Yes, I do Live in France!

The previous post, by Leslie of Oddgodfrey, inspired me to write this. If you missed it, it’s really a link to their blog. You can skip going to the previous post and simply click here to follow that link. They’ve been in South Africa, and to judge from their posts, that is a beautiful country where various people seem to mix and mingle with each other freely, but where, as she writes, something is wrong; something is missing. It reminds me of the United States of America. This is a great country, and I love the USA. My first ancestor arrived here in 1729, lived in Philly, married a girl from Jersy City in 1730, and 12 of their 13 sons fought with the Continental Army. The one I’m descended from, one Phillip Powell, fought with a Connecticut regiment. His grandson Andrew Powell was a corporal with the 123rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry in the Civil War. Andrew was a bit of an oddball. He was a religious nut, for starters, spoke in tongues (no snakes that I know of.) He was shot three times during that conflict, shot in the ass and that’s the truth, plus in the thigh. He received maggot therapy, which worked, but he limped for the rest of his life. Besides being unusually religious, he was in it to end slavery, while many Union soldiers were more concerned with the Union. He believed that saving the Union was the surest way to end slavery. We’re still awaiting the results of that experiment, which brings me to the theme of this post.

We don’t have legal apartheid in America. Haven’t had since the Civil Rights Act of 1965, but I do remember it. I had an aunt and uncle who lived in Bartow, Florida, next county to where Orlando is. Uncle Louie was half Choctaw, from his mother, and one of the most honorable people I’ve ever known. He ran a pallet making factory after serving 20 years in the Army after his WWII service. He had a black foreman over a mixed-race crew. He said, and I can quote this, “If anyone doesn’t like it, they’ll just have to find another job.” But most of Florida, and most of the South, wasn’t like that. There were separate restrooms by race, separate drinking fountains by race, blacks couldn’t patronize many restaurants, schools were segregated, whew! It scared my nine-year-old self because I imagined getting in trouble simply by trying to pee in the wrong room. Never happened, of course.

Post Civil Rights Act, there is no legal separation by race in America. But there is a long ingrained and incredibly stubborn refusal by many “white” folks to even see anyone who isn’t “white” as a regular person. “There is no white privilege.” Horseshit! Being white (an actual WASP, even) I know that I never have to think about race if I don’t want to. That’s a hell of a privilege right there. You think black people don’t have to think about race? Like when a cop pulls them over and they don’t know if they’re going to be cited, arrested, or shot? Gee maybe they do. But, so many “white” people refuse to consider talking about it. “I’m not a racist!” Sure, I’m not either, but I sure have benefited from white privilege. And I mean that, I’m not, and probably other people who say that they’re not mean it, too. But, if you look at a room full of brown people and fail to see anyone, that’s racism. There is at least one person in my neighborhood who went over to the local mall at Christmastime, which is at that season crawling with people, primarily latino or black, either African American or actually immigrants from Africa, and wrote that there “wasn’t anybody there.” Seriously! And you know what? Those Latinos in particular are living the 1950s, Leave it to Beaver lifestyle, raising families together, doing things as a family, shopping, playing around, all that supposedly superior stuff that Beaver and his family used to do. Yeah, but they’re nobody. As long as it’s common for a “white” person to not see perfectly normal people doing perfectly respectable stuff in the mall, we might as well still have apartheid. Frankly, it makes me angry to the point of being sick.

Hell, I know what everybody wants, because we all want the same stuff. We want food, clothing, shelter, companionship, and a better life for our kids. And some of us also want America to get better, not to return to the bad old days, but we get drowned out by sheer stupid stubbornness. And it is stupidity, the worst sort of stupidity, because it is willful. I’ve been putting quotation marks “” around the word “white” because of course the concept was invented by Europeans needing to not feel guilty about stealing people and selling them off. Any geneticist will tell you that the idea of human “races” is a myth, and it’s a damned persistent myth, isn’t it? But not one I intend to ever subscribe to again. The first Brits were dark skinned and had blue eyes. Striking, I imagine. And what does one do with that knowledge in light of “racial identification?” “Swedish ‘negroes?'” Right. Sure. That’s just a quick illustration of how stupid racism is in the first place. Well, it matches our societal obsession with stupidity, which we celebrate, but I’m going to quit now because that topic requires a book, not a blog post.

Just like South Africa, here in the land of the free (and it is, in many ways) something, you know, just isn’t right.