voting Rights of 1965 legislation. At the time, it seemed that the historical disbalance in the voting rights of ‘Negroes’ and whites had been eliminated. Indeed, for a number of years this appeared to be true.
HOWEVER, quite recently the Supreme Court, in various decisions, ruled that the historical disbalance between Black and white voting no longer existed. They chipped away at the provisions of the Voting Rights Law of 1965. Today it has been virtually gutted, as cases of denial of Black voting rights, especially in regard to legislative redistricting, have generally been denied.
The Biden administration has steadfastly sought to enforce these voting rights. The Supreme Court, Trumpites, and the ‘evangelical Christians,’ have sought to deny equal voting rights.
Today, when I recall Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Johnson proclaiming “We Shall Overcome,” and Joan Baez singing this at the Lincoln Memorial gathering in 1963, my bitter reaction is OH YEAH.
Sad, isn’t it, that we have to keep refighting battles we thought we had one? The decision I regarding Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act wasn’t a surprise to me, although it was horrid. Nor is it a surprise that Republicans are returning to the old gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement tricks to suppress voting among their opponents.
The six right wing members of the court have no regard for stare decisis or precedents except when they can manipulate them to get their own way. Roberts originally came to the DOJ as a Reagan appointee whose job it was to start suppressing minority voting. Don’t look for anything from the SCOTUS majority except for favoritism for big money and big corporations over the rights of human beings. They have decided to play the phony game that we have become more “egalitarian” when in fact we are worse off than we were in terms of concentration of wealth, employment and civil rights. We are at serious risk of permanently losing constitutional government to a selfish, narcissistic and sociopathic individual who has already shown he is incapable of governing.
Kathy You used a word that seems judicially obsolete these days—‘stare decisis.’ Back in the Middle Ages, when I studied the Constitution, stare decisis, going back to Chief Justice John Marshall , was the foundation stone of our judiciary system.
Should I request a refund for my constitution law courses? Can I get online credit for courses in Aliotism and Thomasism?
Thank you for highlighting the significance of Reagan’s speech about states’ rights in Philadelphia Mississippi, early in his presidential campaign. Many people do not know about this racist dog whistle that summoned southern whites supremacists to support his candidacy.
Reagan's actions and racist views became even more obvious and apparent when he was elected President. He was against placing sanctions against South Africa to end apartheid, even vetoing the Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986 although Congress was able to override the veto.
Reagan made a very controversial visit to a WWII cemetery in Bitburg, Germany in 1985. About 2000 German soldiers were buried there and 49 of the buried were SS officers which made Reagan's visit offensive to many, especially Jewish people and those that had family killed and terrorized by the Nazi regime. He never apologized for it and it always seemed strange to me. Joey Ramone, a Jewish kid from Queens, and Dee Dee Ramone wrote the Ramones song 'Brain is hanging upside down(Bonzo goes to Bitburg)' because they were as incensed by Reagan's visit as many others were too.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/05/this-day-in-politics-may-5-1985-565776
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-bitburg-controversy
I remember that visit because it was so shocking and inexcusable. It makes me think about how the Reich came to the US to study our Jim Crow laws to see how to segregate Jews and other “undesirables.”
Yes I'm reading Rachel Maddow's book 'Prequel' right now, which is outstanding and very informative but harrowing to realize that these Nazi sympathizers and fascist racists have been part of the American population for so long. The 3 part Ken Burn's documentary 'The U.S. and the Holocaust' was really great too and talked about the ways the Third Reich used the U.S. history of seizing Native American land and confining them to reservations or annihilating them altogether, also using the enslavement and savage treatment of Africans and Jim Crow laws that kept them repressed even when supposedly free.
As she does so well, Heather writes in detail and really shows how horrible the murder of these 3 men In Philadelphia, Mississippi was and how long it took for justice to finally be served in some way. Or that 8 other Black men were found murdered just during the search for them in the months that they'd been missing. That Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner were driven by Deputy Sheriff Price down some sketchy road to be brutally beaten, murdered and buried at the dam site by KKK members he was associated with is still too appalling to believe it can happen here in the U.S.
Yet Reagan chose to go to this site for a reason, as well as going to the Bitburg Nazi cemetery. He knew were he was going in these instances and it says much about him.
I voted for Jimmy Carter and was very disappointed when Regan was elected. Thank you for the history lesson, I forgot all about that visit.
You're welcome, thank you for the reply.
I was still in high school during Reagan years so couldn't vote yet. But there really is more to I would add to Reagan's historical record. Iran-Contra and working back channel diplomacy to undermine Carter and not let the American hostages be freed until January 20, 1981 the day Reagan was to be inaugurated.
Also crack cocaine flooding the streets of predominantly poorer, black communities in places like Compton/South Central Los Angeles and Oakland/Richmond in the Bay Area during his presidency reached epidemic proportions. His drug war policies and the disparity laws for crack vs. cocaine possession meant the Black people, especially young men, were often given longer prison sentences and more severe punishments than White people for cocaine possession. As I said before his actions and racist views became very obvious as president.
Wow…. THANK YOU!!!!! Trying to think of “any” Republicans (maybe Nelson Rockefeller who lost…) who cared about “the people”…. My first presidential vote was for John f. Kennedy…. And I went to the polls with my Mother to vote for Harry Truman when I was 12.
I foolishly voted for John Anderson that year and have been ashamed that I did not see the value of President Carter presidency.
I ignorantly voted for Reagan that year, also. That was my first time voting. I always regretted doing that! I have NEVER voted republican since then, and never will again.
Indeed, thank you for the history lesson…. I too voted for Jimmy Carter….
I voted for Jimmy Carter as well.
Jimmy Carter was a good man. When the time comes to separate the sheep from the goats..........he will be part of the flock, protected peacefully...for eternity.
I’m not really for or against anyone or thing, strange as that sounds. We live in an environment formed by a global society that objectively (as objective as one can be which usually isn’t very) is insane. We then elect and blame leaders for not fixing it and think this makes sense. 😵💫
My commitment is participating in bringing forth a world that works for EVERYONE and everything. With no one or thing left out.
I’m clear that it must work for everyone or it works for no one.
Working with a planet full of frightened people is a handful and yet is the greatest opportunity anyone has had the privilege of doing since it has become possible to feed and actually care for everyone.
This possibility of a world that works for everyone has put in its appearance recently. While many will scoff or even take offense at the idea that this idea is an idea whose time has come, it still has arrived.
It’s time to put down the shoving, and buying, and bullying our way along.
There is enough, way more than enough to go around. All that’s needed is the collective political will to make it so.
It starts with each of us standing on our own two legs, by ourselves, on our own and saying, and giving our word, (word like in the beginning was the word, not the printed words here) giving ourselves, the context for our lives a world that works for all of us.
It’s a simple act as it requires no behavior.
Note that from here you can’t prove it. Yet, you can know it and honor it. You can live from the truth of it into the lack of the fact of it and thus make it possible to occur.
It’s up to each one of us. And don’t force it on anyone or yourself either. Look down deep within yourself and see if it is true for you.
If it is, then throw your hat over the fence and honor what is true for you.
I had heard things over the years but was skeptical. This essay was eye-opening.
It's only been news for 43 years. And you didn't have to stick to rumors. It was found in the "facts section"
Skeptical may have been the wrong word. I was seven at the time and heard about this crime later. Unengaged is more the word.
Many of us were simply young people following our parent’s lead. When I finally learned the truth I was ashamed of my naïveté and my father’s view of right and wrong. We can be thankful we are open to learning and to change. So many are not.
Lucille, my dad was a R no matter what. While I always voted for Ds for president, he always voted for Rs. I think his view of Ds was influenced by the Chicago machine as we did not live that far away from Chicago and went there fairly frequently. Both my parents and my family of that generation also had all the usual prejudices of that generation. It was OK to use certain words, etc. Fortunately, I had as friends a couple (both teachers) who did not share those prejudices and helped stir me in a different direction. I did grow up in Indiana, home to the most KKK members in the 1920s. See Fever in the Heartland about this. Once I was out into the wider world, I soon started to learn more about racism, etc. i am still learning for that matter. Also i have always loathed St. Ronnie.
My father was a Democrat, the only one of that generation in either side of the family. All his kids are Democrats. Shortly before he died, he leaned close and whispered “Your mother was a Republican.” I was not surprised because she had been skeptical of the Holocaust when I was twelve and when I was 17 she expressed eugenic reasons why I was smart and should have children because “they” weren’t smart and were having lots of children.
My parents had their short-comings, pre-judgements, and biases, as we all do. Six lessons they taught me that mean a lot today.
🙏
1st, you can learn from anyone no matter the other's station in life.
2nd, courtesy is a code of respect; small-talk is fine -- it is kinship in code.
3rd, do not say something behind another's back that you would not say to his or her face.
4th, never try to make an impression; you never know what impression you make.
5th, one answers, ultimately, to that (wo)man in the mirror.
6th, people think *about you one-tenth as much as you think they do and one-twenty-*fifth as much as you wish they would.
⚖️
¿Did my parents falter in practice?
¡All the time!
🤫
Nevertheless, they were more than sufficiently consistent in their behavior to set an example of what it is to be honorable, leaving a lasting imprimatur. And, yes, living as an ageing bachelor, I am acutely aware of how far I fall short of the asymptote of honor each day.
😇
But I keep trying to converge upon that Platonist ideal of honor (¡most likely because I have nothing better to do!). That is where the hard coding of fifty-to-sixty years ago comes into play: my parents never ceased trying to converge.
Well - those are as good as the Ten Commandments & understandable.
Ye wear wisdom well, ¡me-lady! 🙏
Ned-imagine being a 7 year old Black or Jewish child at that time. The terror, brutality and confusion would probably affect them for life.
So was my dearest best friend years ago. He was old enough to know better…
Well, by the time I was getting plugged in (e.g., junior high), this news was old news. I knew of bad things occurring against African-American but did not know exactly what.
Live and learn, one would hope. I’ve tried to learn, some just grow old.
During the transition from analog to digital TV, a subchannel of a local PBS station ran documentary 24-7. Several of them were on the Civil Rights movement. I would see the film on evening news when I was a teen, but seeing some of it again in retrospect was still shocking.
Ned, I appreciate your honesty. I was 10 when this happened and I, too, became much more engaged as I moved into adulthood.
It was never "old news." Like the 1963 Birmingham church bombing was never old news. Or maybe it's old news like the Civil War is old news.
Back in the time when alternative facts was not a thing. I long for it with every breath
Certainly "a;alternate facts" have been part of human societies for ages. but pre-Reagan, engaged, investigative reporting and what Joseph Welch called "decency" most kept them from overwhelming society. Joe McCarthy was a popular liar, and the Vietnam War was built on lies, but both were taken down eventually, as was Nixon. Racist politicians told whoppers, and a lot of creepy stuff was still going on, but it did seem that a greater portion of the public and even politicians were acting in good faith. What changed? Follow the money.
Money surely rules the fools today
And buys the brainwashing offered on Fox Fool TV.
I suggest the population explosion (the world population has more than doubled from approximately 3.2 billion in 1963 to around 7.9 billion in 2023, driven by improvements in healthcare, living conditions, and other factors influencing birth and death rates globally (Per ChatGPT).
I suggest this has triggered deep unconscious survival patterns where inhumane actions driven by these patterns manifest. We then dance around trying to explain at a more superficial conscious level what the heck is going on.
Where action isn’t inhibited by language development the outcome of over population is handled directly like for example (again per ChatGPT):
Yes, some mammals, including hamsters, may exhibit behaviors such as cannibalism or infanticide when overcrowded or under stressful conditions. Here’s an overview:
1. **Hamsters:** In captivity, hamsters may eat their young if they feel threatened, stressed, or if they perceive a lack of resources (such as space or food). This behavior is often a survival mechanism where the mother may sacrifice some offspring to ensure the survival of the rest or to conserve resources for herself.
2. **Other Mammals:** Other mammals, such as rodents and certain species of carnivores, may also engage in infanticide or cannibalism under similar circumstances. This behavior can occur in response to environmental stressors, competition for resources, or when conditions are not conducive for raising offspring.
3. **Natural Selection:** From an evolutionary perspective, these behaviors may increase the chances of survival for the parent and potentially the remaining offspring by ensuring that resources are concentrated on those that are most likely to survive.
4. **Management in Captivity:** In captive settings, such as in zoos or research facilities, overcrowding and stress can exacerbate these behaviors. Careful management of housing conditions, social dynamics, and environmental enrichment is essential to minimize stress and reduce the likelihood of cannibalism or infanticide.
In summary, while not all mammals exhibit cannibalism or infanticide, some, including hamsters, may do so under certain stressful conditions. These behaviors are complex and often influenced by a combination of genetic, environmental, and social factors.
We’re not animals though. The vicious violence that people fighting for human rights have experienced is age old.
We should consider exactly who is committing the most violence and what their motivations are-I don’t think it’s population growth.
Interesting. There are certainly too many of us chasing too few resources while things are made worse by climate change which is a factor in many trying to immigrant as well as violence.
Good point: ¿why do we hear so little about over-population? I think it drives global warming and other challenges. We may be living through a grim vindication of Robert Malthus and the Club of Rome.
https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/
Bern: True, except human beings are a bit more complex & evolved than hamsters.
One is never too old to learn, nor too old to change attitudes. I will take a late learner over one who never learns any day. It wasn't too many years ago when I had an eye opener myself along with a patient of mine who was black. Neither one of us knew anything about Juneteenth and what it represented, but we learned and we continue to learn. May all of us be willing to continue to learn, correct our inadequacies and welcome with humility anyone who is just now joining us on this path.
Pamela: My mother was in her late 70s when I married my late exhusband - who was black. She did not talk to me for two years. However, it happened, once she met him, he was almost her bosom buddy. My son from the first marriage had worked on her. But you are so right. We have the capacity to learn and evolve if we choose.
In 1964, I was 11 and too young to participate in the Freedom March but most likely would have had I been older. By 1967, I had joined the huge anti war March on Washington.
In the north, many white families had a quaint way of responding to race issues. My father was proud of his one Black friend, Art, the bus driver, who was periodically invited over the house for lunch. But much later on, I have wondered why Art’s family was never invited over for dinner. Maybe then I could have played with his children.
Somewhere in 1967 or 1968, during street troubles, my father was heard to say, “It’s not the ones from Hartford causing all the trouble. It’s the ones comin’ up from the south.”
By 1981, I was dating a Black woman and she wanted to meet my parents. You always get a picture of how someone might age when you look at the parents. She had invited me to Thanksgiving weekend that year to stay at her parents house. I liked the way her mother looked and I projected it on how my girlfriend would age.
She wanted to meet my parents and I knew I was in for an experience. When I told my mother, she told me that my friend just wanted to better her social standing by dating me. But I explained that she was from upper middle class and I was from lower middle class. She then mentioned that our future children would be the ones that would get hurt. I then left her with a question; “But who am I.” My mother was Italian American and she married into an orthodox Jewish family. My friend wanted to meet my father and I knew that it would go much worse. I waited for when he was alone in the house and I approached him and told him I had been dated a Black woman and I wanted to bring her over. He launched into the not unexpected tirade belittling me as a failure in life. I waited for him to finish. I then asked quietly, “Are you finished?” I then with equal calmness told him not to expect me to come crying on his deathbed. I calmly opened the kitchen door and gently closed it. A true Shakespearian exit. It was the last time I spoke to him. In one year he was dead of a massive heart attach. I felt relieved.
My heart aches reading your story, which I can appreciate because of my own story. Thank you for opening the door now . . . stories can help people heal and we never know how, when, or where.
Thank you. As a writer with a small “w,” I seek to open doors of memory and experience in my life. One moment, one can find acceptance in a particular subject and the next moment, especially upon politically self-critiquing, an unacceptable attitude materializes. It goes with the clam chowder.
Heather, the ever historian scholar, has 10 primary sources studied for this one story. I read only one — Barry Goldwater’s acceptance speech. Wow. Lengthy. I praise her ability to examine and write. I’m glad I’m just an occasional satirist and fun poker. I could never delve so deep as Heather does.
I married a Spanish man (Puerto Rican) and had a daughter with him. My parents loved him. Alas, it didn't last, mainly because we were both so young. But, reading about racism lately, I feel blessed I had the mom I did. I was born in Louisiana (my dad was stationed at Fort Polk). My mom came home to CT when I was three months old. She hated the south.
The south certainly has its own history and orientation toward Black people, but if you ask a Black person living in the North, Midwest and West they can tell you about about how racism was (is) practiced in those areas.
Racism is nationwide and worldwide.
Oh I know this. My mom hated the weather in Louisiana, and she was homesick. She was just 20 years old. I'm happy she moved back because I like CT. If I had grown up in Louisiana instead, I would have liked it there. I'm not the best at getting my thoughts in the written word. I either tend to write too much, or as in this case, not enough. Thank you for responding.
This is very much an overlooked point. I believe we face the challenge of de-segregation of the heart. My sense, as vicious as Southern racism can be, there is more of a humanity to its regional culture, now diluted by modernity. The South may end up showing the North the way.
Before, and preparing me for, the inevitable cascade of disclaimers and virtue signalling, permit me to say that, absolutely, the right side won The Great Civil War; as a 'ute', I was a Yankee still fighting the war.
Many events define our history, often toward the bereavement of what might have been. For me two of the most consequential, in this respect, are the assassinations of President Lincoln and Senator Kennedy a little over a century apart.
Bill-Racism itself is an insidious dis-ease that infects all of us. It’s longstanding. Like your dad most people don’t even know why they harbor racial prejudice and hate. It’s too bad he let his dis-ease come between you.
Kudos to you for being willing to date someone outside of your “race”.
I agree. It goes back generations. It's just something some people are. I sincerely try to look at people as humans. That is what we all are. We are all born, and we will all die. Some of us are good, others are mostly good; some are bad and some are plain evil. But, you can't tell who is who by race or nationality or the color of a person's skin. It can't be done, yet it's done everywhere. Racism runs deep.
To me, treating racism is like putting the plug in the jug. It is a daily discipline. I will almost certainly not be free of racism; I have accepted that. What I can be free of is giving a voice, a gesture, or an attitude.
In 1964, I was five years old and my mom, my sister and I moved from Windsor to Bowles Park in Hartford. It was referred to as 'The Projects. I lived there until I was in second grade. I played with black kids and white kids. My mother, thankfully, was not racist. I've never understood how one can take an entire race of people and find them all bad people based on pigment. People are so hateful. Horrible way to live.
I lived on lower Laurel St near the Underwood factory which eventually demanded and got from the city homes condemned for Underwood expansion. The south end “projects” were along Flatbush Avenue. I think I will take this story and develop it into my next blog entry today.
Bill I like your story too. Consider editing the part “You always get a picture of how someone might age when you look at the parents. She had…..and I projected it on how my girlfriend would age.” This rings shallow and of small import in a budding relationship. Perhaps a warmer description of her mother’s personality would suffice in the event you expand your story.
I’m convinced but remains unspoken that this was why she wanted to meet my folks. So do I emulate my ole man today? In some ways definitely yes and other ways no. I’m bald-headed and couldn’t hardly help that destination. I’m argumentative for sure. I think he was somewhat a contrarian I certainly am and I consider it one of my better instincts because it helps me to look more critically at issues. I inherited a non addictive personality which served me well in my youth when I associated with highly addictive drugs and when I came to those crossroads, I turned around, ,stopped and never looked back. Lastly, he was a chemist and disliked art so eventually became an art dealer go figure.
Yes, I meant to also point out that "always" was not the right word to use in this case, though I understood what he might have meant.
My father actually believed he wasn't racist (his sister called him out for it often) because "I smile at black men when I see them". 🙄
Now my brother, who was much more influenced by him than me or my sisters, is a raging racist.
I am sure *your father was doing the best he could do at the time.
No. I have only expressed one part. Even my mother exclaimed her regret choosing him. It was not a satisfying family unit for anyone. Of course I would not be alive had I not been for this union.
I remember the speech well. The racist significance of it was not lost on Robert MacNeil of PBS, who's report I heard.
My father had a book called 3 Lives for Mississippi…I was maybe 15 and read it secretly. The story horrified me but taught me so much about racism…Stuff like that didn’t happen in Canada where I live…
It might have - speak with first nation people.
Oh my...Thank you...Very important point...
Canada also is not without sin - study your indigenous history in Canada and the horrors Canadian indigenous children and their families endured. We must all do better.
This history of Native Americans in Canada is regrettable but for many African Americans Canada was like the “promised land” compared to America.
Gina - NO QUESTION!! Totally agree. My point is - good for Af Ams in Canada but let’s no be selective - racism is still racism and I would hope you would support indigenous neighbors because we are all related. Second, Canada also can do better going forward - and without question the US has much to improve on.
Yes, of course...Thanks for waking me up...
Trump is Reagan writ large and writ vulgar. Reagan dog whistled in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Trump shouted out loud at Waco, Texas. Reagan courted klansmen, Trump wedded the GOP to the violent right wing extremist militia movement.
Tragically, on the Left, rather than Martin Luther King Jr who welcomed white allies into the Civil Rights Movement, we have openly racist and antisemitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan amplifying the racial separatism of the Black Power movement - which has influenced such diverse figures as Clarence Thomas and Meir Kahane (progenitor of the racist right wing religious extremist Netanyahu regime.)
The Nation of Islam may hold adversarial beliefs but they’ve never behaved like the KKK or insurrectionists that we live with today.
Farrakhan’s criticism of America’s policies and actions includes some truth telling.
When I taught in Watts, the Black Muslim community helped me get kids food and to school. In Southern California they were a force for good
Reagan paved the way for the Orange menace and the MAGA movement, yet many continue to proclaim his reign.
When I was a child, things didn't always work out well until I recognized the issue. I was insufficiently mature. And then my circle of concern expanded until it encompassed my circle of influence, which is to say that I became sufficiently mature. And then things would work out well.
Before he was elected, Reagan was insufficiently mature. Being elected meant an exponential expansion of his circle of influence. Unfortunately, his circle of concern did not expand, which is to say that he was an immature president.
On November 5, one of two candidates will be elected POTUS. One candidate is sufficiently mature. The other candidate's circle of concern ends at the end of his nose.
Yes, it is more complicated, but in addition to being more complicated, it is also just that simple.
He knowingly set the Republican Party on a hateful course which is evident today! And it must be defeated not only at the presidential level but very significantly in both the House and Senate as well! Let's do it for the Senate in AZ, FL, NE, MI, MT, NV, OH, PA, TX, WI; and Gov in NC; and for the House in these "very competitive" CDs--CA 3, 13, 22, 27, 41, 45, 47 and 49; CO 3, 8; FL 13, 27; IN 01; IA 01, 3; LA 6; ME 2; MI 7, 8; 10; MT 01; NC 01; NE 2; NJ 7; NM 2; NY 1, 4,17,19, 22; OR 5; PA 8, 10; VA 2, 7; WA 3, 5; and WI 01, 3!
Summary: 10 key statewide elections for the Senate and one Governorship in NC, and 39 "very competitive" Congressional District elections! Let's do it by registering and turning out every potential voter in support of abortion, IVF and womens' health; overdue gun safety legislation; and aggressively fighting climate change! We can do it---can't we? DAMN YES!!!
"President Lyndon B. Johnson, ...who had pushed hard for a stronger civil rights law since becoming president..., harnessed the growing outrage over the missing men. " The sense of justice of voters is the foundation of American Democracy. I trust that the same will prevail this November.
Have any of you read Robert Reich's tribute to his childhood friend, Michael Schwermer this morning? Moving is an understatement.
Here’s the link to make it easy.
https://open.substack.com/pub/robertreich/p/60-years-ago-today-they-murdered?r=np4n&utm_medium=ios
Thank you, for sharing Robert Reich's story. I agree 100% about he said. That all people must treated with equality regardless of what their beliefs are or the color of their skin. The freedom for women's reproductive rights. Freedom to read the books. Freedom to vote.
Here is an interesting quotation;
“The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” —Thomas Jefferson
from an interesting essay: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/21/2247833/-The-Founder-s-Fury-Ten-Commandments-Invade-Our-Schools
While we must curtail the doing of harm to others, we all have an unalienable right to be who we are.
J L, and thank you for the link to Hartmann's piece -- such a superb refutation of those who believe we were founded as a Christian nation. I only wish I could easily copy and paste it for future reference (I don't use bookmarks.)
Here's a quote I saved long ago:
"It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so." -Robert A. Heinlein
Thank you and Thom Hartmann! I encourage every to read the essay.
That opinion was long and hard in coming, and judging by the religious complexion in the MAGA/Republican party, is still being fought against. The NT, not to mention the OT, are inherently intolerant on the basics. You know the history I'm sure. Who knows someday maybe the huge gulf between the rich and the poor will take on a similar hue.... of course, it already has in some quarters, socialism, and more extremely originally, communism, and look at the fight that has dredged up.
What a powerful essay! The so-called Christian nationalists attempting to claim our nation was founded as a Christian country are not Originalists. The founders’ own words, excerpted here, refute that argument. Everyone should read this. Thanks, JL!
I am not sure that the term "originalist" even makes any sense, at least with respect to democratic governance. Newtons laws of motion are still taught because they prove useful on an ongoing basis. Some of the same can be said of the principles of democracy we inherited, and since improved, from US founders. In hindsight, some of the personal beliefs ad decisions of some of the founders are now seen as objectionable, but that has no bearing on the fecundity of some of their thinking. As Stephen Hawking put it, Newton was not a nice man, but he nailed a lot of stuff that still works, as well as spinning some notions we have dropped since. Ever hear of Pangenesis ? It's a theory Darwin proposed that proved inadequate, even if his notion of evolution is still applied.
The person of Newton is not the source of authority for the validity of Newtonian (a subset of Einsteinian and quantum) physics. Species don't evolve just because Darwin said so. Newton's views have been updated, but a lot of his original work still stands. Why? Because we have not found anything better.
Yet, like the Scholastics faith in Aristotle, some see the person as a higher authority than tested principle. When people die, they stop growing, but testable observation and application need not
Well said, J L. And thanks for that quote -- I'll add it to my collection.
Patricia, so why are so many opposed to those freedoms?
Fear/hatred of the "other". So many men (all white, in my experience) are so terrified of gay men because (I suspect) they are afraid that someone will treat them the same way they treat women. I suspect that the hatred that the "other" will get to be on the same level as with the same privileges as white men is based in much the same feeling. It is either that or the misguided notion that they are the "top tier" of humanity and all others are beneath them and they cannot stand to see "others" getting the same rights as their "god given" rights.
I think you nailed it here, Ally. My only added comment is that the dynamic you describe is probably universal and more associated with white people in our experience because there are more of us here and we have had the most impact on shaping our society and its institutions. Looking around the globe these days, the "other" syndrome is alive and well in all of the current conflicts. That is why it strikes me Our Great American Experiment is such a challenging endeavor: by main strength and awkwardness, we strive to rise above the fears you describe. It ain't easy, as Heather's relentless history lessons demonstrate. While we are guilty of frequent, often tragic, missteps in our striving, it may be useful to pause and ask;"compared to what? Compared to whom?" The answer does not justify our failures, but it does put in perspective the immense challenge the Founding Fathers placed in our hands. Too many Americans have turned their backs on our heritage (both the rights and responsibilities embedded in what we have been given. And a great many accept the challenge and strive to make good on the promise of America. My sense is that acceptance is what draws most of us to this dialogue stimulated by Heather's fascinating history class.
We do have a lot of work to do; we know that. Doing it is a noble endeavor and, despite endless frustrations and frequent setbacks, offers priceless satisfaction. Our tool, as Ned notes, is sustained engagement. It helps to know you are not alone.
Human beings are still SO tribal. It seems like it takes a certain level of self-awareness to be able to question that tribal instinct's knee-jerk reactions, and it also seems like there are a lot of people that haven't got the first clue as to HOW to be self-reflective. Or why they should be.
Perhaps it is because as children we need someone wise to to world to tell us what to do (like don't run into the street) some are more comfortable being bossed around by dictators than seeing anyone of lesser "status" be given some help toward equality, and often those who live like kings have the most trouble seeing anybody else (who is not working their will) get a leg up. Also I think all of us invest in different ways in the way things are and some are a lot more comfortable than others responding to change. Appeals to return to a largely fictional "good old days" , be it Roy Moore's misty utopian view of the US South prior to the Civil War, or a "Forever Reich" dictatorial "strong men"
promise a return of "Glory Days" that were really no more the gory days.
Many thanks. I was skeptical and unengaged. Shame of me; gracias Dres Cox Richardson and Reich.
Ned, the important thing is to live and learn. I learned only a few years ago of Reagan's racist, pandering campaign speech to kick off his presidential campaign. The GOP had been involved in this shit since Tricky Dicky. Now they own it, and there is no way to spin it. States' rights my ass.
States have rights. Societies have rights. Majorities AND minorities have rights. Private individuals have rights, and there are human rights, even animal rights, and arguably planetary rights. They all have to work together for there to be justice. Seems a lot a social and political troubles come from those who want to take rights from others.
Pecking order
...... amazing how that plays out everywhere
And who engage in zero “sum”ism.
I agree, J.L. , but not all of these "rights" are described as such in our Constitution -- the 10th Amendment refers to certain "powers" of states, not to States' rights -- and these powers or prerogatives can be taken back /overruled by the US Congress as necessary. I believe "States' Rights" is a term invented by former slave owners and used today as a racist dog whistle.
All of the political parties in America have “been involved in this shit” since the nation was “founded”. Of course the GOP is a prime example of how to build a party based on racism.
The “Fusion Party” in NC during the 1890s was trying to bring people of goodwill together. The parties remained separate but joined forces to influence certain elections. They were generally in favor of voting rights and education.
Too bad people are so adamant today about choosing sides and never coming together.
How do you come together with racists? You can only defeat them at election time, pass laws they detest, maintain the rule of law and hope their offspring's offspring are subject to better influences and experiences than their parents were. Of course today's disinformation environment makes this nearly impossible.
It is ironic that the party that once defended the proposition that all men (sic) are created equal embraced the tyrants tool of racism after Democrats substantially moved to sacrifice that substantial voting bloc for social justice, a betrayal of historic proportions. Nixon's racism seemed more of a calculation. Ehrlichman is quoted as saying:
"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin. And then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” “We could arrest their leaders. raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Reagan's smarmy racism was also couched. Years after his death "to protect his privacy" taped openly racist remarks to Nixon were released;
The two were discussing the Tanzanian delegation’s reaction to the vote, after delegates danced in the chamber. “To watch that thing on television, as I did, to see those, those monkeys from those African countries – damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Reagan tells Nixon, who erupts in laughter. (Guardian)
The remarks seemed to have little impact on Reagan's aura. Now the cult of Trump is numerous enough to drop dog whistles for sirens. I think bullying and phobias of people who are different is persistent because it is part of human nature, which like all innate propensities, manifests in greater or lesser ways depending on what we are formally and informally taught. But those wish to dominate have always had strategies to make use of our "reptile" emotions to exploit and oppress for their own selfish advantage. Check out the shadowy actions of the likes of Leonard Leo, or Harlan Crow, and follow the money.. Even back to the Civil War; who actually gained and who paid the price (even among the white race) for slavery?
Nice comment, J L. Informative, well written, to the point. Your comments are always worth a look and usually food for thought. I hope Reagan's cellmate in Hell is... well, his worst nightmare.
Ned, your "gracias" reminds me that rarely are their comments here that acknowledge the importance of the Hispanic vote in the upcoming election. They are a massive voting block and taken for granted by the Democrats for the most part.
The WH under convicted felon Donald Trump (CFDT) bragged that Melania knew 5 languages. Well, she knows 5 languages about like I do -- which is to understand important words like taco, lasagne, filet mignon and gracias.
Is HCR's newsletter easily translated into Spanish or other languages?
I believe that it is, but I haven't read about it recently. It could also be that these are read in Spanish on one of the YouTube channels.
I have a friend (recent college graduate who was one of the scholarship recipients of the tuba ensemble as he pursued a degree in music) who is Hispanic, and has been working to translate some of the published pedagogy of Arnold Jacobs into Spanish.
There are reports of the G.O.P. making in-roads into the Spanish-speaking community. Hopefully, President Biden will state plainly that the support these citizens is not taken for granted, that we are bi-lingual country and the richer for it.
Hispanics are around 20% of the US population, their numbers quadrupling in the past 40 years. That voting block can make a huge difference in an election. I hope the Democrats pay as much attention to wooing the Hispanics as the Party of Trump.
Amen to that, Gary,
Ned-Don’t be ashamed. We all have been living the American ways for centuries and it involves ongoing racism that most of us don’t really understand. That’s why education and forums like HCR’s are so important.
Thank you, Gina, for your gracious comment. Of repeated thanks may sound hackneyed, yet my grateful heart prevents them from becoming trite.
Thanks for posting the link.
SPW, thank you for sharing the link so that we can read this wonderful tribute.
By telling a personal story he made his essay powerful. I remember that time vividly, the incident, the discovery of the bodies, the faces of the convicted, Goldwater's speech, my parents Goldwater campaign button, all of it. My parents were shocked by the Goldwater speech and by the many incidents, but they voted for him anyway, he was the Republican. As a vet, my dad loved Ike and so that was that. Perhaps we need to figure out how to get folks like my parents, to think differently. A powerfrul read!
Thank you.
Thank You for this. Shared
I have read Reich's tribute, and I agree that it is profound and powerful.
I haven't, but the story, from his happy letter to his parents on, is heartbreaking. And still they don't change.
Yes, as I read this I was thinking about Robert's tribute. It was very touching. 😢
Yes, Ransom, it was great,
" . . . . murdered by white supremacists — by violent bullies who would stop at nothing to prevent Black people from exercising their right to vote — something snapped inside me.
It was as if I got a new pair of eyes."
Yes, Ransom -- I read it yesterday. It was very moving, as Schwerner acted as his "protector" from the bullying he as a short Jewish kid received.
Yes. The death of the three civil rights workers is what prompted me to go to Mississippi to help federal registrars during a winter break from college.
I live in Boston and Kraków, but I’m from the Mississippi Delta and was seven years old during Freedom Summer. I’m white, and I can swear on a stack of Bibles a mile high that my parents and the parents of all of my friends were 100 percent untroubled by those horrific murders. They considered them a by-product of “meddling” by outsiders. Had it not been for the Warren Court and, later, LBJ, nothing would have changed down there. So it’s a bitter pill to swallow as I watch the current SCOTUS turning back the clock. I grew up in a police state, and I’m afraid I’m going to die in one.
My father was born and raised in Mississippi, and then moved to Chicago as a boy with his family. I never, ever visited Mississippi because of this story. I viewed Mississippi as a terrible place. In fact, the US South in general. My White German mother and Black American father were both very active in the Civil Rights movement, and involved me too. I marched, I fundraised, and I was for the cause of King, the integration of our society. Now I live mostly in Germany and I am always aware of the racist goings on in both countries and elsewhere because of growing up in these times in the United States. I agree that what is going on with SCOTUS, aided by Clarence Thomas, is setting the USA back into the last century if not to the Middle Ages.
Linda, 2 thoughts. First, Germany was the world leader of civilization, until Hitler and reverted to Mean afterwards. I could never understand how this could be, until MAGAs. 'It happened there (Germany), it can happen anywhere', if each generation fails to meet the democratic challenge of its day. Similar thoughts, experience? Second, if if if Trump loses, it will be the beginning of the end of our generation's brush with Facism. After an election loss, all the pending cases against the Orange Clown will catch up to him, he will be convicted. The sordid details will sicken much of America and that POS will spend much of the remainder of his life in jail. If Trump is elected, then our generation will have been the first generation since 1776 to have dropped the torch of freedom, with unimaginable consequences.
A Biden win in 2024 will not end the MAGA attack on democracy. There still the Ferealist Society, Heritage Foundation, Supreme Court and billionaires who think they can buy elections. MAGAs are embedded in local governments and state governments. Our fight for democracy will have to continue well past 2024
The fight for freedom has to continue forever. Evil will rise up snatch freedom away at every opportunity.
It is going to be a long, hard, and difficult slog to keep fighting this battle. It involves hours of hard work, and doesn’t involve violence or riots. One difficulty we seem to face as a country as the late William Greider noted, Americans only seem to make changes in response to overpowering events, like the Great Depression bringing on the New Deal. The Republicans (and a few Democrats) have been gradually bringing on the economic decline of the American middle class, and they lie about Democrats to their captive audiences to get them to believe the worst of us and to attribute to us opinions we do not support. They hope to keep their mobs (and that’s what they are) stirred up against us rather than to think critically about where our problems are really originating.
.
It's a never-ending cycle and a curse on humanity.
But MAYBE, SOMEDAY, we'll wake up and say "Enough of this crap! We CAN do better! We WANT to be better!"
I agree Patrick, the lesson is the fight never ends. Birch Society, KKK, Neo-Nazi party, Heritage Foundation, Koch Bros., etc. and all the bad guys are always lurking, it's the extent of their following that increases or diminishes. But Trump losing and getting jailed will be like the Allies landing on the beaches in Normandy, the fight continues but the result is no longer in doubt.
Yes-well said. Our problems will take many years to sort out if we can ever live up to our ideals.
Germany "reverted to mean"? The "mean" of Germany (I say this as a person of German descent) was until 1945 an autocratic, militarized state, led by Prussia. First the other states were controlled by Prussia, then Prussia "united" them (under Prussian Kaisers). While there was a liberal political movement throughout the 19th century (one of my ancestors was a member of he Congress of Frankfurt in 1848 and arrived here with a Prussian price on his head after they suppressed the Revolution of 11848), the conservatives held the majority.. Most of the Germans who migrated to America in the mid-late 19th Century were opponents of Prussia (which was ironic when that "narrow minded bigot" Woodrow Fuckwit Wilson turn on "anti-German" campaign to support World War I. However, interestingly, the sons and grandsons of those immigrants - from Eisenhower down - were the ones who smashed Nazism. But then Germany was occupied and divided until 1989.
That was what it took for the Nation of Goethe to overcome the nation of the Kaisers (and Prussia was wiped from the map in 1945 and the Prussians driven out in the years after the war).
So that's what it took to "return to the (nonexistent) Democratic mean."
My daughter, who is studying in Berlin, and I, were just discussing that democracy for Germany was the 15 years of the Weimar Republic and then in the East it did not come again until 1989. So, it is no wonder that there is less understanding of it and people are more vulnerable to Bots that encourage them to vote for the AfD. In the USA, our democracy has not been for all the entire time. Women did not get the vote until the the 1900s, and the Equal Rights Amendment still has not been passed.
Not to mention a collective racial subconscious and the desire of the super menschen to acquire Jewish property.
David: I read (many years ago) that when the Church executed someone for witchcraft, they got the murdered person’s property. Executions went on until the law was changed and the Church could no longer collect the estate.
Reminds me of laws enabling local police to keep property and cash from anyone arrested for a drug crime (I don’t think they even had to be convicted). What a spree if local arrests that incentivized! Was that a Reagan thing? Seems like something he would do.
I was just a girl when the Berlin Wall went up. Knowing my heritage, I asked my mom "Are "good" Germans or "bad" Germans"?
She died in February, 1989 and As the wall was being torn down, I wished she could have seen that too.
I understand the feeling. I felt that way when Obama was elected and my father did not live long enough to see it.
Your description of Germany is accurate, but also describes all of Europe in that era, except other parts of Europe had crappier universities and infrastructure, less scientific discoveries and publications, less noteworthy scholarship in the arts and sciences, less insightful philosophers. Today Germany is the cornerstone of the EU. The history of Europe for centuries is one war after another with ever shifting alliances for the sole purpose of not allowing one country to dominate all of Europe, an endlessly rapacious bunch murderous racist plunderers and that was the 'the civilized' world.
Britain’s foreign policy always has been to keep one country from dominating Europe. Farage of UKIP and Johnson of the Tories managed to pull off their goal of getting Britain out of the EU, but it will permanently stunt Britain’s economy in the end because Britain got rid of its biggest trading partner.
Just today, Sir Keir Starmer, the likely next prime minister, admitted his growth plan ‘doomed’ without access to EU markets.
TC, thanks for that brief history lesson. I too am of German descent -- about 1/4 -- but know little of my German ancestry (unlike my majority French-Canadian.) I do know my great great grandparents came to Connecticut I believe in the 1840s, but never knew the (possible) reason.
100Panthers, if the convicted felon loses, I doubt we will return to a less-racist/fascist state anytime soon. He has normalized such beliefs and has activated their perceived grievances for their lot in life, when as Dr. Richardson has pointed out so eloquently time and again, the real blame for their troubles lies with a slew of GOP stalwarts -- among them Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, Gingrich, Murdoch and all the rest. The CF45 skillfully created a base of folks who probably had dark notions about race (as he does) and need someone to blame. He started it with his escalator ramble in his ugly twee building, calling out Mexicans who come to take property, jobs and lives. He made it PC among their group to reveal their previously-suppressed racism.
Worded so simply and truthfully, 100 Panthers
That’s my dream, too. May it be so!
Yikes - my comment was for an earlier post by 100 Panthers about the decline of MAGA after Trump loses and is convicted. Not about some of the intervening posts!
Do you think Trump and his minions will create chaos home and abroad if he loses?!
3 guesses and the first 2 don't count.
I'm a white female, and there is NO WAY in ANY scenario would I EVER go further south
than Tennessee (and THAT'S pushing it.
There is absolutely NOTHING those states have that I'd want see/visit or spending my money in.
As in Every state, there are the pluses and minuses. Today, the preponderance of minuses are in the South. But hate has legs, beware everywhere.
I find that there is a concurrent majority within the South that is probably more liberal than most of the North. Think Jimmy Carter.
My home town in Pennsyltucky is more reactionary than most places in the South.
Pockets galore, I have lived it.
True. But somehow I picture the South as the bulging beer gut of America. (I'm sorry to offend anybody -- it's just the image I get when I think of the swelling population of Southern states vs the North.
I’ll likely offend when I say that trailer trash have MAGAt sensibilities, gullible and admiring of pseudo elites. But they are useful to the ones who want votes, or ones who can intimidate voters when needed. That beer gut thing is likely true too.
Terrie-
I have traveled to 49 states and many foreign countries. On rare occasion I have gone to a place I truly don't wish to return to.
But when it comes to politics, the MAGAs and white Christian nationalists are drive by hate, anger, resentment and misinformation. These all breed fear.
Some of the kindest and warmest people I have met are in the deep South. They are terrified of most Democrats because of the lies they are told in church and by their politicians.
I get hung up on politics and the future of democracy when I read HCRs column and this comment section, but in reality, most Americans don't give a rip or pay attention.
As Americans, we have so much in common with most people -- unfortunately politics is incredibly divisive and it seems like people in certain parts of the country are bad.
There are a multitude of organizations and people in the South dedicated to righting wrongs from the past, they’re brilliant in mind and generous in spirit. Here are just two examples, check them out: www.eji.org/about AND www.opdla.org Montgomery, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana have set the bar high for what can be done to make the world a better place.
Brilliant!!! Thank you for the links!
I hope DJT784534 doesn't get into office so he and his thugs don't attempt to shut down these organizations which, unfortunately, are so necessary due to ignorance, fear, and hatred.
And, since 1971, the SPLC, Southern Poverty Law Center. Based in Montgomery. Offices in Atlanta, Tallahassee, Miami, New Orleans and Jackson, Mississippi.
The word Mississippi always brings to mind Nina Simone and her 1964 song, Mississippi Goddamn. Here's one of several live performances from YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcoKebBg2g
Yes me too! And I mean every damn word of it!
Wow, what a powerful song. Thank you!
I believe we have a chance to win this election because the majority of us in this country believe in Democracy. Sure , Trump can try to revert this country back but it won't happen because we will prevail and win this election in November.
Don’t discount the lying, cheating, election manipulation, voter suppression and outright intimidation. If only votes mattered.
We mustn't forget voter nullification. At least one state legislature has given themselves the power to nullify a result of they don't like it. Which raises the question: if they are so sure their side is so great, why do they work so damn hard to ignore the will of the people?
Best question ever. Only those who think they are likely to lose a popular vote go to such extremes - all the while accusing the other side of doing what they are doing. Sort of like Putin and others of his ilk. Sadly, MAGAts are on board with a rigged election to get their cult leader. Not only to lead them to hell but all of us.
You took the words right out of my typing fingers. This will not be a fair election. Red states disenfranchising thousands, reducing voting methods, installing MAGAs in positions to refuse to certify a Biden victory, recruiting armed “poll watchers”…..
And the trolls, Sinclair propaganda on local stations, third party spoilers, the SCOTUS undermining voting rights… I no longer believe voting alone can or will make the difference.
As Stalin said, it matters not who votes, it matters who counts the votes. It’s not just Goebbels they have read and follow his strategies. They have mined the words of the worst.
I hope you're right
"If not before..."
Long, long before.
Still, still a land of primitive savagery.
Armed with machine guns, blessed by demented jurists.
Alito aspires to the middle ages
Jeri,
First, don't let's malign the Middle Ages (I'm quite serious, despite all the awful downsides...).
Secondly, let's be precise, he seems to be hankering after a reintroduction of the Holy Inquisition.
In any case, it's all about social control and the power of ecclesiastical authorities -- Church, not Christ.
And I'd rather be mistaken in what I've just written, as religion imposed from above can do (and already has done) serious damage to the misrepresented and forgotten truth at the heart of Christ's religion.
Jesus got thrown under the bus when righteous power became the goal.
I agree about the Middle Ages. My niece is a professor of medieval studies and her books are fascinating. Yep the Inquisition was a bummer. Alito can’t wait.
We’ll be back to “an eye for an eye” and everyone will be blind. That’s what the oligarchs and theocrats dream of!
I'm quite lost, can’t find my own comment or yours, Marge... [Can’t handle the Substack program in such a way as to conduct a cogent conversation…] Anyway, when it comes to blundering around, colliding with one belief, getting tripped by another, putting one's foot in a puddle and sinking in up to one's middle... why... the question is, “Who's sighted?”
At best, we’re like the blind man healed by Jesus who could not at first make sense of what he was seeing... trees or people?
This thing of taking beliefs for truth, taking representations for what they represent, taking ideas for concrete realities... then taking the harmless neighbor—wrong kind of face, wrong color skin, wrong politics, wrong religion (or worse, no religion...) anyway something “different”, something “not one of us...”—then, because you hate yourself, taking the neighbor you’re commanded to love “as yourself” for a horrific Hannibal Lecter demon out to murder you and store bits of you in his deep freeze... and reacting accordingly... Why, that's not just blindness... that's getting turned into a figment of DT's psychotic nightmare...!
So much fear-and-hate-filled madness, so much blindness, turning the land into a smoke-filled labyrinth of dark distorting mirrors...
*
When we look around us, we’ll do well to remember Diogenes carrying a lantern in brilliant Athenian daylight. When asked why, he answered:
“I'm looking for a man...”
I agree with you, Peter, on the idiocy of our national conversation and the difficulty of a substack conversation! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. You have a lot to say.
Also, I can picture a new American Crusade against Muslim countries. Can’t you? Of course they wouldn’t be quite so stupid as to call it that. Or maybe they would…
Thank you Steve. I come from educated priveledge. Not wealthy but academic or professional. In the late fifties, into the early sixties San Francisco Bay area, Black communities were very separate but there were always several Black kids in my Jr high school and high school who were great kids and they were part of the serious groups on campus, but the separation was still real, as much as we all enjoyed each others company, and as much as we were all aware of the issues of race.
There are so many smart and consious people in Heather's followers. We should try to identify the communities we live in and the few nearby should meet up once in a while for coffee or a beer.
RR I would like to point out that skin color is not race, it is a genetic variation of human being, just as eye color, hair color, lobe detachment or attachment, longer first or second toe, etc... Our race is human. That is what I put down, that is what my family puts down in every instance, or we put "other" if there is not an opportunity to put that. After Nazism "race" is not a category that Germans have on their census. Perhaps after Trumpism we can move beyond it in the USA too. I come from educated privilege as well. I live in the community where Barack Obama made his Chicago home, and the number of Black academics and millionaires is ever growing. However, that is despite racism (the idea that color gives you a different race). I am grateful for diversity in appearance. The world would be just that much more boring if we did not have it.
If all humans looked pretty much the same, we would still find a way to “peck down,” would we not. The alphas always rule, somehow
Linda Weide.
"White skinned" persons (I am one) are the most insecure of creations. ....always looking to elevate ourselves by putting someone else down be it skin color, or where one lives...how one dresses, or where one vacations if one can afford a vacation, ...how many things one has or where one works...sad and tragic...trying to make oneself "above" another.
I was so ashamed to realize as an adult that when the great black musicians I loved to listen to were done after hours of entertaining young white people, they had to plan ahead where they would be able to go to rest, to get a shower and find a place to sleep that night to get a good meal...I, tragically.... had no clue!!!!
The only thing I do vividly remember were the horrible conditions of the bathrooms for people of color at "filling stations".
Racism is dehumanizing....it is one of the most horrible tragedies of mankind.
I keep thinking it will go away but it keeps raising its evil head of destruction.
Indeed! The famous saying, “How many black people live in Africa?” The answer is “There are no black people living in Africa.” There are Nigerians and Kenyans, but Black is a European and American term. It is part of our intrinsic racism. All of us who coined the concept that skin color was a category of human beings. Race itself is the supporting pillar of all Racism.
So true-how ironic also because most “Blacks” do not have Black skin.
I agree wholeheartedly and although an old white woman if any paperwork asks me to choose my race I will not fill in a box. I write in bold letters, Human Race—Shame On You. I read Caste-the origins of our discontent by Isabel Wilkerson awhile ago and recently watched Hulu’s portrayal of the book, Origin. It is such an eye opener.
In the early 90s I went to Sweden to teach a course called Race, Religion and Culture to a group of CEOs.
At that time they couldn’t understand why America was tracking people’s skin color forcing us to check boxes.
Now with so much immigration I think they have a much better understanding about how racism works.
Nancy: Yes, I urge everyone to see the movie Origin based on the book. It is not race, after all Jewish people sre white too but …
I have read Caste, it’s a great book.
I do the same. Race does not belong in any survey. We all belong to the human race.
Race is a social construct, not a biological one.
The Navy was "desegregated" along with the other services in 1948, but when I was in it in the early 60s, it was run by a primarily-Southern officer class, like a damn plantation. It took a couple "race riots" and Admiral Zumwalt and his collection of reformers (including my friend the late Admiral Don Shelton) to finally bring the Emancipation Proclamation to the Navy.
I was thinking of the assisted living facility I lived in while my husband was sick and I thought it looked like a plantation. Black staff taking care of white residents. There were exceptions , but that was the “stage.”
Ransom, several of us in Oregon are planning to do just that! Prompted by the Professor’s trip to Portland (OR) in September, we’re getting together for lunch next month, and going together to her presentation in September!
Oh, oh, oh, we will be working the lighthouse in Bandon during July, August, and September!
When/where are you getting together?
Check your messages here.
I grew up in the 70s & am VERY glad for what influence I knew from the educated privileged, where education was not a credential purchased but a way of life. I remember 'hippies' being, if not college students, thinking, caring people. Regardless how 'straight' or non-conforming, the liberal, inclusive mindset was POWERFUL. I am glad to be in the company of so many that are smart & conscious!
Speaking from a place of experience. My parents thought the same, some in places I have lived lately, still do.
Steve: Or you may die in a theocracy, which may be worse. I know hypocrisy is rampant but those GOP/MAGITES who scream that Democrats want to impose Sharia Law are polishing their weapons to impose Christianity. And since they seem to have completely missed the New Testament, there will be eyes gouged, people stoned, slavery, polygamy, etc!
Growing up in the 60s, I felt nothing was more important than passing civil rights legislation. All these years later, I know the truth of the saying “You cannot legislate morality. “
If America is ever going to be “one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all,” we are going to need a spiritual transformation… Not more laws. We must find a way to heal the American spirit… To replace hate and fear with love and cooperation. I do not believe this can come from the world of politics. It must come from us… from “we the people”.
Let’s take a lesson from before the xenophobic 1950s, when it was “one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all” and god had nothing to do with it. That would help a lot.
I've never said "under God" when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. That was put in for the Cold War, to distinguish our fascists from the "commies."
I'm old enough to remember the previous wording. The change prompted me to start thinking about the pledge itself. Better to not mince words and pledge allegiance to the Constitution IMO.
America has never been "under God." The New World was a place where people from the Old World came to make their fortunes. Expeditions were funded by the wealthy, who wanted a return on their investment. Those on the lower rungs of society came seeking opportunities. During the time of European settlement, some areas of the country were penal colonies, places to get rid of the "dregs" of society. There is always the need to hold America to the ideal of "All men are created equal," even though Jefferson had a different interpretation of that idea back in his time.
Yes-Georgia was one such penal colony and look at how today it is a “swing state”. For enslaved Black people Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi were the most treacherous. Most were afraid of being sold to people in those states.
It was called "being sold down the river," the origin of the term.
Yes indeedy. Having grown up in the South, I routinely use the phrase about something “going South” to mean something going to shit.
TC? How do you feel about "In God We Trust" on our currency?
Maybe VISA, MasterCard, Discover and American Express should be required to put "In God We Trust" on their cards. /S
A song for that, Joan Baez "God Is God": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oT4qpi0Vec
I love Joan Baez! Thanks.
I always preferred “E Pluribus Unum”.
I agree with your snark. :-)
Not since third grade.
God is the divider, not the Uniter. Ye hear that Alito. Oops, he already knows that and has chosen his side.
I appreciate your point. Way too many Americans use religion as a way to divide us… to engage in the “culture war”. Three years ago I moved from New York City to a small town on Route 66 in Oklahoma. I joined the local United Methodist Church and found it to be a true expression of the first principal I had heard religion is about as a non-religious child… Love thy neighbor. For this reason, I believe it’s possible to speak of religion as having a positive effect on America. It all depends on which religion or religions you are talking about.
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich - Napoleon
Religion is regarded by the common people as true by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful - Seneca
Speaking of Route 66. We lived 3 houses away from old Route 66 in Springfield, IL. One of the great US Highways across the US. It was replaced by I-55 in Illinois, I-44 in MO and OK and I-40 across the Southwest, but so much great history remains along the route. About 1/2 mile south of us in Springfield, the old highway dead-ends into Lake Springfield for about a quart of a mile.
Agreed!
Love is slow, hate has a hair-trigger, sad to say
Perhaps. But love is the natural state babies are born into. They have to be taught to hate.
"You've got to be carefully taught" (South Pacific) vs "teach your children well" (Crosby, Stills, Nash). I prefer "we can live in peace."
Beat me to it, Lynn! “…carefully taught” indeed.
Some are, from the first breath, we read about them often. Aileen Wuornos comes to mind. Maybe hate takes over when love is denied
Steve, historically the protests have changed the Overton Window (range of policies acceptable to the majority of the public). Once the Overton Window has changed, laws change to reflect the thinking of the majority. When laws change, and the majority of the people follow those rules, then the Overton Window shifts to reflect the new norms. Unfortunately, the construction of our brains to instinctively fear “the other” slows the progress toward loving all our fellow humans.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://theconversation.com/the-politics-of-fear-how-fear-goes-tribal-allowing-us-to-be-manipulated-109626&sa=U&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwiH7ef89e6GAxVqv4kEHRprCiIQFnoECB0QAQ&usg=AOvVaw1_7VYN3mQu_OYXGgP3chJd
I know about the Overton Window. But I also know hate is something we are taught. It has nothing to do with how are brains are constructed. We have be a natural desire to survive. But it’s possible to teach children that the best way to survive is together. It’s also possible to teach that science has known since the 1960s how to feed clothe house and educate everyone on Earth (see: Buckminster Fuller, W. Edwards Deming). Cooperation is the key to our survival … to peace… not cut throat competition… not war.
Steve, I believe that we are taught to either love the difference or to fear it.
I don’t think our brains are “constructed to fear the Other”—plenty of people don’t, especially those who live in cities. Even in a small town like the one I grew up in in Ohio there wasn’t much fear of that kind among the young. Our minds can be shaped or reshaped though, by bad information from authoritative sources, or watching bad people attain success and power. FOX News, and the success of Trump, have been terrible for our country.
Mary, I believe that many of us are taught that our innate instincts can be overcome—and others can be taught that we are right to fear those who are different. I grew up in a culture that feared having their children exposed to “those godless communists” in the universities.
Yes, that's what I mean. Your brain wasn't constructed that way, your community was, and its laws confirmed that there was a difference. Someone else here posted that if a White person said they didn't notice when they first met a Black person that the person was Black they were lying, but I remember the first person I met who I was told (afterwards) was Black, a slightly older girl named Shelley. I was struck by how pretty she was, and we played all afternoon. Later I said something admiring about her to a neighbor girl, who said "She's colored." I was puzzled at the word and asked what she meant. I don't think she really knew either, it was just something she'd heard her father say. Shelley's mother did housework for them so she'd been to my neighbor's house and they played. I think my neighbor was just possessive, jealous that Shelley and I were making friends too, so she tried to say something that would put me off her and used a word she'd gleaned was derogatory. Neither of us had a concept of "difference," except that Shelley was pretty and smart and cool.
I’ve read that by age five children have been inculcated with ideas about race.
I'd be interested to know how they define it ("ideas"). My friend in the story--a profoundly, actively anti-racist person I'm still close to at 70--was well past 5 when she tried to nip my friendship with Shelley in the bud by announcing to me that she was "colored." But I doubt she had an "idea" other than "this is something my dad thinks is bad."
Thank you! I agree!
Agreed!!!!!
Thank you, Steve.
You’re welcome. We must think differently if America is going to get out of the crisis it’s in. Passing laws does not eliminate the root cause of our crisis. Laws can help deal with symptoms by making bad behavior a crime, but they can’t eliminate the desire to behave badly.
Yes-it’s clear that so called Civil Rights laws have not done the job!
What a terrible chapter in our history that was, We should have foreseen then that any State that could support the murder of 3 men whose only "crime" was to assist other American Citizens to register for the right to vote, was not worthy of being a member of the United States. I feel the same way today. I think the Civil War was fought in vain. The Northern troops may have won the battle, but the southerners who considered themselves an aristocracy won he war. Even today 159 years after the end of the Civil War, the same situation exists. vulnerable persons, who look "different" speak "different", love "differently" or pray "differently" (or like me have no god at all) are still endangered in the fifteen States. Except now the entire Uniteed States is endangered because these same people - who haven't been give their, way now want to convert all of us to Fascism. Their demented puppet is even planning to build concentration camps in his first year in office - hello, Dachau.
Since so many are reminiscing, I was 31, living in California, and devoted to Civil Rights. I was a member of the Unitarian Universalist Society then, it would be a few more years before I realized I didn't really need a god. The 3 murdered young men, brought horror to our hearts. I had 2 very young daughters (a yearling and a four year old) and no job so I couldn't go to Mississippi or Alabama. And to be honest, while we sent what money we could to the organizations there, we simply did not have the in your face problem s that existed in Mississippi, Alabama and the rest of the deep south. It would be 3 more years before I even became a citizen. But I campaigned heavily for Lyndon Baines Johnson, knocked on doors, distributed posters and even registered voters. (No, they didn't care that I couldn't vote myself, they just needed live warm bodies to go to houses of those who wished to register and help them fill out the forms. And I still mean every word of my post 5 minutes ago.
Fay, all that stuff existed in the North too, just not slavery. "No Irish need apply." "Dogs and Irish Keep Off the Grass" and all the ethnic "jokes" that fortunately don't get said anymore over the past 50 years other than by Republicans. Growing up, Denver was a solidly-segregated city, by race, religion and social class.
Some hate is better hidden than other more aggressive iterations. Slime travels into all nooks and crannies
Hate back then was very violent. Is there any hope that history won't repeat itself?
Not much with the MSM joining Rupert and clones in stoking the hatred. And repubs loving guns more than neighbors or children
True Tom, I first lived in Florida, from December 1958 until April 1961, then I threw a hissy fit and forced my then husband to move to a better paying job in California, and I've never regretted it. Yes there were constant ethnic and gender jokes from the time I first remember until recently, but from shortly after my youngest daughter's birth in December 1962 I was so involved in political campaigns, Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam movements I didn't notice them so much. I grew up mostly in Southern Ontario, during the Depression everyone moved a lot. and I only met persons of color as an adult. The prejudices with which I grew up were mainly directed at Catholics, Irish, German, and Italian and since I couldn't see the differences I guess they never rubbed off. My personal prejudices tend to be against individuals - I have a low tolerance for stupidity, racism, bigotry and gender preference. I know they are out there, I just mostly ignore them.
My low tolerance also, it’s just so revealing of one’s heart.
TC, growing up in Omaha was segregated mostly by region of origin and then by color. Not really so much by religion.
My parents were lower middle class and my mom always worked except for the few months she was home when each of us kids were born. My grandmother lived with us so my parents didn't have to pay child care except on rare occasion. Once we reached 3 or 4 years old, we were only allowed inside when my parents were home and for lunch. By 8 am in the summer almost every kid in our neighborhood was outside playing. And there were literally thousands of kids in our 1 square mile neighborhood. Most of us only put on shoes in the summer to go to church on Sunday. The neighborhood pool was the afternoon entertainment and babysitter from Memorial Day until Labor Day.
There were two schools in the neighborhood, the K-6 public school and the K-8 Catholic school. The kids from each school rarely mixed. But this was post WWII Omaha.
The pre-WWII neighborhoods were Polish, Bohemian, Czech, Irish, Swedish, Danish, German, African American and Hispanic. A few times a year we would eat different ethnic foods but for us kids, it was too weird eating things like Goulash and Chow Mein. My dad would eat the leftovers for days.
I suppose most American cities and towns were the same, people taking care of their own and socializing with their own.
How have we stayed together as a country with such incredible diversity?
By a myth of togetherness. Now we face the dissolution of the myth or making it reality. No other country has the opportunity that we have. So much diversity is strength. No one group has a lock on anything. Unlock the talent and we could show the world what earthlings are capable of. Otherwise we show them the worst of mankind. I remember after the moon landing, it was for all mankind. Elon and Jeff polish their egos with penis-shaped rockets. How sad
That definitely sounds like Denver of my youth. I used to get up with the sun in the summer, make myself breakfast, hop on my bike and spend the day in Washington Park (a pretty big place) ending by swimming in the north lake in the afternoon, then home by dark. A kid on his own all through that, and nobody worried. You definitely could not do that today.
The diversity is the "secret sauce" of America, that and the renewal of the dream in each generation's immigrants.
On August 3, 1980, two counties south of Philadelphia, Mississippi, I was 16, sixteen years almost to the day after the bodies of the three men had been found. I didn’t know then that I was liberal or gay, but I knew this guy Reagan and this small chain Wal-Mart which had already destroyed our small town, were going to be trouble. Little did I realize how much. To this day, it escapes me how non-Southerners romanticize the racist, homophobic, misogynist South, which Trump has revealed hasn’t changed one bit.
It has changed? Fascist President Trump is just warming up. White historians are still hiding. Campuses are still a mess. The GOP is still the party of Reagan and unhinged segregationists. Democrats still blink in the mirror. We have a long way to go. Do we want to go there? Do we care? Mississippi is Mississippi. Arizona is Arizona.
Women, Children, Mules and Other Property is the title of a section of the Oklahoma civil code. It was pointed out in the 1970s as still on the books. The patriarchical oligarchy has pitted the races against each other since the thriving communities of escaped slaves and Irish and English indentured servants over the mountains and into Kentuky were identified as a threat to their power. The priveliges granted to poor white southern people that allowed them to lord it over Black people has kept them voting against their best interests ever since Reconstruction. I believe the Southern Baptist Convention has a powerful hand in keeping this system enforced. They are in the news again today, exposed again, as usual, as the patriarchal misogynists they are.
It actually goes back much further than Reconstruction. The deliberate sowing of animosity between Black and white Americans goes back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 17th century Virginia, when dissatisfied white indentured servants and Black enslaved people rebelled against the royal governor of Virginia, William Berkeley. After Bacon’s Rebellion was suppressed, Virginia enacted its first Black Codes to regulate the conduct of Black enslaved people and to encourage white people to buy into racism.
Yep-and they codified it into law. The major items were stricter punishment for Black people, no interracial marriages, and Black people would be slaves for life while White people would serve their indentured time and then be given severance to start their lives. Racism is deeply embedded in America as you point out so well.
Interesting etiology there.
I was 17 years old and living in a lily-white suburb of Detroit at the time.
I was aware of Vietnam distantly -- the recently murdered John Kennedy had sent U.S. military training personnel there, but in the election of 1964 U.S. propping up of the Saigon government did not figure.
Below this comment box, as I keyboard in, I can already see Ransom Rideout's note on Robert Reich's "tribute to his childhood friend, Michael Schwermer" -- 1st comment posted to Heather's today.
Some things went well in the 1960s. Now, 60 years later, much of the old ugliness remains, in ways that hatred and groupthink always seem to linger, and surface again.
Doris Kearns Goodwin has a new book out recently, "An Unfinished Love Story," on her new husband then, and other key players she celebrates from that era. Many of us remember the music from then. Many of the books, films -- even poets, as Norman Mailer would soon write a book, "Armies of the Night," with poet Robert Lowell with many more my age at its heart.
Thank to Heather for recalling this history from that summer -- with decent souls, three in particular then murdered. Always, in history, it's individuals who claim us, our memories -- and we thrive insofar as, like Heather, like Doris Kearns Goodwin, we can remember them. Even if the remembering reminds us we're never really very far from the same seething, roiling hatreds and group stupidities that, background or foreground, morphing just a bit, just continue and continue.
The abuse by the Klan against the “freedom fighters” the summer of 1964 …..while horrible pales in comparison to the collective operational treason of the January 6th ‘players’… and our national potential tolerance in 2024 for the loss of our democracy with the election THIS close is beyond comprehension….we have sunk so low.
I agree 109%
Every time this story is retold, it makes me feel so sad. Those "boys" were younger than my kids are currently, and I cannot even imagine their terror and suffering, not to mention the depth of grief their families experienced. The evil of the KKK and that they still exist is true horror.
Racism has such deep roots in America. Here's a racist 1866 political poster demonizes a newly freed African American as being idle "at the expense of the white man." https://forgottenfiles.substack.com/p/white-supremacy-on-the-ballot-1866
If I hear one more “It’s not who we are,” I may puke. It’s exactly who we are, and we can’t move past that until we admit it.
That is for sure. That is how we are brought up to be. It is deep in our culture. I will ask all of you good European stock to describe you first visceral reaction upon encountering a Black person. If you do not first notice that the person is Black, you are lying. No matter how radically progressive or Christian or whatever you are.
I was 1 of 6 white kids on my school bus. We had a great time, but I later discovered we did not live in the “good” part of town. LOL.
Differences are noticeable, it’s sort of necessary for flight or fight. Maybe we take it to extremes so it defines us, but differences will never be not noticed.
I get tired of seeing the constant trolling and insults lobbed on Xitter at writers like Alessandra Harris. Nikole Hannah-Jones and Tim Wise for their mentioning things some whites don’t want to hear, but need to hear.
So right-Studies have shown that race is the first thing we notice and gender is second.
I grew up
In a very white area of eastern Pennsylvania… we had no POC in our schools. Then in 1965 I went to college in the Finger Lakes region of NYS, no POC in the college. Then got my first job at the U of P hospital in west z Philadelphia. I recall it feeling like a culture shock. I’m well past that feeling but not where I want to be.
Sad but true, are we the cancer or the host?
Yes.
I wonder which
John, I agree.
Thanks for sharing-this shows us that this was the political playbook long before Reagan and Nixon.
You’re welcome. Here's another example- more racist manipulation of the media. This time posters and news clips detail how white supremacists destroyed Wilmington NC, a thriving mixed-race city. https://forgottenfiles.substack.com/p/how-to-incite-a-white-riot-1898
It's such a pity that LBJ was trapped by the Vietnam War.
And Nixon’s perfidy.
Once racist LBJ was not trapped. He lied. Repeatedly.
Which shows once again how much you "know" about anything, you moron. I wrote two books on Vietnam, and the research I did shows that LBJ had an inferiority complex when facing the "Best and the Brightest New Frontiersmen," and that THEY were the ones pushing the war and then pushing every expansion. In fact, LBJ was the guy delaying every decision (which pretty much guaranteed the defeat). And if he was a "racist" why did he sponsor and push through the 1957 civil rights act against massive Solid South resistance, and then the 1964 civil rights act followed by the Voting Rights Act.
You are always such a damn fuckwit.
Strong lettter to follow?
What specifically did LBJ lie about?
Vietnam.. North and South, Laos, Cambodia, the massacres and burning of children, LBJ knew… he was the bully of the Senate, chosen to bring Texas for JFK, and they never got it done… he hid behind public relations, lies, it cost us 58,000 lives, we lost, America’s first loss, and we were changed forever.. LBJ retired in disgrace, chased by the ghost of Sen. Eugene McCarthy for the rest of his life - Great Society was his Texas apology, a start, and we need to remember ten years of Vietnam, those 58,000, and the photograph of Eddie Adams that ended that war, one shot in black and white ended our worst war - that changed America. One shot by a 35mm camera taken a point blank range, in the street in wartime.. one shot.. forced us out of a war… what do we need now?
I’d guess color pictures, front, side and back, of lying President Trump might do it, as he spews his never ending lies knee deep and chest high. One film that captures the essence of the man ought to do it..
Sandy Lewis is a drooling moron, pay him no heed.
He still towered over Nixon
Not trapped. Not at all. LBJ squandered blood and treasure in SE Asia. One of the casualties was the funding for the Great Society.
He trapped himself, worse he manufactured the Gulf of Tonkin provocation for the war.
Once again, what you think is "history" and what actually happened might as well have been on different planets. Since I was there at the (alleged) Tonkin gulf (non) Incident, and wrote a book that starts with Tonkin Gulf in detail (I was staff of the command in charge of the destroyers) and explains who was "running with it" to use for the war they had been pushing since they came into power in 1960 (Vietnam got stated by that pissant JFK and pushed throughout till they were defeated in 1968 by the "Best and the Brightest" of the so called "New Frontier). My research for "The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club" - now that one can access formerly top secret reports downgraded by the 50 year rule - showed that Johnson was paying no attention in the spring/summer of 1964 when the US military was running provocative aerial operations into North Vietnam and we were sending destroyers to cruise down the "3 mile limit line". Johnson took the "incident" seriously because he was afraid of the goldwaterites using it against him. For 20 minutes after he was first told of the "event", LBJ was the only guy on the planet who had it right, when he exclaimed "Those poor damn sailors were probably shooting at flying fish," which in fact they were. In 2006, it was finally proven that the "Lights in the water" that night were actually the reflections of the moon through the clouds and the lightning flashes from the storms in all quadrants, off the enormous school of flying fish that annually transits the Gulf of Tonkin in the first week of August. What I discovered researching that book was that we were all yelling "Hey! Hey! LBJ! How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?" at the wrong guy. It should have been "Hey Hey JFK - the guy who was NEVER going to withdraw, despite all the dumb lefties who just KNOW that the great JFK was "assassinated because he wanted to get out of Vietnam." HAH!! And again, HAH!!!!
Keep telling the truth, maybe someday ears will listen and eyes will see
I think both JFK and LBJ were trapped by the inevitability of McCarthy-like accusations that they “lost” Vietnam in the same way that some experts on China were accused of “losing” China. The problem was that neither the Chinese mainland or Vietnam were ours to lose to begin with. In Vietnam, the North Vietnamese viewed us as an obstacle to winning their civil war. Despite North Vietnam’s willingness to accept help from the USSR and the PRC, Neil Sheehan recalled in his book “A Bright Shining Lie” that one young NVA guard holding an American civilian prisoner told him that Vietnam was not going to let the Soviets or Mao’s China dictate to them.
Nixon and Kissinger issued a back door request to the South Vietnamese government to refuse to participate in the Paris Peace Talks in 1968 and LBJ was too exhausted to do anything about it. Nixon and Kissinger lied that they had a special plan to “end the war,” and they pointlessly managed to continue the American war in Vietnam until 1973, and the South Vietnamese government collapsed two years later.
Do you have PTSD?
None of your business, dude.
You are right, I should not have said that
The Reverend Martin Luther King, jr. said, I believe, "The arc of history is slow, but it bends towards justice."
The arc is slow, but we must prevail, for it carries the truth.
Potholes everywhere
Thank you, Heather.
“Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders.”
This could just as well have been written today - 60 years later.
“My fellow citizens, we have come now to a time of testing. We must not fail.” LBJ, 1964 Those words resonate today when the country is divided by a fascist convicted felon and his puppet in congress and the judiciary. WE MUST NOT FAIL!
President Johnson’s “We Shall Overcome’ speech to Congress on March 15, 1965 was, in my opinion, the most remarkable presidential civil rights speech in American history.
He had taken a three month Senate filibuster in 1964 before forcing through the Civil Rights Law of 1964. However, the bill sent to him omitted the voting rights provision.
After a bloody massacre in Selma, Alabama, Johnson, a southerner, gave his over powering historical oration to Congress in which he spelled out why providing ‘Negroes’ full voting rights was adhering to the Constitution.
The result was the sweeping Voting Rights of 1965 legislation. At the time, it seemed that the historical disbalance in the voting rights of ‘Negroes’ and whites had been eliminated. Indeed, for a number of years this appeared to be true.
HOWEVER, quite recently the Supreme Court, in various decisions, ruled that the historical disbalance between Black and white voting no longer existed. They chipped away at the provisions of the Voting Rights Law of 1965. Today it has been virtually gutted, as cases of denial of Black voting rights, especially in regard to legislative redistricting, have generally been denied.
The Biden administration has steadfastly sought to enforce these voting rights. The Supreme Court, Trumpites, and the ‘evangelical Christians,’ have sought to deny equal voting rights.
Today, when I recall Martin Luther King, Jr. and President Johnson proclaiming “We Shall Overcome,” and Joan Baez singing this at the Lincoln Memorial gathering in 1963, my bitter reaction is OH YEAH.
Sad, isn’t it, that we have to keep refighting battles we thought we had one? The decision I regarding Section 3 of the Voting Rights Act wasn’t a surprise to me, although it was horrid. Nor is it a surprise that Republicans are returning to the old gerrymandering and voter disenfranchisement tricks to suppress voting among their opponents.
The six right wing members of the court have no regard for stare decisis or precedents except when they can manipulate them to get their own way. Roberts originally came to the DOJ as a Reagan appointee whose job it was to start suppressing minority voting. Don’t look for anything from the SCOTUS majority except for favoritism for big money and big corporations over the rights of human beings. They have decided to play the phony game that we have become more “egalitarian” when in fact we are worse off than we were in terms of concentration of wealth, employment and civil rights. We are at serious risk of permanently losing constitutional government to a selfish, narcissistic and sociopathic individual who has already shown he is incapable of governing.
Kathy You used a word that seems judicially obsolete these days—‘stare decisis.’ Back in the Middle Ages, when I studied the Constitution, stare decisis, going back to Chief Justice John Marshall , was the foundation stone of our judiciary system.
Should I request a refund for my constitution law courses? Can I get online credit for courses in Aliotism and Thomasism?
Exactly so, Kathy.
Bitter indeed, Keith. Just glad my folks are not around to see the debacle of politics today.