Quarantine Diary #68 5/29/2020 Dishonest Poison

On Wednesday I asked if you could pick out moments that set you on a path towards NOT becoming one more racist American. Most of us have lived our lives in white privilege – but most of us know what this means, see it, try to find ways to address the injustice around us.

Like I said. This is not a moment to pat ourselves on our backs.

But I am always just as curious about what went right as what went wrong. We learn from both.

If I had to explain my own life … There are degrees of compassion and conservatism in my family, but I got further to the left faster than anyone. Makes me curious, too.

1. Asking open-ended questions. During elementary school (early 60’s) there was a lot of stress in the adults around me about the Civil Rights movement. One day I heard at recess that 300 Black people were going to move to my rural area. Lord knows where that confounding rumor came from, but I heard it and it scared me. I talked about it at the supper table. My dad said it was a rumor that wouldn’t happen but then he asked me, “Would it be bad if we had neighbors that were not white like us?”

I’m sure he was bouncing off his experiences in WWII with men of other races. He was not afraid of a rumor and he was not afraid of talking about people who were different than us. Then he asked if I thought God had different heavens for Christians with different colored skin. That threw me for a loop. Of course not.

My parents asked some questions instead of telling me what to think. They didn’t always do this, but they did when helping me think about race when white people were hyperventilating about race.

2. I read a lot. Reader’s Digest often had nice stories of nice African American people. Simplistic and not explaining or calling for systemic change? You betcha! But I was reading it when I was just a youngster and it opened my eyes to tales and issues I was not going to encounter in rural Michigan.

3. In high school I started volunteering here and there. I think kids who officially “give” to others get back a sense that they have a bigger world view than some. I grew into my own aspirations, I guess. Along the way I was encountering people who were different from me and I was learning that ordinary people aren’t that scary.

• Being asked mind-opening questions before my opinions had set to concrete.
• Reading about people different from me.
• Meeting people different from me.

Not rocket science, but some clues, I guess.

…

Michol Ford wrote about some of her experiences to me. I really like her recollections of how she became the open-minded person she is now.

“I didn’t know my father was prejudiced until I came home from college during the race riots in Milwaukee in the 1960’s. That’s when I heard him say while watching the news, “They ought to just shoot all those N.“

I was dumbfounded! My four siblings and I had all been sent to Catholic schools and I was at a Catholic college, all this was a huge cost to my parents. In Catholic schools the first and most important thing we were taught is that all people are created equal. I never really heard any race talk growing up. Thank God.                    

My sibs on the other hand, to this day, are all prejudiced and I have to think it’s because they lived at home during that time in history, so they were exposed to his feelings. (They are all Republicans too. I guess one feeling feeds the other.)

I on the other hand have never been prejudiced and in fact favor the underdog. Black, white, red, gay, Mexican, poor, whatever…….. I think maybe I was adopted??!! I said that once to my mother and she said she’d take me back (to the orphanage) if I was. Probably not the best psychological tactic on her part. Might explain some of my toughness though.

I think we are living in very sad times for humankind in so many ways. Which makes me so glad to have found the UUU Congregation and it’s amazing and caring people.

… (I asked her if I could post her story and she said yes and added this.)

There is a little more to add.

 My father came to Fort Wayne to take me out to dinner while I was in college. He said I could bring one friend. One of my friends was a black girl from Jamaica. She was a little older, maybe 30?

Anyway, while helping put my coat on my father said, “Don’t you ever do this to me again!”

I had no idea what he was talking about at the time, but I eventually figured it out. And then he spent the entire evening talking to her .. pretty much ignoring me! I kind of chuckled to myself. It just made my anti-racism even more entrenched though.

..

Michol’s son Jeff Ford is a baker at Cress Spring Bakery in Blue Mounds, Wisconsin. Usually they sell at the Madison Farmers’ market, but not this year, yet. You can make arrangements with him to order and pick up the bread in Madison area, sometimes. The website is: http://cressspringbakery.com/Welcome_HSIH.html

He always includes a poem with his bread. This is this week’s poem. It works.

Mindfulness

I practice a very special

form of mindfulness

called not-minding-ness.

This has brought me peace and purified 

my soul to the point that it is almost

possible to live with me.

My sacred principles are:

Read no newspapers.

Watch no television.

Stay the hell offline.

Do not discuss religion or politics 

with anyone dumber than yourself

or smarter than yourself

for in neither instance

will there be enlightenment. 

Remain silent at all costs

unless you are being tortured nonstop 

in which case it is acceptable 

to scream occasionally.

If a spider is crawling over you 

let him crawl,

he may well be more evolved

and he comes by his poison honestly.

Above everything be still 

and know that this world 

means to kill us all

and will eventually.

Relax. The worst has already happened. 

-Kurt Luchs

…

What are you thinking about George Floyd and the Twin Cities and where you live and yourself? What are you doing? What are you afraid of? What are you sure of?