Maybe Texas SHOULD secede from the United States (and Why)

It is instructive to observe the U.S. from abroad, even if that means watching Swiss television, as I did this morning (tsr.ch), with its report on the battle in the U.S. Senate over firearms.

In Texas, and I believe this is more than anecdotal, in the town of Louisville, the report showed children aged 12 or younger (I think there were kids as young as 8) receive instruction in using guns and rifles (one mother explained it as being so that their children could learn how not to hit things that they did not want to kill) in classrooms.   One father offered it as a gift to his son on his birthday.

One gun store owner explained his opposition to tightening of gun control laws saying that instruction was so purely for self defense, not to kill innocent others.  But one knows already how in this trigger-happy society how easily one elides into the other, intentionally or accidentally.

I believe the state of affairs in the Lonestar State to be deeply immoral.

And I would not be unhappy if Texas left the U.S. with my blessing and with George W. Bush as its new president.

Modestly characterized as "unruly" or "loud" behaviors at 3rd Avenue and Pined

"I am a victim of social oppression:  crime, poverty, racism, family, unemployment and drop-out.  I have no choice.  I am full of anger...at white people, who dominate everything*.  And I'm not doing anything wrong   If I smack someone, like it's 'cause they got it comin' to 'em, y'understand?."

The behaviors and attitudes on exhibit day and nightnear bus-stops at 3rd & Pine and 3rd & Virginia in Seattle, modestly characterized as "unruly" or "loud" are an insult to all the decent, hard-working African-Americans in this country.

The screaming epithets and threats--"You mother-fu----, I'm gonna kick yo' ass jus as soon as ya come ove' here"--are not the result of poverty, racism, or low levels of education so much as a unwillingness of parents and community leaders to curb or proscribe violence as a way of life.

Changing small behaviors would be a start.  Shouting and fighting in public should not be something considered benign by blacks--or whites.

No need to denounce the recent film "Precious" as inimical to the image of black Americans as "The Birth of the Nation" when the reality gives lie to the rhetoric.

All the talk of diversity and emphasizing our similarities, or local productions of Lorraine Hansberry's "Raisins in the Sun" or showings of the film "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "Django Unchained" seem only to have led to an ostrich-in-the-sand attitude and a relinquishing of responsibility within African-American communities to distinguish between language that diminishes others, destroys human property, provokes hate...and that which builds bridges and helps others.

"And hey man don't talk to me of what those Indians [South Asians] or Chinese do.  They ain't got anything to do with it.  I'm talkin' of THIS COUNTRY, get it?"

* Even if Caucasians represent up to 70% of the U.S. population and it would not be surprising that demographically speaking it would be statistically reasonable to expect that one would see more white faces than black faces in the cinema, in advertisements, etc.

* * * * *

Kindness and honesty are the birthright of all human beings, no matter what the color of their skin, their religion or political creed, past, present circumstances, or station in life.

Reclaim them for they cannot be taken away by any.

Redirecting aggression among cats; among human beings

"Redirected aggression occurs when a cat is aroused into an aggressive response by one 
person or animal, but then redirects this aggression onto another person or animal. For 
example, if two family cats have a spat, the losing cat, still aroused, may walk up and 
attack the family child."

Human beings are no so different from animals (cats, dogs...) in this respect.

A lesson-in-the-making from the YMCA, clarified by reading an online article from the Humane Society of King County:



 http://www.seattlehumane.org/files/images/Dealing_With_Cat_Aggression_Toward_People.pdf

Beauty and Truth...beauty and truth...

An experience of Beauty...whether in the visual arts (think of Titan's "Rape of Europa" in the Gardner Museum in Boston, or the Master of the Nets Courtyard in Suzhou), music (Debussy, "Images"), Nature herself (the San Juan Islands)...or even a lover...his/her physical beauty.

Beauty synonymous or identified as Truth, a truth.

Beauty as an encouragement on a quest for truth in the journey of life, rather than simply external ornament (think Bernard of Clairvaux).

People of color can be just as racist, if not more.  (I won't go into the historical aspects...).

Having a fear of people of another skin color based on having been physical and emotionally traumatized repeatedly by persons having the same culture, skin color, ethnicity is not necessarily racist.

Branding persons with such past experiences as racist is blaming the victim and only deepens the trauma.

* * * * *

The one unambiguously racist incident that I recall over the past fifteen years was when I passed by a group of black men in the Central Area who making motions with their fingers pulling up the corners of their eyes, smiled jeeringly at me.

I did have a (white) neighbor who spoke disapprovingly to my building manager that I listened to television programs in a certain foreign language, though it was not the one she thought it was.

Most of the hostility and suspicion (80-90%) I have experienced over the most 20 years living in Seattle has been from African-Americans (12% of the local population).

* * * * *

But no one asks me for my opinion and I am usually too afraid to give others mine.

To tell the truth, I don't think people like me are asked for their opinions.

An  inconvenient truth.
We just reinforce the cowardice of society, that of others, and our own by not speaking.

Unfortunately for America, there is so much chatter (chit-chat, shooting the breeze...) that hides the essential truths and that passes for actually saying something.

I came out of the closet. I am coming out of the closet. I will come out of the closet.

Do I need to feel shame or guilt about having been dragged, kicked, and beaten outside of Garfield High School as a teenager just because the incident does not fit into the Political Correctness of Seattle over the past 40 years?

Society blames the victims...

* * * * *

Tell The Stranger this:

I came out of the closet.  I am coming out of the closet.   I will come out of the closet.

* * * * *

I was traumatized as a 15-year-old.  

At Meany Middle School and at Garfield High School here in Seattle I was shoved, pummeled, kicked in the stomach, knocked to the ground,  and once poked with umbrellas by roving bands of young African-Americans in the hallways, bathrooms, and grounds of the schools.  No one came to our aid, the teachers being too concerned for their own physical safety and being obviously unprepared to deal with this kind of mass violence.

Other incidents of physical violence occurred, as well, not just to me but it happened to anyone who was not black.  I did not fight back (I remember just curling up into an inert ball) but I was scared and unconsciously made a decision to do everything to avoid it happening to me again.

What happened to me probably happened to hundreds of thousands of students in junior and senior high schools across America, especially in cities with any sizable presence of African-Americans.  Seattle, long considered "one of the whitest" of American cities (at least 85% then), experienced relatively "mild" race riots, what about Los Angeles, Houston, Detroit, Cleveland, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, etc.?

Though I've lost contact with classmates from that era, I did bump into the sister of one sibling's friends at a party a few years ago.  She teaches in a middle school in Seattle and mentioned that she is teaching the children of black people who had beaten her up years ago.

At the downtown YMCA, for at least a couple of years, I was subjected to verbal and emotional abuse by members (strangers).  Except for one instance, I did not report these incidents, thinking at the time that either nothing would be done or that instead of the perpetrators being identified and punished, I would be blamed. 

Do I need to feel shame and/or guilt in addition to the pain already buried inside of me?  

As long as society does not recognize or account for the scars left by these experiences, many, many Americans will have difficulty healing and dealing with the shame, pain, and guilt associated with those experiences.  Through no fault of their own, they were subjected to terrible beatings.   I think they continue to try to "atone" for things they were not responsible for (slavery, the second-class citizenship blacks experienced in the South).

It was if because their skin was not black, they (white, Asian...), they had to wear a badge of shame the rest of their lives, shackled and punished by "conscience."   I would call these things undeserved guilt.

* * * * *

Silencing the voices of those who have been damaged just because their voices do not reflect the political arrangements of the day is like depriving a child of his spontaneity, spontaneity the raison d'etre of having a life at all.   

On Being "Open-minded"

Not always easy if one has been traumatized by that particular group of people.

* * * * *

I was recently admonished recently by a YMCA staff member, who has a knack for being patronizing and making others feel "small" or defective.  I was told I should be open-minded.  The reference was to speaking of whom people I have a fear.  The implication was also that earlier "unpleasant" experiences with these people was due to my having provoked their ire by being unfriendly or discourteous to them,

Afterwards,I thought a while about what she had said.

And I thought to myself, "Yes, it is good to be open to all kinds of experiences and to all kinds of people," and yet it takes commitment and courage to be open to some (groups of) people."

And here I will be fearless and say that I, a racial/cultural minority, have a deep fear and mistrust of African-Americans, based partially upon my experiences as a teenager of having been repeatedly kicked, knocked down, shoved, pummeled, and slapped by young African-Americans at Meany Middle School and outside of Garfield High School, both in the Central Area.

Re-traumatization occurred again as an adult at the downtown YMCA.  At that point in my life I was too scared to report more than one of these incidents to the YMCA.  I assumed that the YMCA would do nothing and that the reporting incidents might, in fact, put me in harm's way and at risk for retaliation; or that the YMCA would blame me for somehow having "provoked" the incidents.  (Yes, it's easier to blame the victim sometimes than to side with him/her against the perpetrator).

A staff member who witnessed one of the verbal assaults tearfully told me that she just could not understand why the man had acted the way he had.  She seemed to be as in incredulous pain as I.

* * * * *

I build higher walls against certain (groups of) people who exhibit patterns of behavior that I consider destructive and/or unhealthy.  At the same time, I see a need to see people as individuals.

Women who have been raped, presumably by men, will have a greater distrust of men than women who have not.  Is their being "less open" to men irrational or wrong?

A tricky balance.