BLM Movement

BLACK HISTORY MONTH

Why Black Lives Matter

My daughter and I marched in 2020's Black Lives Matter/George Floyd protest in Tallahassee. We were proud to support her African American heritage, on her mother's side, her right to speak out on her own behalf and to let the world know that we've had enough of racism, hate and bigotry in this country.

I just learned of the BLM movement that year, but it started with three women in 2013, one of whom had simply made the comment on social media that black lives matter. And, C'MON, this is a bare minimum requirement, for a human life to matter. Black folks are human beings and so, of course, their lives are sacred, have meaning and value. The fact that this has to be stated for the record is the truly sad part.

These women--Garza, Tometi and Cullors--met at a black leadership conference that year, bonded and created a website for their grassroots organization. As Tometti reminds us, "Black people aren't a monolith." The black community is just as diverse as every other ethnic or racial group. The media just likes to perpetuate stereotypes, but you shouldn't buy into them. They only serve to fuel the hate and bigotry we still see today. The BLM co-founders were horrified and largely motivated by the killing of Trayvon Martin the year before they met. But it was the George Floyd murder by police in 2020 that saw the movement explode internationally.

I am convinced that so many people being home bound and isolated by COVID that Spring gave them a reason to get outside and to congregate. I know that I was paying so much more attention to the MSM and social media at that time and I couldn't get enough of the George Floyd/BLM coverage. I was outraged, as were my daughters. It took no convincing to get my youngest to march that day in downtown Tallahassee with me. It's a memory I'll always cherish.

She and every black member of my family matters significantly. In society, it's a bare minimum to say that one's life matters. Of course, all lives matter, but because of systemic racism and bigotry, we sadly have to single out black lives because they haven't always mattered in this country.

And since it's Black History Month, we should honor the legacy of Black Americans because THEIR HISTORY IS OUR HISTORY! And we should continue to demand better of this country and its government. That's why I'll be joining the continuing protests across all 50 states on February 17th. Please join me and take to the streets.

#BlackLivesMatter

(Editor’s note, the book “Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter,” by Veronica Chambers, 2021, help to inspire and inform this post. It has lots of great photos plus a timeline of the civil rights movement.)

WTF, AMERIKKKA???

 

I knew we had a supremely racist country stained with a bigoted past whose foundation was laid on the backs of slaves. Even still, the presidential candidacy of an Illinois Senator in 2008 gave us hope. Barack Obama ran his campaign of hope on the slogan, “Yes We Can” and won the presidency as the nation’s first African American to hold that office. And if that weren’t a monumental step forward for America, he was successful and earned a second term. My pride in America, faith in her Constitution and hope for our future was at an all-time high.

But there was a severe backlash across the largely red states in this country. The innate racism, a systemic issue affecting the heart of our democracy and tearing at the fabric of our union, reared its ugly head in response to eight years under a black progressive president. A crescendo from white Amerikkka, especially in “the Heartland” and “Bible Belt,” the poorest and least educated of our neighbors, built into a red wave which overtook our democracy and became MAGA World and Trumpism (aka The Cult of Trump). An outcry from the lower and middle class, that started with The Tea Party movement a year into Obama rule, bolstered by neo-Nazi and Confederate-loving rednecks, grew into a roar of the alt-right until neo-conservatism was overtaken by fascism and a sense of false national pride. Like post-World War I Germans, Christian Nationalists cried for the fatherland and a new white messiah to save it from the hoard of brown immigrants (“vermin,” just like the Jews had been to Germans). There was also a rise in anti-semitism JUST LIKE in Germany and in 1920’s Amerikkka. Yes, the height of the Ku Klux Klan in the good ol’ US of A!

That backlash is what got us a pornstar-fucking, reality TV star and fake billionaire playboy as president in 2016. The alt-right MAGA cult was now the ruling class. We saw what it unleashed immediately. The Klan’s hoods came off. They marched, unhooded, through the streets of Charlottesville in 2017, leading to violence. They even stormed our fucking Capitol waving Nazi and Confederate flags in 2021! UN-REAL!

Racism reared its ugly head in a very real way. Thank you, MAGAts.

The nation barely survived COVID, racial unrest, growing economic disparity, culture warfare and recession during the Dark Years of 45 and MAGA rule. But we booted his impeached ass out of office and replaced him with another rich, white dude and career politician. We threw a bunch of his cult-loving insurrectionist traitors into prison. We thought we had moved on.

Enter Kamala Harris. She was thrust into the political spotlight in what “the cult” saw as another coup. It wasn’t. It was a necessity. The old, white patriarchy—yeah, the ones who brought us slavery, America’s original sin—needed to be dismantled. The bi-racial woman of color seemed just the person to do that…finally.

Only racist, white Amerikkka wasn’t ready. The only thing worse than an African-American male candidate, apparently, IS A FEMALE. Ask Hilary Clinton.

The misogyny in this vast Republic of 330 million is very deeply rooted. The Christian Nationalists, whose archaic views take a very narrow and fundamental view of the Bible, hold women in shackles very much like their extremist cousins in the Middle East. I prefer to call these American terrorists the Christian Taliban because of their extremist views on women and their desperate need for theocracy. There’s a reason June Cleaver archetypes were so popular in 1950’s American culture. From this worldview, women should “know their place.” Or as 1 Corinthians 14:34 instructs, “Let your women keep silence in the churches, for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” The shariah law of the Taliban demands it.

We saw the Harris/Walz campaign end Tuesday night in utter defeat. It wasn’t the first time a woman dared to shatter that last glass ceiling and begin to dismantle the patriarchy, propped up by centuries of white aristocracy (aka privilege). Hopefully, it won’t be the last. And her campaign of joy and hope, Obama at the forefront in the final month, fell on deaf ears.

But white Amerikkka spoke loudly. They said yes to a black male BUT HELL NO TO A WOMAN!

The first Trump administration rolled back women’s rights 50 years. White, Christian Amerikkka thought that didn’t go far enough. They want the Christian Taliban to roll them back 100 years to women’s suffrage, as outlined in their manifesto, Project 2025.

At least Hitler put his name to Mein Kampf and never distanced himself from his own playbook. Tim Walz tried to warn us. You don’t draw up a 900-page-plus playbook just to shelve it! You also don’t name its authors to your Presidential Transition Team, while publicly denying you even know these people. C’mon, mini Hitler, own up to your work! You are named more than 500 TIMES in its pages!

ITS MESSAGE: Women, know your place and keep silent!

Amerikkka shouted that from the top of the ballot box Tuesday.

SYSTEMIC RACISM

I've written about race in America quite a bit in the last eight or so years because it affects me deeply and personally, like on a soul level. From the above pics, you can see that I live in a very MULTI-RACIAL family. My sister adopted an African-American sibling pair the year before I adopted my first daughter, who is white, and four years before I adopted my second daughter, who is multi-racial. So when Americans started shouting "ALL LIVES MATTER" in 2016 and again in 2020, I had to dissent. ALL lives haven't mattered even though the preamble to our Declaration of Independence signed in August 1776 PRETENDS THEY DO!

I wrote in June 2016 that "the backlash to the Black Lives Matter campaign is rooted in ignorance," and it very much is. Ignorance of history. Ignorance about white privilege and how this country was founded. "ALL MEN" were endowed with "UNALIENABLE RIGHTS." But even as our forefathers penned that, they didn't really believe that ALL LIVES MATTER. In fact, they ruled that African men were 3/5 of a human being, justifying their lower status and white ownership of slaves. The founding fathers believed in Manifest Destiny and that it was bestowed on WHITES by their Creator. Hell, it is believed that George Washington's "wooden" teeth were actually those of slaves...but I digress.

Cartoon I posted in March 2016

I concluded in my June 2016 blog post that, "It wasn't blacks who created the divide amongst humanity. By and large, it was white people. It began with the premise that races OTHER THAN white were somehow inferior. In the case of Africans, they were classified subhuman. The African slave was classified chattel. They were no different than livestock and often treated WORSE! So white people created the US v. THEM culture between themselves and everyone of a "lesser race" (blacks were often referred to as "mud race")."

That STAIN ON AMERICA is what we are still living under the dark shadow of. It is the basis for the systemic racism we see in our Institutions, from governance (at all levels) to housing policies to media disinformation. But even still, in white-controlled America, we still have African-American's towing the line to protect the status quo of racial inequality. Watch this video about Tim Scott, one-time Republican Presidential Candidate, narrated and produced by a black man who compares Scott to a "magical negro" from Hollywood lore.

Not only do "conservative blacks" like Scott distort the narrative, they effectively try to REWRITE it! And our national narrative, as told in history books and propogated by the far right, is ALREADY AS WHITEWASHED as it can possibly be. It's why Republicans vehemently OPPOSE the ideology behind Critical Race Theory and want it banned from any and all curriculum. HOW DARE BLACK PEOPLE TELL THEIR OWN STORY IN THEIR WORDS!!! White America would rather keep them shackled and muzzled. WHAT'S NEW?!?!?!

Tim Scott shucks and jives with the very best of them, selling his version of "the American Dream." Ask most African-Americans what they think about this dream! Just like the preamble to the Declaration, it's HORSE MANURE! It doesn't apply equally. What Scott's story wishes to ignore (dare I say, WHITEWASH) is the struggle his parents and grandparents faced in a country that didn't see them as equal human beings! It ignores the fact of how they even got to this country. MOSTLY BY SLAVE SHIPS ACROSS THE ATLANTIC!!!

Most Black Americans did not immigrate here BY CHOICE, they were dragged here BY FORCE in some of the MOST INHUMANE means possible! And though their blood, sweat and tears built this country, sustained the Southern U.S. Economy until the Civil War, and was spilled on the battlefield (from the U.S. Revolution through the latest conflict in Afghanistan), they were not treated as equals until the civil rights movement some 100 YEARS after Emancipation!

So spare me the false narrative Tim Scott. Even today, you could just as easily be profiled, assaulted and killed as George Floyd!

To that point, I have to worry about my own daughter.

Unless you've had to "have the talk" with your kid, YOU DON'T GET IT!

My daughter has faced micro-aggressions her whole life! She doesn't look any more African than Kamala Harris. But she's a lot more brown and "ethnic-looking" than her white friends. If a group of them is caught smoking weed (a legal drug where she lives) out in a public space, guess who the cops are going to single out! 

You don't think racism still exists in America?? YOU ARE BLIND. Maybe you're just too white and need some black friends, I don't know. But it is a SYSTEMIC problem rooted in our very dark past. It's just a fact.

And if you don't understand white privilege, I invite you to read my post from August 2017. In it, I write how us whites "benefited from the way the system had been rigged for all of history." That was an inherent privilege bestowed on us by "our Creator," I guess. It goes back centuries to Europe and the Roman Empire. It was the basis for the rise of Nazi Germany and wanting to engineer an Aryan society of blond-haried, blue-eyed whites. Nazism was very strong in America in the 1920's at the height of the KKK movement. Look it up. Manifest Destiny all over again.

The bottom line is, YOUR EXPERIENCE is not your neighbor's experience, regardless of the class or race of person he/she is. HOWEVER, the white American experience is VASTLY different than the black experience in this country, and if you'd just take the time to ask or to look into it, you'd see that. JUSTICE FOR ALL doesn't mean for folks on both sides of the tracks and it never has! We see it every day in stories of police brutality and racial profiling.

That's proof of systemic racism. It's built-in. It's always been there, from slave times forward. America is a melting pot and we all give society it's flavor. Without the black experience, told by black voices (not the Token Tim Scotts), we lose some of that flavor that makes us all Americans. I see that when I go to one of our oldest cities, New Orleans. You talk about rich American history, rooted in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean! Jazz music, which started in the Treme', a historically multi-cultural neighborhood in the heart of N'Awlins, is the most American music there is! Cultural diversity is our strenghth, not our weakness, and it should be celebrated.

This isn't my white angst or guilt coming out. I don't hate myself or the race I was born into. I had no say in the matter. Neither did my daughter. But this is deeply personal to me, not just because of her, or my brother-in-law or my many nieces and nephews. I got sick watching the original Alex Haley's Roots in the 1970's as a kid. It was so eye-opening and stomach-turning revelational to me. It changed my perceptions from then on about race and how one was so disgustingly treated. So please don't come at me with your white angst about how your power and circle of control is vanishing. White Americans will be in the minority in another couple of decades. Get used to it!

White America, Simma Down!

In my March 2016 post about white angst, I wrote, "But the Trump phenomenon is beyond weird. He played upon the growing angst of white, conservative America. He served up, in true reality TV fashion, all the most inflammatory rhetoric he could muster, like a grand dragon at a KKK rally in the deep woods of Mississippi. He's yet to distance himself from that domestic terrorist organization, by the way." And I wrote this a full year and a half BEFORE the Charlottesville incident!

White angst is rooted in the real population data which shows a declining percentage of white Americans, down more than FIVE MILLION in the second decade of the 2000's. Pew Research Center found in 2021 that only FIVE PERCENT of Republicans think the dwindling of white Americans is "a good thing." And because the whites now feel marginalized--Native, Black and Brown Americans are saying "WELCOME TO THE CLUB!"--and their way of life under attack, they have lashed back. "This is why they cling to their 'traditional' and 'family' values. They want to believe that life was actually once like 'Leave It To Beaver' and their favorite black-and-white television shows of the 1950's. They'd like nothing more than to turn back the clock and relive those heydays of segregated bliss. They want prayer back in school, abortion abolished and white privilege to once again reign supreme," as I wrote way back when. That last line could be the promotional ad for Project 2025, Trump's current platform of Christian extremism. But I highlighted the segregation part of my quote because that gets to the root cause of white angst, a topic I've taken on several times on this blog page.

No longer in the majority, many whites feel like they're world is crumbling, like the people of color are taking over and their rights will be stripped away. To heighten those fears, the traditional, family and "Christian" values they've held since the 50's (when a lot of GOPer's were born) are no longer in the mainstream, widely accepted, adhered to or en vogue. In the 2020's we've seen church attendance dip below 50% for the FIRST TIME EVER in this country. More and more Americans are non-religious; and those who once were are no longer attending church nor are they requiring their children to attend Sunday school, VBS or youth services. Those were all things I was required or encouraged to do, growing up in a middle class, Christian American home.

But this country, sorry to tell you Heritage Foundation, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, WAS NOT FOUNDED on the Bible or Christianity. Morality DOES NOT depend on your scriptures or sacred texts. There were codes of morality in the Mesopotamian region LONG BEFORE your religion or the texts even existed. Morality is determined by humans who make the laws governing society--humans who are both influenced by religion, but also by humanism, atheism and lots of other ISMS! Quit ringing your hands that Jesus was taken out of government and the classroom. HE NEVER BELONGED THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE! Even HE washed his hands of government and politics. "Then he said to them, 'So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.'" Luke 20:25, Mark 12:17 and Matthew 20:21. So for those keeping count, that's ALL THREE Synoptic Gospels quoting Jesus on his views about taxation and government. He wasn't too concerned with it. His concern was "his father's heavenly kingdom," which he makes quite clear throughout the gospels (and might I insert here, he never once mentions homosexuality anywhere in the gospels).

So now that we've made clear that Jesus agreed with our Founding Fathers on one issue--that is separation of church and state--let's get back to our main point. White Christians, in particular, feel that they are under attack. Because they no longer control the narrative or censor Hollywood or the media or control the halls of justice, they feel marginalized and bullied. Guess what, TOUGH SHIT! You controlled the narrative for long enough! Ever since the Roman Empire co-opted Christianity, white Europeans have controlled the narrative, written and told the story still printed in our history textbooks today. Talk about INDOCTRINATION!?!?! When was the minority view ever considered? When were they're stories ever told?

Only since the civil rights movement of the 1960's have we even BEGUN to learn about black and brown contributions to our great country. Only in recent decades have the voices of Native Americans been heard. ALL OF THOSE MARGINALIZED PEOPLES since the beginning of Western Civilization contributed greatly to our history! Think of the Native American code breakers who assisted our war effort, the black Union soldiers (and black veterans in every war since) who left their blood on battlefields around the South and the World, the migrant workers who put half of the produce in your local Walmart, etc...they have helped to shape America into the inclusive, representative republic that it was supposed to be. Their stories are finally getting added to the history books, but not without white backlash. Take for example, Critical Race Theory and how angry that made white Christians and other conservatives. HOW DARE THEY HAVE A VOICE! DON'T 'THOSE PEOPLE' KNOW THEIR PLACE???!

Which brings us back to whites becoming the minority. When you are the minority, your stories don't get to dominate the history books, the media, the collective narrative anymore. Again, WELCOME TO THE CLUB! How does it feel to get a taste of your own medicine???

Like I wrote in March 2016, "white privilege breeds fear and it has ever since the end of slavery." Conservatives who want to roll back time and "Make America Great Again," are just perpetuating age-old stereotypes, now including brown immigrants, and preying on white people's fear, their angst. Back in the 1870's, they didn't know what to do with newly freed slaves roaming the countryside, looking for work, housing, equal rights to free white citizens, so there was a huge backlash. Enter the Jim Crow era for the next 100 years!! And now, since civil rights assured them their equality, we are seeing the same Jim Crow-like backlash. It's called Project 2025 and the new, more aggressive, more fascist Trump regime. He's preying on that white angst like a mother####er!

Those "Christian values" they hold so dear are the same ones that "put Africans in shackles, Native Americans on reservations, turned a blind eye to the mostly Jewish Holocaust, interred Japanese-Americans and now wants to deport every 'illegal' back to their homeland," I wrote in 2016. Are the whites now afraid of a new black and brown backlash? That the same oppression they perpetuated for millenia will be brought back to bear on them??? Is that their fear? "Did the African-American President ever open those FEMA camps to inter white folks? Has any minority--Latino or otherwise--ever considered putting privileged white folks in shackles and selling them into slavery? So what are they so scared of?"

We've seen how the Establishment of old, rich white dudes react every time black or brown people seek to be heard, whether it's kneeling through an anthem or marching to protest George Floyd's death. I wrote in October 2017, "It's like a sudden eruption of white-hot angst from just below the surface that bubbles over in the form of hate, outrage and bigotry." And now that a WOMAN OF COLOR will probably be the next Democratic candidate for President, watch how the right responds. We already know how the white Christian right feels, it's in their manifesto (Project '25).

Their fear is that eons of "white privilege" is slowly being eroded away due to the fact that they will SOON no longer be in the majority. The socialist redistribution of wealth is a threat to the stranglehold they've had on this country since it's foundation. This is at the heart of their angst. This is why conservatives have aligned themselves with hate groups (like in Charlottesville, 2017) who shout, "WHITE POWER!" They are not ready to give over their privilege or their power. It causes them to lash out in anger and support a neo-Fascist (but only on Day One, right?) who whips them into a frenzy, even leading them to attack our government (like on Jan 6, 2021), to deny election results and to hate their black and brown neighbors--both legal and illegal. See my post from May 2019, "White Privilege Breeds White Nationalism."

It's about to all play out again this November and probably in January, when the election results are contested by the Orange Cult Leader and his minions.

I'm just going to need the white Christian nationalists and those worried about their white privilege, to sit down and simmer down! We've heard ENOUGH out of you. Let the black and brown people speak. It's their turn now.

SYSTEMIC, STRUCTURAL SEXISM (In America)

It's funny that the European countries we were beholden to and where most of us immigrated from are so much further advanced than we are when it comes to equality and social policies. Even Mexico, to our South, and Spanish-controlled Florida in the 1800's had abolished slavery when the trade was at it's peak in our country. And ever since racial equality has been a thing and gender equality (and insert social justice or policy issue here), the Europeans, namely British and French have been way ahead of us, Great Britain's Slavery Abolition Act of 1834 following France by some 40 years. Spain, who brought slavery to this continent, signed a pact with the U.K. in 1817 to abolish the slave trade. And even though we got on board in 1865 after the Civil War tore this country apart, slaves still weren't free. After a short period of "reconstruction," the South still persisted with the "new slavery," sharecropping, and Jim Crow Laws. It took the civil unrest of the 1960's to finally end the systemic racism and oppression of African Americans, a cancer that hasn't been totally eradicated from our culture.

Women's suffrage was a popular civil rights movement some four decades earlier. Still, women don't enjoy the same freedoms, bodily autonomy or adequate compensation for similar work as men.

This is one reason we need more female representation in the Executive, Judicial and Legislative branches of U.S. Government. How can we call this a "representative democracy," a republic, when our Legislative branch is dominated and controlled by old, white men? The disparity was called out in an April committee meeting on Capitol Hill by Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA).

Pool/Getty Images (Google)

In a Young Turks video from April that garnered 2.4 million views, Rep. Porter goes head-to-head with a Heritage Foundation official, Dr. Burke, at this hearing. "Only about 28% of members of Congress are women. The median age of the Senate is 65 and the median age in the House is 58...so, on average, lots of older people, lots of older men," as she points out that policies protecting women's rights, especially single mothers, are never prioritized. These policies, specifically early childhood education, "won't benefit many members, most, the average member of Congress...even when their kids were young, most members leaned most heavily on their wives, and I say wives because most members are men...Too many in Congress don't get it because they didn't have to live it," Rep. Porter said.

She calls out "the familiar policy pattern" in Congress to invest in things they understand. "The collective body of older, richer men in Congress OVER-invest in things they understand (emphasis hers)." She claims policies to benefit single mothers don't personally benefit the average member of Congress and so they don't try to understand the problem as it never affected them personally, so they don't invest public dollars to support things like early childhood education.

STRUCTURAL SEXISM
Rep. Porter continued to call out her male colleagues for ignoring the plight of women, in general, and single mothers, in particular. She identified the ongoing inequality in public policy a result of "structural sexism."

"When we say that structural sexism continues to permeate this body...and our policies, that's what we're talking about. We're not imagining it." She claims that policies to benefit women are what "always ends up on the cutting room floor in legislation." She intends to make structural sexism go away with more progressive policies. "Women can and must contribute to our economy if we're going to have a globally competitive economy." Rep. Porter hopes that her colleagues will be moved to take action by "this single mom asking them to care, on behalf of all the other parents of young children who are struggling in this country." She claims to be the only single mother in Congress. She asked the committee, "What about the 10 million single moms? Where do they fit?"

She concluded by saying, "I'm sharing my story because my story doesn't get heard in Congress...Our whole perspective here is warped by the fact that this body is so disproportionately UN-representative of the American people's experience."

Springer Link says, "Structural sexism refers to discriminatory beliefs or practices on the basis of sex and gender that are entrenched in societal frameworks and which result in fairly predictable disparities in social outcomes related to power, resources, and opportunities. [It] also functions to normalize and legitimate such beliefs, practices, and inequalities of conditions and outcomes."

An October 2022 study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reports, "Structural sexism manifests via norms that constrict women’s social participation, including at work." Furthermore, "Intimate partner violence (IPV) is underpinned by structural sexism, patriarchal norms, and unequal gender power dynamics."

FSU Assistant Professor Patricia Homan developed a new structural sexism approach to the study of gender inequality and health.  Her approach, published 2019 in the American Sociological Review, goes beyond sexist mistreatment by individuals to examine how the degree of systematic gender inequality in power and resources — i.e. structural sexism — in a society can impact people’s health. This was the same focus as the above-referenced NIH study. Both point to the effects on children and society, not just women. "Structural sexism can be evident in major social institutions, such as the government and the economy, in interpersonal interactions and relationships, such as marriages and in individuals’ beliefs and identities." The effects in government were pointed out quite well by Rep. Porter. Professor Homan came to the same conclusion about more progressive policies to reduce it's impact. “The first thing we need to realize is that gender inequality in the United States is not only a human rights issue, but also a public health problem,” she said. “Therefore, gender equity policy is health policy.”

WHY DO I CARE?
You might wonder why I began with the issue of slavery and racism. Well, because one led to the other as a systemic societal issue, one that persists today. We will never eradicate racism, but we can educate. The same applies to any social issue, including gender inequality.

I have raised two daughters, one who just celebrated her 20th birthday, the other turns 23 in a few days. Both of them were adopted, my youngest daughter is African-American. That is why I liken the race and gender inequality issues. She faces them both and suffers micro-aggressions on the daily, even in progressive parts of Colorado. That's why I care deeply about these issues, but specifically the sexism that is so deeply entrenched into the fabric of our culture.

My daughters both have a problem with this patriarchal society, as do I. We finally have a woman of color in the White House, but it'll still be many, many years before one is elected to the highest office. As Rep. Porter points out, my daughters, especially my youngest, are so under-represented in Congress and at all levels of government, that it's no wonder.

Screen captured image from a YouTube video posted by Graduate School of Social Work - DU, titled "Power Privilege and Oppression," uploaded six years ago

The history of humankind, as we've been taught for eons, was pushed and pedaled by the patriarchy. They have controlled the narrative, from the time of the ancient sages until the present. We've been force fed a whitewashed, male-dominated version of human history. Why did it take until 2016's "Hidden Figures" film with Tom Hanks for most of us to learn that black women were behind our successful lunar missions at NASA??? Their stories, by and large, are untold in the history books. Harriet Tubman was one of the exceptions in history class, and not the rule. How many female heroins does the Bible exalt? Exactly, very few. The Judeo-Christian worldview for all of time has been one of patriarchy. God, the giver of life, has always been portrayed as an old, white man. Why does God possess a gender? And why would we assume his race? Jesus was born of a Virgin Middle Eastern woman OF COLOR! He was a man of color. Seems kind of silly that we've been pedaled a patriarchal view even in Sunday School.

I've fought hard against these stereotypes and have encouraged my girls, likewise. They grew up to be feminists just by their observations of the world. I merely joined them when they were old enough to make these judgments about society for themselves. And because I don't want them to suffer the inequality of old, nor for their potential daughters to grow up in a patriarchal society, I've pushed for more gender equality and been an outspoken advocate of same...for my daughters and granddaughters benefit. Men have ruled the narrative--the church, government and history--for quite long enough.

"White people are scared to death right now, particularly white males. They are scared to death they are going to lose their power in the future, and they are," says renowned race relations teacher Jane Elliott. "If you want to be treated well in the future, treat people well in the present."

Two different worlds

On their Agent Provocateur album, Foreigner sang "Two Different Worlds," and that song just came back to me as I was about to start this blog post. In America, we certainly have two different worlds. In 1984, Lou Gramm sang, "One that belongs to me, one could be wrong for me," and that couldn't ring any truer than today.

On the one hand, you have California who formed a task force to tackle the question of reparations. That topic is being debated by their state legislature right now!

On the other, you have a state like Alabama still trying to hide it's most egregious sins of the past (see "Descendant" on Netflix). Or a state like Florida, where Gov. Ron DumbSantis (aka DeathSantis) is trying to kill "critical race theory," because whites down South don't like to be reminded or shamed about their awful past (or their current racism).

It's two different worlds in America, one where it's okay to say "Black Lives Matter," and others where one can only say "All Lives Matter" or face the consequences of being "WOKE!" (i.e. aware of systemic racism in this country).

It's two different worlds, one where we embrace the sins of our forefathers and one where we white wash American history and create Roman gods out of them.

I've written before about White Angst, and I still believe that's at the heart of this dichotomy. White folks just can't deal with the truth of their privilege in society. They can't understand why their WASP-y way of life, their corrupt religion or their social structures are under attack. Because they are part of the systemic racism that grew out of Manifest Destiny.

Half of this country needs to get a grip. Come to terms with what your ancestors did to African-Americans and walk a half-mile in their shoes.

It's called "being woke" for a reason. Some of you have been asleep TOO LONG!

Good Morning, White America

Dateline--May 31, 2020 (USA)

Good Morning, White America.
How'd you sleep while our cities were burning and tensions boiling over?

Oh, you thought I meant last night?

How about the last 401 years?

I'm talking to you Karen Van Winkle. Are you awake now? Did it really have to come to this?

You thought it was "all better" once we afforded a few civil rights to our neighbors of color. You told them, in essence, to "Calm Down!" when they protested by taking a knee. Your white, American sensibilities got all riled when they wouldn't stand for the anthem. Well now your cities are burning, both literally and figuratively. And you're going to sit there, in your Anglo-Christian self-righteous indignation, and call them "thugs" and "savages" for burning it down?

Where ya been, Karen?

This didn't start with George Floyd in May 2020. It started in 1619 when your white ancestors brought African slaves to this continent. It's been going on ever since. Maybe these images will remind you of our long history of brutality towards blacks. OUR COLLECTIVE KNEE ON THEIR NECK.

In the 52 years that I've been alive, I have seen with my own eyes the stain of slavery on American society. It was mere months before I was born that we took out Martin Luther King, Jr., because we didn't care to hear his message of freedom.

And over that half century, we've taken out countless numbers of black men who we didn't care to hear. Well, their blood is crying out to be heard.

How long did you expect them to remain silent, peaceful, "in their place," white America? Racial tension was already at a boiling point, with black America dying at a significantly higher rate from COVID-19. And while we were all home, watching from our living room, more racial injustice played out in living color across our devices. What did you expect them to do, Karen, just take it? More abuse, more death by cop, more senseless killing, more white outrage over their method of protest while ignoring their message?

They are starting fires because you weren't listening. They are rioting in the streets because in four centuries not that much has changed. They are demanding justice because we pretended like all footing was made equal in the 1960's.

For 52 years, I've watched you turn a blind eye to their plight. Generations of poverty, oppression and marginalization didn't affect you, white America, so you went about your "Leave It To Beaver" lives in your white suburbs, pretending like all was good across this great country of ours.

Then our nation was forced to deal with our ugly scars. A once-in-a-lifetime pandemic hit and forced us to shut down for about 8 weeks. Karen Van Winkle got restless. Her hair grew out in all it's natural glory. We saw her roots. She demanded her freedom. She likened the lockdown to slavery and oppression. White America was finally getting a taste of it's own medicine--limits on liberty, joblessness and in some cases, hopelessness. How do you think it's felt for so many of our neighbors to be black in America? That's been their existence for generations, dating back to 1619.

You were inconvenienced for 6-8 weeks, unable to get your hair done, have Girls Night Out and attend Celine Dion concerts. That's not even in the ballpark of centuries of oppression and marginalization, Karen! Get over your pasty white self.

Your city is on fire. Are you paying attention, yet?

It is burning because you failed to give proper attention, proper respect and human dignity to your neighbors of color. It is burning because from 1619 on, you didn't see them as fully equal, fully human or fully American. It is burning because white people started this violence, not the "thugs" and "savages" looting your precious Target.

White America doesn't understand this at all. They don't understand that this has been a violent struggle since the beginning. Instead of crosses burning, police vehicles and businesses are burning. Why? Because you started this mess, Karen!

Do you think the African slaves boarded ships because your ancestors told them to? No they were bought and sold and herded like cattle. The white men took what they wanted violently and made them their property.

Fast forward about 340 years and you have the civil rights marches of the 1960's. White America didn't understand why black America couldn't just be happy "in their place." And when these peaceful protests fanned out across the South, we released the dogs, the hoses and the police brutality. WE were the aggressors, Karen, the purveyors of violence! Not them.

Fast forward another 50 years and you have black athletes taking a knee in silent protest. Even that, you met with vocal outrage and faux patriotism. White America still wasn't listening. They drowned out the message with attacks on the protestors, turning their backs and a blind eye toward what was still going on right under their white noses.

You know, if you ignore it, it might just go away, right?

We've been ignoring it for the 52 years I've been a natural-born American citizen. And now our cities are burning.

We reached a boiling point. The death of George Floyd, an American murdered on the streets of Minneapolis, was a catalyst, a tipping point. Blame the pandemic, blame the jobless numbers, the deafness and ineptitude of our leaders in the face of crisis, but the tone deafness of white America towards 400 years of racial injustice and inequality is the real culprit.

We've had our collective white knee on the neck of African-Americans this whole time. You think 8 minutes is a long time (and I grieve with you Floyd family), try 401 years!

It's time to wake up and to own this culpability, white America. You've remained silent and willfully ignorant for too long. Your silence has spoken much louder than your words.

Stop pinning the blame on protestors, rioters, your neighbors...take your own knee off their neck and STOP THE VIOLENCE!

Have a great day!

Real Outrage v Faux Outrage in White v Black America

https://amp.indystar.com/amp/3103252001?__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR11MdUxeLWRlQ6uVO3w1V4QEu87ZZkHGAj-X2Euqz_aFaGKBU2ieNgUyZE

"ALL LIVES MATTER" remember?
But do they?

This kid's life didn't seem to matter.

For the last month, we've seen mostly white protestors, some armed with AK-47's, up in arms over "stay-at-home" orders in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, even right there in my hometown, Indianapolis, where this kid was gunned down. Why were these white protestors so riled, so triggered, so full of angst and anger? Because Karen couldn't get her nails done, her haircut or go out for GNO. White people were filled with rage--said Karens getting nose-to-nose with cops in one video spraying vitriol in their stoic faces (SAY IT DON'T SPRAY IT, KAREN!). They carried signs equating a month-long lockdown with 400 years of institutionalized slavery. They waved anti-American flags and symbols, like at a KKK or Hitler rally. They openly carried semi-automatic weapons, some into statehouses (I'm looking at you Lansing, MI).

The images that filled my newsfeed and that of cable news for weeks was of white privilege flexing it's collective muscle to get our economy "reopened." Oh the faux outrage!

Despite the show of force, Vanilla Isis or Flu Flux Flan (take your pick) wasn't met with any police force WHATSOEVER! Hell, in some photos and video, you couldn't pick out a uniformed officer. The ones who did get spit on by raging Karen just stood there, no expression, no reaction of any kind. White protestors didn't get sprayed with hoses, shot with rubber bullets, teargassed, attacked by K-9 units or anything even resembling force. Nope. There was none of that.

When white people used their cars to form a blockade in downtown Lansing, preventing ambulances from safely getting to emergency rooms, there was no armada of police vehicles or charges of "obstructing traffic."

America, this is a perfect portrait of what white privilege looks like. Still don't think it exists?

White people, by and large, lost their collective SHIT when some black athletes started a silent protest during the playing of the National Anthem. They knelt. You went berserk.

Now, protestors in Indianapolis, with something to TRULY get angry and worked up about, protest in small numbers their outrage over police violence claiming one of their own...and they get charged with "obstruction of traffic?" Did you see how many of them were standing on a street corner with signs, not guns? I sure didn't see any blockade of vehicles, fat Karen straining to lean out her window and yell insane slogans. This was real outrage.

Police violence against people of color is systemic racism.

We see it play out ALL THE FUCKING TIME!!! Yet, where's the outrage by whites? When a kid in Indy is gunned down, when a man in NY is taken down to the pavement and beaten, when a jogger in Georgia is stalked like prey, confronted and gunned down--IN THE STREET ON FUCKING VIDEO--where is all the outrage, White America???

You know what, you disgust me! Karen's of the world, in a lather because you can't leave the comfort of your own home, you fucking disgust me. You wouldn't spit on a black man if he were on fire in your front yard! You get all hot and bothered if he or his family hold up signs saying "Black Lives Matter," or GOD FORBID, he KNEEL during your beloved Anthem! That's when you get enraged. Saying nothing of your faux patriotism, holding up the confederate flag or one with a swastika, but you don't really believe that "ALL lives matter" you just want to silence and marginalize the black ones. It's what you've ALWAYS done!

It's time for white America to wake up and smell the coffee. It's time to own up to your centuries of privilege and acknowledge how you've perpetuated systemic racism!

I can't even type anymore. There's a gnawing sickness in the pit of my gut.

White Privilege Breeds White Nationalism

If I could start any non-profit I wanted tomorrow, I think it would be an educational program to treat middle-aged (and older) white males in denial. Their disease? Denial of white privilege. It's an epidemic that seems to only affect that demographic.

Disclaimer: I'm a 50-year-old white male who has benefited from white privilege my entire life.

My co-patriots would like to claim that I'm a guilt-ridden, self-loather who thinks reparations are in order and we should all self-flagellate. Sure, make me a victim in this scenario. But isn't that what "they" do? If you listened to all the alt-right propaganda, it's people like me, in the media, on the streets, waging a war against whiteness! Their way of life, their race and even their gender are under attack!

Poor little white dudes.

The predominance of white privilege has shown it's ugly face throughout history, but I don't need to prove it's existence. To me, it seems as obvious as the nose on my face. To others who've benefited from it THEIR WHOLE LIVES, it's become a "dirty word." We don't like to face our own prejudices and shortcomings. I get it. But denying it's existence would be like spiders denying that they benefit from webspinning, or lions denying their royal jungle lineage. To further this metaphor, white men have existed at the top of the cultural food chain for so long, we even mold our deities in their image. Have you seen most portrayals of Jesus Christ?? I grew up believing that Jesus was a fair-skinned, blue eyed Westerner with a British accent.

Anthropologists best guess


Fighting the denial of the blatantly obvious would be the mission of my non-profit. I would force my target demographic--men who look like me and a lot less like the Jesus pictured above--to look into the mirror and get real with themselves.

In thinking on this idea yesterday, I had a moment of real gratitude. I said thank you to the Universe for my health, my intellect and my good looks. Yes, I'm a frumpy, aging, white man with graying brown hair, wrinkles around my green eyes and a gray goatee. But I could walk into any establishment, even after a long period of unemployment, and talk my way into a job. No one would bat an eye as I sauntered into the building because I fit the model of "normal" in our white-bred, Chrisley Knows Best society.

All I'm asking of my Wonder Bread, milk toast brethren is to walk a mile in someone else's shoes; consider for one minute what their world might look like if they looked like confused, Arab Jesus (see photo above). What would their middle class American suburban experience have been like if they'd been born with brown skin, a disability or even as the opposite sex of their OWN race? Because even white women have been marginalized throughout world history. EVERYONE EXCEPT WHITE MEN HAVE!

But to accept that truth would be to accept all the baggage that comes along with it--from patriarchy to slavery to abominations of every sort (think Hitler and Nazism). We've got a barbaric past. But why own any of that when you control the narrative? See my post last year in the wake of "kneegate" in the NFL.

Men, since the dawn of time, have controlled the narrative. We wrote all of the ancient, sacred texts, the basis for our morals and laws. Then, we made all the rules, we enforced the rules and we protect that patriarchy with a fierceness not even matched by the Spartans (or the Nazis). And because we were simply born into the ruling class--dominant gender, dominant race--we believe we get to continue making all the rules, writing the white-washed narrative and keeping everyone else in the margins. That has been our man-given right since the dawn of time, right?

And all I want is for my brothers all of white mothers to own up to it. Well, that's the first step, anyway. I really want them to go further and consider what this world has been like for people outside their Truman Show bubble. Understanding breeds compassion and empathy.

Denial of white privilege breeds the opposite. In today's American political climate, it's given us the resurgence of white nationalism. It's that militant side of white America who is ready to take up arms to stave the non-white onslaught. You know, all those rapist Mexicans that want to steal our jobs! Too much? Sorry, not sorry. Those are the outlandish claims being made (mostly on Fox News) by the alt-right.

"They" are so worried that someone else is going to usurp white control of everything and take with it all the power, the pen and the privilege. They will rewrite the rules and the narrative--this mythic, monolithic "them" (non-whites). Diversity of skin tones, gender identity and ideas scares the ever-loving shit out of the white aristocracy, especially those on the alt-right. They literally feel that they are in the fight of their lives. The world has turned against them--their government, the media, the people they've oppressed and marginalized for eons.

Maybe they SHOULD be scared! Maybe it'll make them re-evaluate their stranglehold on society and all of it's "norms." But, sadly, it hasn't. It's made most of them dig foxholes in their mostly white, cookie cutter, McMansion suburbs. It's forced them to drag us back, as a nation, into the white ages of Cleaver-land. I'm talking 1950's black-and-white sitcoms, where Father Knows Best and you can Leave It To Beaver.

Life was so much easier for whitey back then, wasn't it? We didn't have "the blacks" rioting and burning down their own neighborhoods and scaring us half to death. We didn't have "the gays" pushing some gender-twisting, liberal agenda down our throats. We didn't have "the gentler sex" demanding equal pay or speaking out (think #metoo). We didn't have "the godless atheists" challenging our WASPy ideals and core beliefs. It's SO scary being a white person these days!

The threat to white privilege has caused this huge backlash and talk of border walls, national (meaning white) security and bringing God back into the classroom. And it's not just non-whites under attack anymore. We have to dominate and control our women, once again, by rolling back advances like abortion rights (Roe v. Wade), voting rights (women are incarcerated, as well) and affirmative action (it benefited women, too). We have to continue to marginalize the voice of gay, white men, even, save their voice be heard and their "chosen lifestyle" be normalized (think recent PBS show, Arthur, debate). Everything non-Christian, non-white, non-male is in the crosshairs because White Privilege Breeds White Nationalism!

It's akin to someone's most deeply entrenched personal issue becoming exposed. The defenses go up immediately. Fight or flight in full effect. Same goes for WASPy, white America. They are deeply afraid of exposing their sacred right (think Manifest Destiny) and having it trampled. Because you understand that to give ANYONE else rights (think #blacklivesmatter) is to somehow diminish THEIRS! Anything that threatens their centuries of control is to be pushed back, demonized and utterly defeated.

I don't feel guilty about it. I didn't make these rules and I certainly don't defend them. My white ancestors were not slave owners. They were immigrants from all parts of Europe, some who were literally despised when they got here (think Irish potato famine refugees). I've totally enjoyed and benefited from my white man card and all the privileges it served up to me. But I wasn't raised to despise anyone who didn't belong to the club (membership certainly has it's privileges). I was raised in a multi-racial, middle class, Midwestern city neighborhood. I walked to school and/or played with neighborhood kids that were African-American, Asian-American, European-American...notice these all have qualifiers. We are all immigrants from somewhere else...NON-natives. So PLEASE, I BEG OF YOU MY WHITE BROTHERS, get over yourselves!!!

Let's end white nationalism today and embrace all cultures, all Americans and even those trying to become Americans. Let us willingly lose our privileged status, the us and them labels and be more courageous. Get out of your foxholes, lay down your defenses and embrace diversity. It is about to be 2020 for God's sake! Let's let go of 1950's stereotypes (ding, ding, ding...it wasn't THAT GREAT back in the old days!) and fully embrace the moment we live in. It's not scary. It's exciting. Change is good. Lay down the crack pipe. Let love rule!

Black Lives Matter. Period.

#blacklivesmatter

It's sad that we have to have a campaign with the above hashtag. But it's sadder, still, that we see black lives snuffed out on a semi-regular basis on social and other media. The recently released footage of the Castillo murder by Minnesota cops comes to mind. Traffic stops of gun-carrying white people don't go down like that!

I fear that some of the backlash to the Black Lives Matter campaign is rooted in ignorance. I also fear the the younger generation, and I'm talking here about GenY'ers and those after them, are unaware of what the world was like in the decades before they were born...in the years I grew up. So let me set the stage for you...

I grew up in the 1970's. Born in 1968, I grew up on Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood and Captain Kangaroo. I'm part of the generation that grew up watching a lot of pre-cable TV. In those days, you didn't see a lot of black people or black families portrayed on television, or in mainstream media in general. There was no black Marlboro man. In fact, unless you read an ethnic publication, like Ebony magazine, you basically saw NO PEOPLE OF COLOR in any advertising, print or electronic, whatsoever! The first shows featuring black characters that I remember are Sanford and Sons and Fat Albert, both of which came on TV in 1972. Both shows were largely centered around junkyards. No implied message there!






Back then, we had 3-4 channels to choose from, so getting even ONE show with an all-black cast, tackling the issues of urban life, was a big deal. We didn't have shows like Blackish, channels like Black Entertainment Television (BET), or game show/talk show hosts like Steve Harvey. When I was very little, we had two shows! After that, Good Times, the Jeffersons and others became popular, but they were an anomaly. In all of TV History, prior to the 70's, you were hardpressed to find major characters who were anything but white.

Consider that. As a kid growing up 40 years ago, I still didn't see as many blacks represented in the media as I saw all around me in Indianapolis. And worse still, the swim club closest to my childhood home restricted access to non-Jewish whites only! My parents refused to join or to let us go there with our friends. Even then, I understood why.

A decade removed from the victories of the civil rights movement and there still wasn't much equality in America. I was shaken from my white superiority by the Roots miniseries that aired on ABC when I was 8. I'm glad my mom let me watch it. It made me look at my neighborhood friend, Gerald, through different eyes.

I share all that because I fear that teens, twenty and even thirty-somethings today don't realize that the world was still very segregated just 30-40 years ago. In fact, I was bussed to a different school across town in 8th grade as part of Indianapolis Public School's desegregation efforts. That was 1981-82! Things didn't magically get better with the civil rights movement in the 1960's. It's been an ongoing fight. It's taken decades just to get where we are today.

I had a well-meaning friend on Facebook give me his .02:

"The problem that i have with that slogan is that i should be able to say all lives matter, but i can't. I have been verbally attacked for saying it. Why? As long as society and people keep saying "white this" and "black that" we will never be free of racism. Both sides have it... but, there shouldn't be sides. My 5 year old daughter doesn't see skin color. She sees people. So, why are we as adults perpetuating the segregation?  It's time to be humans or earthlings.  Btw, i totally get what you're saying. I'm not saying that black lives don't matter, but please try to see what I'm saying as well. All lives should matter, except for terrorists. They should be destroyed"

The manifold problem with this "white people logic" begins with it's foundation. It wasn't blacks who created the divide amongst humanity. By and large, it was white people. It began with the premise that races OTHER THAN white were somehow inferior. In the case of Africans, they were classified subhuman. The African slave was classified chattel. They were no different than livestock and often treated WORSE! So white people created the US v. THEM culture between themselves and everyone of a "lesser race" (blacks were often referred to as "mud race"). This culture has been so prevalent, even in the last century, that the American public got a rude awakening with the civil unrest of the 1960's.

That's the culture into which a great percentage of today's African-American was born. They were welcomed into a world of inequality onto an unlevel playing field that was stacked against them. And just because the field is a bit more level today, it didn't make their lives any easier in the last fifty years. They had to overcome obstacles. They faced cruelty and injustice that many in the fairer race can't even comprehend. So when they say "black lives matter," it is rooted in the deep, dark history of civilization where their lives really DIDN'T matter to white people.

The phrase itself doesn't imply anything other than what it says, "Black lives matter." Period. End of statement.

What it DOESN'T say?
"Black lives matter more."
"White lives matter less."
"Cops matter even less."

It's simply a fight for equality...a fight that began ions ago and continues today. Why it puts those of other races on the defensive is beyond me.

But it does prove that white privilege still exists. It is so ingrained in us, that we feel slighted by the exclusion from the motto "black lives matter." Why we feel the need to argue, "What about us?" Well, white friends, our lives have ALWAYS mattered! We didn't have to fight for equality. We didn't have to suffer attack dogs, gestapo police tactics, terrorists (like the KKK and irate Southerners) and a government bent on keeping us marginalized just to maintain our civil rights. No, those have never been threatened or in question, not in any way. So why do we feel threatened by the fight for black equality?

I'll save my comments on "color blindness" for a different post, but the above statements pretty well sum up my feelings about non-blacks who have a problem with #blacklivesmatter.

You may wonder why this issue resonates so much with me. I'm not just some do-gooder white dude looking for a cause. I'm not suffering from white guilt. I simply want my daughter, my niece and my nephew, who are all or part African-American, to grow up in a world that seems 100 YEARS AHEAD of the society in which I grew up. We need to see RAPID progress where civil rights are concerned, not just racial equality, but sexual, gender and in every other way! I care because I love my kid and her cousins, dearly. I want a better world for them. And ever since I was a little kid, racism has made my blood boil.

Thank you for reading my blog post.

Nips, Rube & Stein, a segment (first draft)

Just finished the first draft of a 22-page short story, working title, "Nips, Rube & Stein."

Here is an excerpt...

The last thing Rube remembers about his father are the words he uttered after they had just buried Rube’s best friend, Nips. “He was just a dog, son. Dogs are a dime a dozen.“

But Nips was the best thing that had happened to him in his 10 years on Earth. A mongrel mutt he found in the woods at the end of their road, Nips had been Reuben Edwin Schwartz’s companion and confidant the last four years. His father, a non-religious man, had named the dog Rabbi as a joke. Rube called him Nips for his aggressive disposition toward strangers. He’d bark and nip at the heels of anyone he didn’t trust. Now that he was gone, young Rube felt lost. It marked a major turning point in his life.

Rube’s father, Ben, was a hard man with a penchant for booze and for women. All he knew was that his father upped and left one Sunday in 1974 and never came home. The plain truth was that his mother had finally had enough with his Vodka-infused debauchery. A well-known adulterer, Ben had squandered any chance of reconciliation with Mary Schwartz, so after years of neglect and emotional abuse, she kicked him out. Rube missed his dad, but he missed Nips even more.

Never had a boy found a better friend. He and Nips went everywhere together. Sometimes Henry Rollins Hicks would tag along. A stuttering, African-American boy, Henry Rollins befriended Reuben at school, where they were both bullied as black sheep. Rube’s family was the wrong religious persuasion, even though they were not practicing Jews, and Henry was simply the wrong color. Rube knew that Henry Rollins was alright when Nips, untrue to his nickname, went right up to the frightened boy and licked his hand. It was the first stranger Nips hadn’t nipped. That told Rube all he needed to know about his newfound friend.

Cartoon Depicting Racism

When my friends or those who suffer white angst tell me that I'm just suffering "white guilt," I'm going to show them this cartoon and tell them it's something called EMPATHY...they should check it out. :)

What brought us the Trumpinator? White angst.

I asked and answered my own question in the headline. "What brought us the Trumpinator? White angst." This blog post examines how we got to a place where a reality TV star and real estate mogul became the face of "white America" and why that scares me.

I don't dip my toe too often into political waters, not because I'm politically illiterate or can't swim, merely because I'm disenfranchised and I haven't felt like swimming in a long time. I don't believe my vote even counts. My say in matters of government mean absolutely nothing. I'm not represented by people inside the beltway. They are mere puppets of Super PAC's, Wall Street and men with money, influence and power, of which I'm none of those.

But I'm writing this post today, in the shadow of Super Tuesday, with a growing unease of where this election cycle is headed. If you think down the toilet, that'd be my feelings about the state of the Everglades, Lake Okeechobee and the SWFL beaches. No, my feelings about where DECISION 2016 is headed is subterranean, an upper ring of Hades, more like.

It all started with the three-ring circus run by the GOP this election cycle. The "Bad Lip Reading" videos of each GOP debate on YouTube were hilarious, but mostly because they weren't that far-fetched. And as Trump distanced himself from the other Republican candidates, I just sat back and laughed. I didn't take it at all serious until serious candidates, like Gov. Jeb Bush, dropped out of the race. That got my attention, but I still blamed Bush's inept advisors and campaign leaders. As it became more and more clear in the primaries leading up to Super Tuesday that Trump was indeed going to be the Republican candidate for President, I became more serious, as in seriously alarmed. What if this race boils down to Trump vs. Hillary? OMG! That's a very real possibility now.

Now, it's time to wake up and get active. I don't want either of those inept, morally bankrupt kooks running my country!

But how did we even get here?

I don't want to waste my time on a beltway insider like Hillary Clinton. We all know why she's there. And we pretty much know where she stands. We need another Clinton about like we need another Bush in the White House. I'm over career politicians, by the way. They only serve to exacerbate and extend the age-old problem in politics and to reinforce all the stale jokes about how far you can trust them. That is, about as far as you can throw them!

But the Trump phenomenon is beyond weird. He played upon the growing angst of white, conservative America. He served up, in true reality TV fashion, all the most inflammatory rhetoric he could muster, like a grand dragon at a KKK rally in the deep woods of Mississippi. He's yet to distance himself from that domestic terrorist organization, by the way.

And what is at the heart of that angst? Is it the same disenfranchisement that I've been feeling? I think it is, but for many different reasons. Where I feel voiceless is because I don't own any land, have any assets or any political clout of any kind. Where they feel voiceless is in stemming the tide of progress in Western society, in general. This is why they cling to their "traditional" and "family" values. They want to believe that life was actually once like "Leave It To Beaver" and their favorite black-and-white television shows of the 1950's. They'd like nothing more than to turn back the clock and relive those heydays of segregated bliss. They want prayer back in school, abortion abolished and white privilege to once again reign supreme.

If you gave them collectively the chance to roll back the changes brought on by the social revolution of the 1960's, I'd bet you they'd gladly do it! I say, "Let's buy them all 'Back to the Future'-style Deloreans and set the destination for them!" Back to 1955 and away they go!!!

Because what the cultural and social revolution brought us in the turbulent times into which I was born are the progressive values of the new millennium. And part of that creed is that everyone should have a voice. People, regardless of sex, race, sexual orientation or religion, are inherently equal. I mean, for the love of God, that's a 1787 value!!!

But white privilege breeds fear and it has ever since the end of slavery. I believe Trump has preyed upon that fear and stoked its evil embers. "Immigrants are bad!" "Be scared of anyone who doesn't look like you!" "They are only here to steal your jobs, your income, your wellbeing!" These themes are nothing new. In fact, they are ancient. But no one has marginalized the white, Anglo, Protestant majority more than itself! They have marginalized themselves because of their illegitimate fears and now they are fighting back against a straw man! And Trump is their new ideological leader. "Death to the straw man who is out to steal our money, our jobs, our way of life!"

It baffles me how these people, amongst who I was raised, feel threatened by the progresses we've made as a society, as humans. Science has progressed rapidly, allowing us to see far out into the galaxy and even to take a closer look at our own planet to see what irreversible damage we've done to it. Yet, now science is somehow bad. It's like they want to turn the clock back to Roman Imperial times and imprison the heretics who say the Earth is warming, or that it's indeed round!

In the new Millennium, with the freedom to practice and engage in any religious ritual one feels comfortable, the WASPy world wants to turn back the clock to Puritanical times when white Christians fleeing government tyranny ruled the day. We now know what those "Christians" did to the non-white minority (who were then actually still in the majority in this country). And it didn't stop there. Those same "Christian values" put Africans in shackles, Native Americans on reservations, turned a blind eye to the mostly Jewish Holocaust, interred Japanese-Americans and now wants to deport every "illegal" back to their homeland. WWJD, folks? (Hint: read about the Samaritan woman at the well...it's in the New Testament...that's to the right of all the warnings about homosexuality!)

What has white privilege bought these people? A growing sense of fear. They fear that they are no longer in the majority, a position of absolute power. And even if that were so, do they really think any of those great tragedies would be wrought upon them as a whole? Did the African-American President ever open those FEMA camps to inter white folks? Has any minority--Latino or otherwise--ever considered putting privileged white folks in shackles and selling them into slavery? So what are they so scared of?

I know how scary same-sex unions can be. Look at how stirred up the right got over gay marriage!

I know how scary it is to share the streets with men wearing turbans and women who keep their faces covered. You know, because it's so much better to have your skirt barely cover your hoo-ha and your boobs hanging out (a real American value).

I know how scary school desegregation was in the 70's. I LIVED IT! (and survived it, btw)

I grew up in a racially mixed, lower middle class neighborhood. I think diversity is what's so great about this country. But the growing polarization is what scares me more than anything...more than gun violence, terrorism, illegal immigration, even Donald Trump as President. If we keep on this current course, I fear we are headed for a revolution. But that's a topic for a separate rant/blog post.

I'm speaking up this year because it really concerns me how "white America" has responded to the perceived risk to their centuries-old privilege, the status quo and the new social norms. If Donald Trump is really their "savior" and the answer to all that ills them, then heaven help us!!! This is a time for all of us, even those of us who feel totally disenfranchised and unrepresented, to speak up and shine the light on white angst and fear mongering politicians. This is our country and it's about time that well-meaning, non-voting people of all color take it back.