For America’s sake, do you really want to vote to support….

Lies and liars?

No Social Security?

Death of the Earth in your children’s  lifetime?

No Medicare?

No Obamacare?

The end of freedom of religion?

Mentally deranged candidates?

The end of “Sweet Land of Liberty?”

Ignorance over science?

Crippling of our public schools?

Sell-out of brotherly love?

It’s hard to believe that my fellow Americans could be vulnerable to the trashing of empathy, truthfulness, fairness, brotherhood, and fair play.

I acknowledge that most white folks both look down on and fear blacks, and my guess is that most black folks hate, resent and fear whites.  I accept now that U.S. has a problem with systemic racism, after seeing and reading about police persecutions and especially the governmental role  of the  USDA, as discussed at length in the Nation’s 2021 article  “Forced Off Their Land,” by Kali Holloway:

“Since 1965, multiple federal agencies–most notably the USDA itself–have issued reports citing, as the US Commission on Civil Rights put it that year,  “unmistable evidence that racial discrimination”  within the Agricultural  Department “has served to accelerate the displacement and impoverishment of the Negro farmer.”

Recently I wrote against paying reparations for blacks, misunderstanding that it was not for years of slavery but for the discrimination of the USDA.  (Lindsey Graham had referred to it as “slavery reparations,” and I bit.)

Earlier this year the  Department of Treasury observed that “Racial inequality is the unequal distribution of resources, power, and economic opportunity across race in a society. While the discussion of racial inequality in the United States is often focused on economic inequality, racial inequality also manifests itself in a multitude of ways that alone and together impact the well-being of all Americans. This includes racial disparities in wealth, education, employment, housing, mobility, health, rates of incarceration, and more”.¹

The Nov.-Dec issue of Mother Jones reminds us that the government also discriminated against black veterans of World War II.  Benefits of the G.I. Bill were administered at the state level, where white officials served as “gatekeepers.”

Fate arranged it–or bad luck of the draw–My genealogical line is tainted with prejudice.  My great great grandmother (b. 1831) was loosely related to to Judge Taney, and visited him while he was pondering his decision in the Dred Scott decision.  Our family genealogy says that she influenced the way he subsequently ruled.  I’m sorry.   An earlier settler from England mistreated his imported slaves, and Francis Scott Keys’ statue has been toppled.  Another forbear, much admired by me, was a Dixiecrat.  I’m sorry. 

As for me, if I have any prejudice it is of the unconscious kind.   I have the greatest respect for black women.  I loved Georgia. our elderly black babysitter whose husband died, she borrowed money from my father,  was unable to pay him back, and he griped about it.  She did not return to us. I missed her and our days listening to Arthur Godfreys and All the Little Godfreys on the radio. I recently learned from reading my diary written as a youngster that I mis-remembered a conversation with her.  I thought I remembered her saying that she’d  cook at my wedding and that I had corrected her and said she’d dance at my wedding, whereupon she laughed and said, “Wouldn’t that be something!”

Imagine my chagrin when I found my  diary recently and read that just the reverse was true.  I corrected her and said she’d cook at my wedding.  Her response was not changed, however. She laughed and said wouldn’t that be something.  As an adult in Atlanta I housed one of the black families heading northward as part of the Mule Train, and much later had three wonderful black counseling interns when I worked at the prison.

The impetus for this post was first, the statement I quoted in an earlier post this year by Lyndon Johnson,; the article mentioned above in the Nation; and an old song I recently found and read from the library’s giveaway shelf —I Hear America Singing  by Ruth A. Barnes in 1937.  The song/poem is as follows:

CHRISMUS ON THE PLANTATION

It was Chrismus Eve, I mind hit fu’ a mighty gloomy day–

Bofe de weathah an’ de people–not a one of us was gay;

Cose you’ll t’ink dat’s mighty funny ‘twell I try to mek hit cleah,

Fu’ a da’ky’s allus happy when de holidays is neah,

But we wasn’t, fu’ dat mo’nin’ Mastah ‘d tol’ us we mus’ go,

He’d been paying us since freedom, but he couldn’t pay no mo’;

He wasn’t nevah used to plannin’ ‘fo’ he got so po’ an’ ol’

So he gwine to give up tryin’, an’ de homestead mus’ be sol’.

I kin see him stan’in’ now erpon de step ez clear ez day,

Wid de win’ a-kind o’ fondlin’ thoo his haih all thin and gray;

An’ I membah how he trimbled when he said, “It’d h’d fu’ me,

Not to make yo’ Chrismus brightah, but I ‘low it wa’n’t to be.”

All de women was a-cryin’, an’ de men, too, on de sly,

An’ I noticed somep’n shinin’ even in ol’ Mastah’s eye.

But we all stood still to listen ez ol’ Ben come f’om de crowd

An’ spoke up, a-try’n’ to steady down his voice and mek it loud:

“Look hyeah, Mastah, I’s been servin’ you fu’ lo! dese many yeahs,

An’ now, sence we’s got freedom an’ you’s kind o’ po’. hit ‘pears

Dat you want us all to leave you ’cause you don’t t’ink you can pay.

Ef my membry hasn’t fooled me, seem dat whut I hyead you say.

“Er in othah wo’ds, you want us to fu’git dat you’s been kin’,

An ‘ez soon ez you is he’pless, we’s to leave you hyeah behin’.

Well, ef dat’s the way dis freedom ac’s on people, white or black,

You kin jes tell Mistah Lincum fu’ to tek his freedom back.

“We gwine wo’k dis ol’ plantation fu’ whatevah we kin git,

Fu I know hit did suppo’t us, an’ de place kin do it yit.

Now de land is yo’s, de hands is ouahs, an’ I eckon we’ll be brave,

An’ we’ll bah ez much ez you do w’en we has to scrape an’ save.”

Ol’ Mastah stood dah tremblin’, but a-smilin’ thoo his teahs,

An’ den hit seemed jes’ nachul-like, de place fah rung wid cheahs,

An’ soon ez day was quiet, some one sta’ted sof’ an’ low:

“Praise God,” an’ den we all jined in, “from whom all blessin’s flow!”

Well, dey wasn’t no use tryin’, ouah min’s was sot to stay,

An’ po’ ol’ Mastah couldn’t plead ner baig, ner drive us ‘way,

An’ all at once, hit seemed to us, de day was bright agin,

So evahone was gay day night, and watched de Chrismus in.

–Paul Laurence Dunbar

Whew!   I was initially suspicious of Dunbar’s motive. Was he knowingly writing a false tale? Was the language to make fun of the freed slaves? (Our culture today has made me suspicious.)  Was he a daring liberal? Was this a serious, possibly true poem?  Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was the only black student in his graduating class at Central High School in Dayton, was editor of his school’s newspaper and president of its literary society.  (Orville Wright was a classmate).  And his parents were former slaves in Kentucky.

So, why this post on race?  Probably some felt guilt when I hear angry voices shouting “he was a slave owner.”  And the disconnect when folks pretend to be Christians while reviling their God’s  other children.  To me it takes a lot of gall to claim to be religious and racist at the same time.  How can white folks deny  systemic racism at the same time they’re wishing blacks would go home to Africa?  I don’t know the percentage of current black U.S. citizens who came to this country as slaves, but it’s hardly their fault for having been enslaved and shipped here in leg irons.  There’s a photo of the leg irons used on slave ships, and probably for economic reasons they were not used on a slave’s two feet, but with the irons attached to the leg of one man and and the other leg iron to a slave next to him. (There’s pictures in an article on recovered wrecks of                                                                 slave ships on Google.)

I feel that this post is being written at an incredibly juvenile level but it does state my current opinions, fears, questions and disgust.  And wouldn’t it be a breath of fresh air if “Chrismus On The Plantation” were a true story!

Post Script: Writing this post got me to wondering about the contents of CRT, so I checked Google for books on systemic racism and found on book sites “way over 25 book titles.”

A . A . A D . D . – Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder.

This is how it manifests:

I decided to water my garden.

As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I looked over at my car and decided my car needs washing.

As I started toward the garage , I noticed that there is mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier.

I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys down on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full.

So I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.

But then I think, since I’m going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway. I may as well pay the bills first.

I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only 1 check left.

My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find a can of coke that I had been drinking.

I’m going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the coke aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over.

I see that the coke is getting warm, and I decide I should put it in the  refrigerator to keep it cold. 

As I head toward the kitchen with the coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye– they need to be watered.

I set the coke down on the counter, and I discover my reading glasses that I’ve been searching for all morning.

Then I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I’m going to water the flowers.

I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly I spot the TV remote.

Someone left it on the kitchen table.

I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I will be looking for the remote, but I won’t remember that it’s on the table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers.

I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor.

So, I set the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill.

Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do.

At the end of the day: 

—-the car isn’t washed,

—-the bills aren’t paid,

—-there is a warm can of coke sitting on the counter 

—-the flowers don’t have enough water, 

—-there is still only 1 check in my checkbook,

—-I can’t find the remote, 

—-I can’t find my glasses,

—-and I don’t remember what in the word I did with the car keys ! 

Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m really baffled, because I know I was busy all day long, and I’m really tired.

I realize this is a serious problem, and I’ll try to get some help for it,

but first I’ll check my e-mail.

Don’t laugh– if this isn’t you yet, your day is coming ! ! !

Growing older is mandatory.

Growing up is optional.

Laughing at yourself is therapeutic.

P.S. I just walked outside and SOMEONE LEFT THE WATER RUNNING IN THE DRIVEWAY !

I don’t remember if I wrote this or someone else did.

In an attempt to clarify another widespread misconception, I am exerpting only a small part of Stephen Pinker’s major article in a 1913 issue of the New Republic:

The humanities are the domain in which the intrusion of science has produced the strongest recoil. Yet it is just that domain that would seem to be most in need of an infusion of new ideas. By most accounts, the humanities are in trouble. University programs are downsizing, the next generation of scholars is un- or underemployed, morale is sinking, students are staying away in droves. No thinking person should be indifferent to our society’s disinvestment from the humanities, which are indispensable to a civilized democracy.

Diagnoses of the malaise of the humanities rightly point to anti-intellectual trends in our culture and to the commercialization of our universities. But an honest appraisal would have to acknowledge that some of the damage is self-inflicted. The humanities have yet to recover from the disaster of postmodernism, with its defiant obscurantism, dogmatic relativism, and suffocating political correctness. And they have failed to define a progressive agenda. Several university presidents and provosts have lamented to me that when a scientist comes into their office, it’s to announce some exciting new research opportunity and demand the resources to pursue it. When a humanities scholar drops by, it’s to plead for respect for the way things have always been done.

Those ways do deserve respect, and there can be no replacement for the varieties of close reading, thick description, and deep immersion that erudite scholars can apply to individual works. But must these be the only paths to understanding? A consilience with science offers the humanities countless possibilities for innovation in understanding. Art, culture, and society are products of human brains. They originate in our faculties of perception, thought, and emotion, and they cumulate and spread through the epidemiological dynamics by which one person affects others. Shouldn’t we be curious to understand these connections? Both sides would win. The humanities would enjoy more of the explanatory depth of the sciences, to say nothing of the kind of a progressive agenda that appeals to deans and donors. The sciences could challenge their theories with the natural experiments and ecologically valid phenomena that have been so richly characterized by humanists.

https://newrepublic.com/article/114127/science-not-enemy-humanities

WHEN  OUT  OF  SORTS

Anger gets boring

after a while,

like milk gets sour.

So, spend more time

with your pet.

If you don’t have

 one,  get one!

I want to write dog,

not pet, but that word

has been sullied into bum

and a bitch.

Don’t you believe it!  Some

of my best friends

were Trixie, Shorty, Boots,

Gracie and Cleopatra.**

They make eye contact,

have empathy, mirror your

mind,  are warm and wag their tail.

What more could you ask for?

**and Buttons and Sinbad

Nan  10/8/22

Reply