Oh, and monstro? I think of you as a very non-angry, lovely poster. But I will admit to a certain mild anxiety level whenever I communicate with you (I think this is the first thread in which I’ve happened to speak directly to you, but when I’ve read something you’ve posted), because there’s always that lurking fear that you’re going to assume I’m a racist.
It’s a very sad development in our society. I think these days a lot of white people are afraid of a lot of black people, not because they think they’re going to be mugged or something, but because they have this ongoing guilt thing going on. But I don’t know how it could have been different. The fact of racism had to come out into the open eventually. I was a kid in the early sixties when the real societal changes were happening. In those days, the word for non-racist was ‘tolerant.’ I was just a little kid, and I remember my dad explaining to me that that was a bad term to use, because it implied that there was something that had to be tolerated. That was probably the beginning of the White Guilt thing for me - I had never considered the implications, barely knew what the word ‘tolerant’ meant in a general way.
Many of you are probably too young to remember, but this was the first time, really, that we started seeing anger from black folks. In those days, it was far more universally deserved; racism was still quite common and open, particularly in the south. The interesting thing is, the battle was won fairly quickly at the surface level - within ten years or so, it became totally socially unacceptable to be openly racist in most parts of the country and at most socio-economic levels. But just as one experience with a few angry black people can leave white folks with this ongoing lurking fear of offending, so a single or a few experiences of open racism probably lead many black folks to assume that the racism had simply become covert rather than overt, and that most white folks were probably still racist. The difference was that now, many of the black folks weren’t willing to continue with stoic endurance as they had earlier. They were, and quite rightly, going to call people on it.
It was a good and necessary thing, but in some ways it lead to greater hostility between the races, or at least, greater *open * hostility. And it’s left long term societal scars - anger on one side and guilty anxiety on the other. I don’t think they’ll disappear during my lifetime, but this is something that we can at least reasonably hope will pass with time, as racism becomes so unacceptable to admit that adults can no longer pass it on to their children.
So, I’m sorry, monstro. It’s probably just a matter of time, but you too may be too old to ever see it disappear entirely. In the meantime, it sucks. But I’ll do my best to remember your viola and your cats (and do my best to forget the reality TV), and try to assume you’re not going to be automatically pissed off at me because I’m white. FWIW, it’s a well-meant fear, if you know what I mean. The fear is that *we * have offended inadvertently. That probably doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, but try to bear it in mind.
Oh, and the right-wingers? This is the age of Karl Rove and the Swift-Boaters; some of them’ll say anything and some of it will stick, and their most effective tactic is to turn around any accusation so that *you’re * the one who is guilty, not them. You have to just ignore 'em. We left-wingers have to do the same. You’re right; it sucks.
