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I lived in Minneapolis for two winters. At 3.3 million, its metro population is greater than the entire state of Mississippi where I spent my first 36-years, and of Eugene, Oregon where I've lived for 32-years. Eugene and Minneapolis are alike in that their populace is educated, secular, affluent, and Democratic (or, as Trump would say, strongly Democrat). By contrast, Mississippi is staunchly Christian, strongly Republican and leads the nation in poverty, ignorance, obesity, oppression, and early death.
My mother condescended toward black people, but my father treated them well, as did I considering my immaturity and ignorance. Although he went to an all black school, my best friend in high school was a black boy named Jerry Kelly. When my white friends and I went camping one weekend, Jerry went too, and when my father and I went camping 400-miles from home, Jerry went too. The South had an unwritten code about what a white person could do with black people and what he or she couldn't. For example, when I was in high school, my white friends would simply walk in on me without knocking, but Jerry wouldn't have dreamed of doing such a thing, and when my white friends and I drove around town drinking, Jerry wasn't invited.
The only bad moment, racially speaking, that I had with Jerry occurred when we were running my father's 115 mile paper route. Most days, my father and I ran the route together, him driving and me throwing papers, but some days, we would hire Jerry to replace one of us. On this particular day, I told Jerry to go into a cafe to collect for the paper. He said he didn't want to go because the cafe was run by white people (black people couldn't enter white-run cafes, although some such businesses had side windows for their black patrons). Being infinitely more naive than Jerry, I assured him that there would be no problem since he wasn't there to order. So, in he went, and, seconds later, out he came, closely followed by a raging white woman.
Much of my prejudice toward black people didn't come from living in Mississippi but in Minnesota where gangs of belligerent black teenagers would stalk downtown streets, daring white pedestrians to remain on the sidewalk. I also encountered groups of loud and aggressive black people on city buses. I came to regard them as hyenas, a perception that returned this week when I watched black mobs looting white-owned stores.
My Mississippi hometown had its last lynching in 1953, when I was four, and a previous lynching in 1928, when my father was in his teens. In the 1928 lynching, a mob took two brothers from the city jail, shooting one, and dragging the other behind a car before hanging his corpse from a tree.
When I was young, I romanticized people who didn't fit society's norms. For example, I sought out the friendship of homosexuals and black people, and I was captivated both by the Freedom Riders and the Weather Underground. Because I valued appearance over substance, I was even drawn to groups that sought one another's annihilation, for example the KKK and the Black Panthers. I also loved snazzy uniforms, and so I favored the looks of Confederate soldiers over the Union, and of the SS over the Allies. Although I felt superior to people who brainlessly hated what their neighbors hated and loved what their neighbors loved, my values were equally shallow and a lot less consistent.
My British and Australian readers know about the murder of George Floyd, but they might not know about a New York City white woman named Amy Cooper who called the police to report that she and her Cocker Spaniel were being physically threatened by a middle-aged black bird watcher who objected to her dog being unleashed in a Central Park area set aside for wildlife.* Once she was on the phone, Ms Cooper worked herself into the appearance of hysteria, all while the black man filmed her performance. After being fired from her $175,000 job with an investment firm, Amy Cooper botched multiple apologies so badly that she finally hired a PR firm. For example, she had sought to minimize her behavior by claiming that, "Words are just words," and "I didn't intend to harm that man in any way," and she even tried to win the public's sympathy by saying, "My entire life is being destroyed right now.” Does the Me Too movement's insistence that women are too pure to frame men ("Believe the Women") include the Amy Coopers of the world, and does it really hold that no black man ever came to a bad end because of a white woman's lies?
Although local bumper stickers laud diversity, Eugene is hardly diverse. Black people and Asians are rare, and Hispanics are too poor--and too afraid of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)--to engage in politics. Even so, white Eugenians have been out in the thousands (the largest protest reaching 10,000**) protesting the Floyd murder, and they've been at it for more than a week, during which several businesses were vandalized. The spectacle of white crowds in a white city shouting insults at a white police force 2,000 miles from a black man's murder strikes me as impotent, and I even wonder the extent to which the size of the protests (not just in Eugene, but in the nation and the world) has been fueled by hatred for Trump and frustration over Covid lock-downs. Whatever the truth about this, Covid deaths can be expected to mushroom, especially among black people.
*https://www.thedailyworld.com/opinion/commentary-george-floyd-killed-in-minneapolis-is-why-amy-coopers-central-park-call-was-so-repugnant/
**https://www.kezi.com/content/news/Massive-crowd-gathers-for-protest-march-570907911.html
17 comments:
I saw the story about Amy Cooper. IF the police had responded to her call it is sadly quite possible that the black birdwatcher would have been (at a minimum) arrested for asking her to put her dog on a lead (in an area where leashing is compulsory). It is also sadly quite possible that he would have lost his life over the same request.
I feel no pity for her. None. Nada. Zip.
There have been Black Lives Matter protests here too. Our Prime Minister has dismissed them as an 'imported problem'. He is wrong. Our first people are much more likely to be imprisoned than whites and much more likely to die in prison as well.
And last week a young Aboriginal man was mouthing off at the police (as teenagers do). The police response was to sweep his feet out from under him so that he crashed face first into the road (he was handcuffed). He was later released without any charges being laid. The Police Commissioner said that the officer concerned had been having a bad day.
I have no idea why there are protests in London about GF’s murder, do you?
Kris
I saw the footage of Amy Cooper and thought i had never seen anything so disgraceful. It was long before I saw something a LOT worse.
Your remembrance of sending Jerry into the store gives me a visceral memory of things I have done, not specific things but just those moments of truly having no clue and somebody else paying the price.
I hope some good comes of George Floyds death, he should never have become a martyr but if he does it might at least have some meaning
Oh yes, we are well aware of Amy Cooper and what happened, even though the shallow me can't remember what exactly happened to the black man. Honestly, some black people can be very scary to white people, but it should not be so. While I support the Black Lives Matter movement, I haven't forgotten how homophobic and hateful some black people can be towards gay men, black or white or brindle. And of course those deep south people can be rather hateful towards gay men too.
"And last week a young Aboriginal man was mouthing off at the police (as teenagers do)"
I never mouthed off to the police; I never had a friend who, to my knowledge, mouthed off to the police; and if I had a child who mouthed off to the police, I would wonder how I had failed to raise him or her properly. In my view, the police have a tough job, and they deserve respect. Does this mean that I have never felt badly treated by the police? No. While I have never been assaulted, and while I have mostly felt well-treated (even leniently treated), there was one occasion on which I was treated contemptuously despite the fact I was doing nothing wrong, and another on which I saw someone else being treated contemptuously. However, I never dreamed of treating the cops in like manner because if a cop is already acting badly, then no good can come of making him even madder.
"The Police Commissioner said that the officer concerned had been having a bad day."
With a friend like that, who needs enemies! Maybe the commissioner should look for other employment.
"I have no idea why there are protests in London about GF’s murder, do you?"
It is my understanding that racism and xenophobia are flourishing in Britain, so I assume that Floyd's murder (for murder, I believe it to have been) was sort of a jumping-off place for the British protests, but I have no clue what is going on to inspire protests in Osaka, Japan! By the way, I keep the pipes you sent in a prominent place, and every time I see them, I'm reminded of your generosity.
"the protests will not cease until police force is defunded and has come to a reckoning"
As the Minneapolis city council has pledged to do. Would not no police mean no arrests, and no arrests mean that criminals--including criminals within police departments--escape their day of reckoning?
Videos of black looters out weigh the looters of pasty assed white folk"
I don't know if you mean that the looters are "pasty assed" or that the people they are looting are "pasty assed." Either way, it appears from your photo that you're a blonde white woman, yet you're describing people who look like yourself with a racial insult. Furthermore, the insult you're using is based upon appearance, which means that no amount of right-thinking and right-acting can change it. If race-based insults of black people are wrong, why aren't race-based insults of white people wrong?
"Everyone on earth with a beating heart deserves kindness, compassion, friendship and love"
In all sincerity, I would then ask how you justify--to yourself--supporting a president who is up before dawn each day trashing people on Twitter, and who spends his daylight hours seeking to destroy the reputations, if not the lives, of those who refuse to treat him as though he were God? Even if you dismiss as "fake news" everything that non-conservative news sources say about Trump, he is condemned by his own words, yet you stand behind him. I would respectfully ask that you help me to understand how this can be so.
"he should never have become a martyr but if he does it might at least have some meaning"
Largely out of concern for Peggy and myself, I am much more focused on the thousands who are going to die because of catching and spreading protest-related Covi-19. As of today, Floyd's mostly obese family will have attended three funerals in three states, and I'll be waiting for the grim news that one or more of them has died deaths that could have been prevented. Perhaps, they're simply being carried along by social pressures at a time when they're too upset to think rationally, but in any event, America reached 110,000 Covid deaths this weekend, and that's only counting the known Covid deaths. In states that were among the first to relax the stay at home orders, the cases are dramatically increasing, all because people can't be bothered to wait for widespread access to the diagnostic tools that would have presumably allowed outbreaks to be contained. On a personal note, Peggy and I have done our damnedest to avoid catching this disease, and to think that our efforts might count for naught due to the improvidence of others isn't setting well.
"the shallow me can't remember what exactly happened to the black man"
He was shot (fifteen times) and killed by the police in an unrelated incident in which he also did nothing wrong. Inappropriate humor aside, both people were gone by the time the police arrived. He has since been interviewed a time or two (that I know of), and has expressed the willingness to accept her apology. Why he would do his, I can't imagine, her words containing obvious lies and strongly suggesting that her sorrow is for herself alone rather than for how she treated him. A lifetime of trying to live down what might be the worst thing she ever did does seem like too high a price to pay. Peggy said that if she were Amy Cooper, she would change her name and move, but anyone with access to Google could find her within minutes. By the way, the dog rescue agency returned her dog, which seems reasonable since she had had the dog for years, and clearly didn't intend to cause the dog distress. Really, for me, the worst part of the video was watching that dog struggle to breathe.
"I saw some of the destructive dumpster burning, window smashers in Eugene on video clips and thought it looked something like a drunken drug fueled white trash party of some kind, more than anything else."
I didn't see the footage, but I did see the boarded-up windows on the ramp onto Delta Highway (I-105) the next day. As you probably know, Eugene has long been the homebase to a number of anarchists. Before the FBI moved in, they set off some bombs and burned the Oakridge Ranger Station. While I don't know the extent to which anarchists participated in the riot, I do hear the voice of anarchism in demands to defund or demolish police department. By the way, Jody, Kris (who posts as Anonymous) is another Oregonian--in her case, a Portlandian.
I know about Amy Cooper, it got a lot of coverage over in the UK and is a perfect example of the power and prejudice wielded by people who have the power to do so. As a side note here I don’t get the connection to your following lines though - ‘Does the Me Too movement's insistence that women are too pure to frame men ("Believe the Women") include the Amy Coopers of the world, and does it really hold that no black man ever came to a bad end because of a white woman's lies?’ - because white males lie and behave just as despicably, I have no doubt they use their gender as part of this. Men, in the entertainment business and corporate fields who are predominantly white as well, though such behaviour is widespread still across all nationality and race. So it reads as a poke at the Me Too movement, which isn’t saying believe everything a woman says, it’s saying take as seriously a woman’s claim to injustice as much as you would a man’s and therefore allow them to feel like they can be believed if they’ve been raped and abused, give them equal billing, look at every accusation any ‘person’ makes and take it seriously regardless of it being a woman or man, regardless of sexuality and gender, regardless of skin colour. The Me Too movement also stems from hundreds and hundreds of years of abuse, mental, sexual and domestic violence.
The lynching you mentioned, the dragging of a man behind the car by the neck until dead, fills me with cold dread and horror to the point I feel physically sick. People capable of such cruelty have chosen to see black people as inhuman and in doing so have lost their own humanity.
More BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic people) are dying of Covid than white the statistics are showing, yet out they go protesting because when you push a people enough times whilst claiming they should stop going on about slavery and say things like ‘All lives matter!’ they are fighting for their children’s futures. To the ‘All lives matter’ crew – When black lives are treated as being as valuable as white, only then will all lives matter. It’s as simple as that. It’s like someone saying ‘My house is on fire, help everyone!’ and replying ‘What about all houses? Shouldn’t we be talking about all houses right now to be fair?’
I thought the following made a fine point about emphasis. Two sentences:
1. It’s horrible that a black man was so badly treated and killed, but all the looting has to STOP.
2. It’s horrible that the looting is going on, but treating black people like this and killing them has to STOP.
The following is a superb video from a woman answering the question posed to her ‘Why would you loot and burn your own home town?’ It’s important to watch until the end because she gets her point across with the most strength later on in. If you’re reading this and you would ask that question do yourself the service of finding out the answer. Underneath the title someone wrote - (If you only have 2 minutes, start at 2.40) so do, because that’s when she starts explaining it in terms everyone can understand.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FfFj_to7fU
If you can’t use the link the name of it is - How Can We Win? by Kimberly L. Jones
The connection to Trump is him fuelling the civil unrest, actively stoking it, he isn’t hiding that he’s doing that, so in that sense he is part of the reason people are marching, but it’s what he’s brought to light that people are marching to show and to try and stop. He wants a civil war but he doesn’t seem aware that this isn’t the 1950/60’s, this time white people are marching against it too.
Someone asked why there are marches in London - Because police brutality and racism isn’t limited to the U.S and because so many of us over here support and understand and feel the rage and disgust too.
As usual, you raise some interesting points that are ignored by standard commentary -- esp. your last paragraph. However, I hope your last sentence is wrong. I'm not saying it IS wrong; I just hope it's wrong.
"So it reads as a poke at the Me Too movement, which isn’t saying believe everything a woman says..."
I think it reasonable to expect that a group will say what it means, and that it will say it in such a way that the public can readily understand what it means. Me Too is not saying, "Take Women Seriously," it is saying, "Believe Women." If it meant the former, why didn't it say the former? Words matter, and a group's slogan should be like a gas pedal that encourages those in sympathy with it to participate in it based upon a clear understanding of where it stands, rather than being like a brake that confuses its sympathizers and provides its enemies with ammunition.
Again, words matter, and so it is that here in America, a man's career can be damaged or ended by the unsubstantiated claim of a single woman about something that happened decades ago. A recent example of this is Joe Biden who a woman says raped her in 1993. She has no proof. Like many other women, she had previously said he made her feel uncomfortable by being more touchy-feely with them than the relationship warranted, but only recently did she add: And, oh, yes, he raped me, and in the corridor of the capitol building no less. No one else has accused Biden of such a thing, and indeed, numerous women, some of whom had said he made them feel uncomfortable--have come to his defense. Yet, because we now live in a political climate in which a man--especially an aging white male--can be assumed guilty until proven innocent, Donald Trump, no less, has already been using this woman's claim to damage Biden, and it remains to be seen just how much her words will influence the upcoming presidential election.
Oftentimes, when a group of idealistic people makes a good faith effort to address a grievous wrong, that group ends up being taken over by extremists, the result being that moderates are no longer welcome.. For example, the Civil Rights movement went from demanding racial equality to demanding (1) reparations for slavery and (2) preferential treatment of black people in order to atone for centuries of oppression. In the case of the Me Too movement, the group has gone from demanding that women be treated fairly when they accuse someone of sexual abuse to showing no discernible interest in whether the accused is guilty or innocent. I heartily agree with the Wikipedia article entitled "Believe Women," which, might convey my concern better than I since it quotes women who, like myself, were in full agreement with the movement prior to the popularization of the slogan (which occurred at the time of the Kavanaugh hearings):
"The slogan has been criticized for encouraging a presumption of guilt. Michelle Malkin, writing for The Daily Signal, suggests that it is a form of virtue signalling.[3] Rebecca Traister, writing for The Cut, calls the phrase "compelling but flawed": it is often recast as "believe all women", and used as a "deeply problematic" and "clumsy imperative" that has "enfeebled the far more important argument that we should encourage them to speak more, and listen to them more seriously when they talk."[4]
I've spent all this time addressing your first paragraph alone, so more is likely to follow.
Yes some women are abusing the power of equality. They're in a position to do so purely because they are being listened to. Bad people exist regardless of gender. Many people who are against the movement use these extreme cases, justifiably bad cases, but they use them as being a reason that it's a bad thing its happening full stop. Just like feminism is viewed as a slur almost these days due to extremist feminists. They do not represent all women who deserve to be heard and taken seriously (which is the same as being believed. Also sometimes people past acts come back to haunt them. It isn't the asking for equality in any area that's wrong and should be stopped and indeed focused upon by the episodes connected that are wrong or perceived to be wrong, but so often that's what happens.
"Many people who are against the movement use these extreme cases, justifiably bad cases, but they use them as being a reason that it's a bad thing its happening full stop."
Perhaps I failed to make myself clear. I think that, at its origin, the goals of the Me Too movement were entirely laudable. It is what the movement has become that I object to and which is exemplified by its "Believe Women" motto. In 1972, I became an early subscriber to Ms Magazine, but as time went on, I noted that Ms switched from being pro-woman to anti-man, and that men who had had their "consciousness raised" would have no problem with this. Years later, I attended a NOW meeting with the intention of joining, but what I found was that the few men in attendance were unwelcome to speak (not just about their experiences with discrimination--which would have made perfect sense to me--but about anything whatsoever), the idea being that women had been silenced for millenia, and it was now men's turn to be silenced, and that they could either go along with this or be shouted down. I hear a similar animus in "Believe Women," which is to say that the mentality of the movement has come to lie between justice and payback, and I believe that this alienates not only men but fair-minded women. To further compare Me Too with feminism, few young women are willing to take on the title of feminist anymore, not because they feel less strongly about equality, but because they see in feminism a movement that was derailed from within by women who, like the writer Valerie Solanas, regarded men as a genetic mistake that, aside from breeding puproses, could be safely dispensed with (as one bumper sticker read, "A Woman Needs a Man Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle"). I fear that the same is becoming true of Me Too, it seeming to me that "Believe Women" translates into "Don't Believe Men."
"I sincerely try to serve God & live according to His Word."
Then why do you support a politician whose life is lived in stark contradiction to the values of love, reverence, truthfulness, compassion, and kindness, that you claim to uphold above all others? I am sincere in my desire to understand this, but because all you've offered thus far are irrelevant Bible verses, a dismissal of everything I say about Trump as "fake news," and a refusal to even look at my sources, I am no closer to understanding you as I was when Trump was elected. Like Trump himself--who subjected the people at a lawful demonstration to tear gas, flash bangs, and rotor dust, all so he could stand in front of a church, remove an unknown person's Bible from his daughter's $1,500 handbag, and hold it aloft for a photo-op--I regard your religion as worse than empty, that is, while it clearly brings satisfaction to you, it is base hypocrisy to me, and, I imagine, to most people.
Matthew 23: 27-28: “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."
Quoting this verse, Marion, isn't hyperbole on my part, it is how your support of Trump makes you appear in my eyes. Please help me to understand differently. I want to think well of you.
I saw both events and now another at a Wendy’s our news and while the events are news worthy and the comments about them fair by media what I disliked is the repeated presentation for days and even hourly. It beckoned to people to react. Gut wrenching stuff. And that people stared protesting was almost fueled by the repetition of videos of the events. However trashing property has no added value in protests and just makes some people seem mindless And evil.
Trump has his agenda and will try to win using whatever he needs to. That he still has believers after so many lies and painful action in public is odd especially from some who claim to have devotion to a faith that claims to teach morals and humility.
It will be interesting to see how Covid affects protesters.
Stay safe.
"However trashing property has no added value in protests and just makes some people seem mindless And evil."
Heidrun, I always enjoy your comments. Now...I don't know what value theft and vandalism have in general, but they very much strike me as they strike you, and I know that many protestors agree with us, complaining that the looters, the vandals, and the people who assault the police, hijack what were meant to be peaceful protests. Here in Eugene, two statues honoring Oregon Trail pioneers were torn down on Saturday. I, too, would have preferred that statues honoring the Indians whose land they stole had been erected instead of statues honoring the thieves, but once people violate the law, they are saying that, when one feels strongly enough about a cause, violating the law is acceptable, and if this is true, then they have no right to complain when their opponents do it.
You mentioned the Wendy's parking lot killing. Why in god's name, did some jackass burn down the restaurant!? I just heard on the news that the cops are searching for a white woman, and I immediately remembered that it was a white woman who recently threw a Molotov Cocktail at four policemen. I think that when people go to such extremes as that, they clearly bring more discredit than sympathy to the cause they imagine themselves to be promoting.
"Snow, it breaks my heart that you can only think well of me if we agree politically. That is just sad. I won’t argue/discuss politics with you."
I'm not asking you to argue. However flawed my approach is, I'm doing my utmost to act in the best way I know how in order to transcend the wall that separates us, and the ONLY way that I know how to do this is by understanding how somehow who portrays herself as a sensitive hippie, flower-child lover of God, clouds, people, cats, dogs, roses, moonflowers, and poetry, can enthusiastically support, a president who is amoral, petty, cruel, mean-spirited, dishonest, and narcissistic, qualities that are like a brick-bat to the face of the very values that you claim to live by. Help me understand this, Marion--please. Your support of Trump probably strikes me about the same way it would strike you if I told you how much I loved Peggy, yet was constantly beating her up. If this were the case, how could you take my expressions of love seriously?
By the same token, you talk of love, and although you don't personally go around abusing people, you support a president who does. Examples abound and are augmented daily, but take just one. Take the grave psychological harm that he has inflicted upon immigrant children by separating them from their desperate parents for untold months, parents who, in many cases, had been raped, tortured, and robbed of what little they owned, parents whose children were so impoverished and so at risk of gang violence that those parents concluded that, for the love of their children, they had no choice but to say goodbye to everything and to everyone else they had ever known, and to walk all the way from Central America to the United States in the hope of claiming asylum so that they could feed and protect their children. How is your love for all humanity consistent with supporting a man who would do such a thing? Will you simply say what you've said to nearly every other criticism I've ever raised, which is "fake news" as though Trump is the epitome of virtue?
Your "fake news" mantra is why I tried to approach you on the basis of Trump's own words, but all you could say to that was "it breaks my heart," Very well then, advise me about what would work for you in order that I might bridge the chasm between how you represent your values, and your support of a man who, every day of his life, shits upon those values. I'm not talking here about any differences we might hold regarding liberalism versus conservatism, capitalism versus socialism, abortion rights versus "pro-life," guns versus no guns, and so forth because I often find it more interesting when we're in disagreement. I'm instead talking about decency versus indecency, good versus evil, and compassion versus hatred. You tell me that you love me, and I accept that you want to be close, as do I, but I can't be close by sweeping such a grave inconsistency under the rug. You are one of two Trump supporters that I have in my life, and if I could understand you, maybe I could understand Peggy's father because, as with you, my (and Peggy's) relationship with him has been damaged by the contradiction between his Christian values of love on the one hand and his support for a politician whose heart is overflowing with depravity on the other.
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