Not Isolated..in the Least

Picture of a Young Man

who should still be alive

The Trayvon Martin MURDER is, as a discussion piece,
a great litmus test for just how bigoted your friends and
neighbors are!

I have been discovering the VERY covert racial ignorance
(of people I've known forever) as a result of this whole mess.

Even had Auntie, who, granted, is becoming more unhinged,
launch into a diatribe about how "not all Klansmen are bad...
some are good and some are bad!" Because she ONCE knew
some KKK members who bullied an abusive dad into cooking
for his kids. (Hey...it's a redneck...you don't expect a Rhodes
Scholar response, do you?)

It's infuriating, frustrating, frightening, and more than a little
disheartening to see and read all the rage-filled racist insanity
that is passing for public discourse in small towns like mine,
where 'a' Trayvon Martin could just as easily have been a friend
or neighbor. Probably has been. Probably will be again.

One local paper (The Miller County Liberal, one of the worst, 
lowest caliber pieces of yellow journalism slime--it should be
against the law for them to call themselves a newspaper)
VILIFIED President Obama for weighing in on the case,
saying of our President:

"Aided by his ignorance of the situation, knee-jerk prejudices,
and tendency toward racial profiling, Mr. Obama played a
heavy hand in elevating a tragic situation in which a teenager
was killed into a full blown hot race riot."
And then, utterly inexplicably, he veered off into this bizarre
tangent about how he and the poor dead kid look so much alike
they could be father and son. It was election-year race-pandering
gone horribly wrong."

Wow! Did you see what he did there? In  addition to having
done too many drugs and living on another planet, he's accusing
folks who want to see the murder of this young man done justice
as being racists themselves. Thereby (not really) exonerating his
own crazed, racist, nonfactual rantings and misinformation!

And this from a relied-upon source of news and information in
a small community where things are already so backwards and
unrepentantly nutso. A paper which also boasts racist cartoons
and only anti-Obama rhetoric and Fox-News style hand-wringing
and falsehoods posing as information and patriotism.

It's a powderkeg issue all right; those who are racist and don't
like attention being drawn to it are similar in their venomous
retorts and protestations to closeted gay men when exposed;
their fear and anger is above and beyond what is merited by
the situation. 'Doth protest too much,' and all that.

Racism is as deeply rooted and prideful a tradition here in the
ridiculous South as deep fried foods and killing stuff. These are
communities of such isolation, limited growth, limited education,
incestuousness, poverty, false superiority, arrogance, ignorance,
defiance, anger, childishness, arrested development, shame,
criminal activities, double standards, paranoia, selfishness, and 
love of conflict--a culture of 'honor'--how will it ever change?

Not that this is true of every Southerner, but a lot. (I'd hate to
be accused of profiling.)

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We Still Need You, Dr. King

WARNING: Vitriolic language below. Do not read if offended by hate-speech.

A powerful insight, but...

Has the message and the inspiration been lost?

How will most folks commemorate Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.'s birthday recognition? Complaining about no
open government offices? Laying around and doing
nothing of much importance? Perhaps making snide
remarks alongside their buddies, or radio disc jockeys,
or Fox News reporters as to the so-called illegitimacy
of this day and of our current president?

I wish to take the occasion to give tremendous Thanks
to Dr. King,  Coretta Scott King, all those who fought
the good fight as Freedom Riders and Freedom
Fighters, and those who continue the legacy today.
There is still so much to be done.

I feel the sting every day of just how far there is left to
go on the journey.

I hear the rat-a-tat-tat gunfire on my soul as an orchestra
of "nigger-this" and "nigger-that" are barked daily, easily,
repetitively, their issuers incorrectly imagining me a
receptive brother-in-arms of hate and dismissal.

These calloused, thoughtless words owing nothing but
to ignorance; born in, bred in, taught, recycled, imposed,
carried down so ironically triumphantly from the shameful
"don't know no betters" of hate that passes for heritage,
especially in these lowly southern backwoods.

One generation to the next, passing on the familiar
like a treasured family heirloom, defiantly daring someone
to tell them all that they 'know' is wrong. Clutching
dissension like a badge of honor. "Accept me by seeing
how faithful I am in my nonacceptance, Paw!" they seem to
cry out.

Others like them offer up the same withered theories as
to why there is a proper scapegoat--with misinformation
its father--behind every mishap and wrongdoing ever suffered
by these scared and lost boys. They don't even know the
meaning of the words they speak, the lies they spill, the
hate the brew like bathtub gin, ever-more potent and
dangerous the longer it sits and steeps.

A world connected non-stop, all peoples seeing into
one another's lives, across the oceans and across the
barriers of language and time. And still we have pockets of
time-displaced folks who revel in their lack of development,
who seek to know nothing more than what they surround
themselves with. They are as preserved as a mosquito in
amber, as annoying as if still alive and mounting a campaign
of frustrating distractedness.

Like the atrocities of World War II, are we destined to
have the evils of segregation become like fantasy as those
of that generation slowly die off? Will the lessons of Dr. King,
and the need for them still, be forgotten because we no longer
have a breathing reminder of how far we have left to go?

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