Could We Build Something Different?

There’s a big old island of trash floating out there in the Pacific Ocean. I learned today from some reading that it's mostly itty bitty pieces of plastic, detritus from the world's wasteful ways. Here's an interesting article about it: http://www.zmescience.com/science/oceanography/just-in-case-you-didnt-know-theres-a-garbage-island-twice-as-big-as-france-in-the-pacific-ocean/  It’s awful. It’s dangerous. It’s ugly. It’s an assault on our humanity that it exists. How did it get there? One piece at a time. People thought…well, one little bottle in the great big sea is no big deal. Others may have thought…everyone else is doing it. It is not beyond the possible that one of those plastic bottles came from you or me…80% of the debris is from land rather than ships or rigs. Then there were those that flat out did not care and still do not care. Make no mistake, people are adding to the mess every single day. They do not have the love and respect for our planet to treat it with reverence. So the blight grows. One piece at a time.

I woke up thinking about this yesterday, as an analogy for what happened in Charleston Wednesday. I don’t think it or any analogy is perfect but I do believe that incremental growth has been in work when it comes to racism in our country. I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s. I was raised in a South Central Texas, in a Christian home, with a lot more love than is present in the homes of many who call themselves “Christians” today. But I did see the ugliness in my own hometown and also played out on TV. In my town it was mostly directed at Hispanics. Anybody who thinks this line of thinking is over is not in tune with today’s politics. Via media of course, I witnessed the unfolding of the Civil Rights Movement. I can’t forget the twisted hate-filled faces of mobs trying to keep one little girl from going to elementary school. It seemed to me that things were finally so stunningly wrong that we reached a tipping point and good people began to realize change was necessary. While I certainly knew we had a long way to go to becoming “post racial,” I did tell myself progress had occurred since the '60s.

Then we elected a black President. There was a great feeling of hope and pride among many people that this was the beginning of a new era. But even during the campaign and most certainly after, the ugliness raised its head. It seemed that a lot of folks decided that racisim was not only permissible behind closed doors, but that it was actually in vogue. These days tasteless jokes abound and folks use veiled expressions and code words to talk about their prejudices. People seem to think that things they thought but kept to themselves are now just fine to say. Didn’t we have a Presidential candidate stand up just this week and tell us that Hispanic immigrants are rapists and addicts? He knows he has an audience for those words. And anybody who thinks racism is less an issue ore even about the same as it was 10 years ago is not being honest with himself or others. I remember vividly the ugly mobs at school segregation protests and the deaths of marchers, and of course of the four innocent young girls in Birmingham. To me, this was a moment when right thinking people knew they could no longer remain on the fence. It was time to take a stand against racism. Now we have an event so similar to the one in Birmingham that comparison cannot be denied. It is tipping point time again. It is time to say:  Enough. No more. This must stop. That means the snide comments as well as the out and out hate speech and actions. Enough. Stop. Now. We have built a big island of hate and bigotry in this country and indeed in the world, one bit at a time, just like that big old trash island out in the ocean. We need to make it clear that we will not tolerate this trashy behavior in our presence or in our country. And here's my final thought...What if instead we started building, bit by bit, some islands of love and tolerance in our beleaguered world?

Disasters and Christianity...How to Help Others Rather than Add Pain

I feel the need to get this off the chest. I am sick and tired of sanctimonious “Christians” who give good believers a bad name. I don’t feel the need to explain or justify my faith to anybody and respect all other beliefs. Faith is not what causes pain and tribulation in our world; it’s fundamentalism and hypocritical zealotry. Sunday I was in Wimberley, TX with my cousin whose house had 12 feet of water in it from the Memorial Day flood. At that point she wasn’t even sure her house could be saved, but they were tearing out everything out down to the studs. She needed help, and wonderful people, many from local and area churches, were bringing food and supplies and generously offering to do the dirty work required. At one point a silver haired fellow with a church logo on his t-shirt came up with some other folks and offered the help of his group. I am calling him Mr. Fullaself. We gladly welcomed them. He said they would be happy to help but wanted a prayer circle first. I thought that was very nice and joined everyone else who was out in the driveway in a circle where we held hands. He gave a brief prayer and we dropped hands and started to go back to work. But he said; “Now I would like to say a few more words.” At this point my thought was “uh oh.” He proceeded to give a little sermon of sorts in which one thing he said really stood out.  He said “God will not take something away without giving you something even better to take its place.” OK at that point I wanted to throttle him. I wanted to say, and wish I had said, “Is that true for Jonathan McCord and all the other people who have lost loved ones in this flood? Is God going to give Jonathan a BETTER son, daughter, and wife?” My good feelings were turning to anger. Next he proceeded to ask if we had all been saved, and gave a rendition of the plan of salvation, which I recognized well from my Baptist upbringing. People stirred a bit in discomfort. He began pointing to each person and saying this: “If you die tonight do you know where you will go? Will you go to heaven or hell? Do you BELIEVE in heaven and hell?” He was asking each of us this one by one, literally jabbing his finger at every person in turn around the circle. By this point I was appalled. I gave my cousin a look across the circle. I could tell she was hanging in because she NEEDED help. He pounced on a young Hispanic woman and her daughter from San Antonio who had driven over knowing no one, just to lend a hand wherever needed. They had been my partners in a dish washing/disinfecting assembly line process prior to the interruption. It was clear they were uncomfortable and likely not even understanding his Christinista lingo. I spoke out and said, “I am comfortable in my faith and have no worries for the hereafter for myself OR for my daughter who is inside ripping out carpet and just happens to be gay. I know we will be fine.” I never pass up a chance to call out Christianistas for their judgment of gays. Then I walked away, noticing with a pang that he had pulled the mother/daughter team over to the side to browbeat them some more. When he was finally done I went to my dishwashing friends and told them how sorry I was for what had happened and thanked them profusely for their help. What an example of Christian charity THEY were demonstrating by just being there to help us out.

Once this ordeal was finished, Mr. Fullaself approached my cousin and said he was a retired contractor and would be happy to advise her about the state of her house. She accepted because this was her biggest concern and she wanted information from someone familiar with situations like hers. He proceeded to walk her though the house giving her very dismal pronouncements about the sorry state of her place, ending up with the conclusion that it might well be a teardown. Then he left. HE DID NOT DO A LICK OF WORK. His “crew” stayed and we were grateful for their help. I am telling myself they were embarrassed by his conduct, but nobody said anything to diminish the damage he had brought to everyone’s spirits. I feel sure he went to other locations doing the same, and since then has been telling everybody about the great help he has been able to provide to so many people as they try to recover from the flood.

Late that afternoon the REAL contractor who will be helping rebuild my cousin’s home came by and was able to give her much better news and describe how her house could most certainly be saved. It entered my mind that maybe Mr. Fullaself wanted to take my cousin down a notch or two because she clearly had a very nice place right on the creek.

Here are some suggestions for people who want to help out after a disaster:

1.     Do not turn this into a time to proselytize. It’s fine to say you are from a church of course! After that it’s time to say “Now what can we do?” Churches all over the area mobilized, organized, and played a huge part in recovery in all affected areas. This is still going on.

2.     Do not tell people that the disaster happened as part of God’s plan and that he never gives you more than you can handle. That is so trite and patently untrue for many. God is not wiping out your family to make you stronger. He/she is not that sort of egoistic celestial puppeteer. My cousin is family friends with the McCords. Her children have been searching every day for their friends and all victims. Jonathan’s wife and son were found, but not yet his daughter. You never know when you can say something that is terribly hurtful and inappropriate.

3.     DO NOT SAY GOD IS GONNA GIVE YOU SOMETHING BETTER. There will be no children, wives, fathers, or siblings 2.0 to replace those lost.

4.     DO show up even if you’re not up to heavy lifting, shoveling, etc. There are jobs for everybody. Also, I watched my cousin greet friends who just dropped by to say they were thinking of her and maybe pass the time for a short while. She really appreciated those breaks from the hard work at hand. Before I left Tuesday, she was already counting her blessings, and one was the chance to reconnect with people who were coming by and get in short visits. She did NOT mention being blessed by a sanctimonious hypocrite.

OK I’m done with this particular rant. If you made it all the way through, thanks for reading!

Musings About Unlearning Racism

My mind seems to be stuck in the 60s lately. The books that I’ve been reading are a factor, to be sure. Recently I read Revolution by Deborah Wiles, which takes me back to one particular year, 1964.  I haven’t seen the movie Selma yet, but surely it has other people remembering this time as well. It’s about the summer of 1964 in Greenwood, Mississippi. This town with its roots in the Deep South had avoided observance of civil rights legislation, starting with Brown vs. board of education and continuing with the civil rights act of 1964. I thought I would also put down some of my recollections of racism in Texas during my growing up years. I believe that with many families and groups, racism gets less pronounced through each generation. I know my mother and dad held less prejudice than their own parents, and I carried on with broader views and am proud to be the mother of a brave young woman who will tolerate no prejudice whether it is directed at race, religion, or sexuality. I continue to learn from her. But I have to confess straight out: I was raised with some racist notions and it took me longer than it should have to put them aside. I think it’s accurate to say I am a recovering racist. Maybe that’s the best thing many people my age, raised in the South, can hope to be. I am not proud of that but I think that publicly admitting my past thinking is something I ought to do. Reading Revolution, along with living in a time when racism is being ramped up again after all that we’ve been through as a country caused me to go back through my memories of racism as I saw it during my growing up years. This is my past and the past of folks who grew up alongside me in Texas and in many other parts of our country.

·      My earliest recollection is being admonished by my grandmother. We were in the grocery store, and she gave me a nickel to spend. I must have been only 5 or so because I popped it into my mouth for safekeeping. She pulled hard on my hand and scolded me saying,”Take that nickel out of your mouth! You don’t know where it’s been! It could have been in a little Mexican’s mouth.” I didn’t like the idea of my nickel having been in anyone else’s mouth and instantly obeyed. This is my first remembered lesson that somehow brown kids were different from me. I don’t think I questioned that at all.

·      Once I started school I learned lots of lessons in prejudice, from my teachers as well as other kids. It was well known that speaking Spanish in school was a terrible sin and that we should tell the teacher if we heard any of that going on. Again I don’t think I questioned this, but I did envy the Spanish speaking kids because they had a way to communicate that was tons better than other kids had. Still, I thought it must be wrong to speak Spanish even though the reason was beyond me.

·      This lesson was one that repeated itself over my childhood years. Once a little girl in my class called me on the telephone. I thought this was pretty cool because I was not used to having friends call me. This would have been when I was in second grade, or maybe third. Mother questioned me about that call and when I told her the girl’s name, she said I should not encourage her to call in the future. She had a Hispanic last name. She was smart and funny, with long pigtails that I admired. This time I felt resentment at the unfairness of the latest edict: I was to be nice to this girl at school but she could never come over to play or spend the night and I could never go to her house. This may have been the first time I DID question the discrimination. The one exception was if a school project was involved. This actually came up a year or two later and I was pleased that on one occasion she could come over with several other girls to work on a school project. Looking back, I feel bad about this exclusionary attitude. It wasn’t just my parents, it was ALL the moms and dads. I was thus deprived of the associations that could have given me

·      From my earliest years I got the message that socializing with those who were not just like me was not allowed, and that was especially true for boys and girls. At one point my mom got on me for holding hands with little boy that I thought was wonderful. When I complained that he was the smartest boy in my class, Mom said that did not make any difference. I was not to think about having boy-girl friendships with boys that were not “white.” As I grew older, the message was communicated more strongly, not necessarily from my parents but from others, both adults and peers.

·      When I started high school, black kids joined our classes for the first time. The assimilation was pretty smooth as far as I could tell…there were none of the ugly incidents that I saw elsewhere on TV news. I learned that these kids were smart and funny too, but were another group with whom my contact should strictly be at school.

My world got a little bigger when I went off to college. One of the girls in my sorority was dating a boy with a Hispanic last name and nobody cared. I realized that everybody everywhere did not share the prejudices that I learned growing up. Then as I moved into adulthood my attitudes continued to change. I think the final barriers came down when I started teaching at university level and I had students of all colors and persuasions who were smart, creative, and downright wonderful. I am glad that my world is not so hemmed in as it was at some time. And I am glad that my daughter grew up much more “evolved” than did I in this respect.

Here’s why I want to share my stories:

·      I think my growing up years were typical for boys and girls in South Central Texas during the 60’s and before. It is up to us turn away from such prejudices. This goes for sexuality too. I am saddened by people my age who still show through words and actions that they look down on others because of their skin color, their religion, or their sexuality. Some of this is overt and ugly, but a lot of it is veiled in code words and innuendoes. I hate prejudice in all forms.

·      It distresses me that since 2000 it seems the racists have come out of hiding and revealed their prejudices more boldly than in years running up to then. First it was 911 and a lot of judging of “brown:” people. I know some of my grad students reported incidents where they were looked at differently after that date. Then, with the election of President Obama, the ugliness increased and even became fashionable in some circles. Again with some people this is very overt, but with too many others it is more subtle but still discernable.

·      Since my daughter is gay, I have become especially conscious of the treatment of folks whose sexuality does not fit very narrow parameters. I believe sexuality is a continuum. People are born with traits and inclinations that range from being very “feminine” or “masculine” to points in between. I am straight but think my place on this continuum is closer to the middle than extreme. By no means do people choose to be gay or straight. I saw hints in my daughter at age two that I realized later were early indications of her future development. And that’s OK!

·      I feel sad that the world I grew up in had such strict barriers. I got shortchanged. I missed out on having fun with so many wonderful kids who are now delightful adults. I never got to have sleepovers with Linda, Ruth, Rosemary, Josie, Yolanda, or any of the other girls I now love spending time with as adults. I had even less chance to get to know George, Gene, Fernando, Wallace, Catarino, or other boys in my class that were not “OK” for me to socialize with. What a loss! We grew up alongside one another but not WITH one another. I grew up with Susan, John, Eugenia, Donna, Carol, Ginger, Jill, Donnie, Ronnie, Mike, and all the other kids that had fun together at parties and just hanging out. Our lives could have been so much richer without the strict boundaries that were part of our “education.” I hope our grandchildren are growing up in a world that is more open.

·      Finally I want to say I am sorry. I am sorry I was a slow study and had to go out into the world to really understand how poisonous racism really is. I’m sorry I was not more courageous and less oblivious growing up and missing out on all the friends I could have had. I think it is appropriate to say I am sorry for these things, and it feels important to me. I know there are folks who don’t want to apologize for things that happened in the past, including slavery, and that this is being discussed right now by some politicians. Well let me just say that for myself, I am sorry. I wish these things had never happened. Maybe I am not directly to blame for historical evenets, but I am responsible for my own slow evolution. Putting all this out in public is, I believe, one more step in my growing up. Thanks to all my present friends, some who know how I used to be, but still now welcome me into their lives as if I had never shown any prejudice. From now on I want to speak out against racism whenever I see it, both veiled and blatant.