Tuesday, July 16, 2019

Racism is a thing

I grew up in the southern most county of West Virginia, The state split from Virginia over the civil war, but there were slaves there.

We were far below the Mason-Dixon line.

I never went to school with black kids until my senior year of high School. The next year, the schools merged. The Black school sent over 4 athletes and three smart girls to begin the transition. This was in 1964, for goodness sakes, a decade after Brown vs. the Board of Education.

I knew racism up front and in my face.

My only Black friend as a child was Gene Kelly, a 40 year old man who worked for my Uncle Russell in the H and S supermarket where I worked. His wife was Russell's homemaker and cook, so I knew her as well. But no others.

I know what racism looks like, feels like, even smells like.

And our President is a racist.

I think most of us knew that subliminally from the day he announced for President and called Mexicans 'rapists'.

Many of us knew that when he was the head of Obama's 'birther conspiracy' theory.

But after this week we all know it's true.

Telling those four women of color to go back to 'where they came from'--when three of them were born in Minneapolis, Detroit and New York--was beyond racism and sexism to utter nonsense.

AOC, one of the 4, represents the district of the President's birth and childhood.

Good Lord, what are we to do?

The House of Representatives, with 4 Republican (brave people) and one Independent joining all the Democrats, passed a non-binding condemnation of the President tonight. Slim chance the Senate and the quaking, frightened Republicans will approve.

Something needs to happen.

I've been hesitant on Impeachment.

But no more.

Impeach him, for the Good Lord's, and our sanity's sake!

Now....


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About Me

some ponderings by an aging white man who is an Episcopal priest in Connecticut. Now retired but still working and still wondering what it all means...all of it.