OFF TOPIC

But it struck a raw nerve with me.

Here's a glimpse of a part of our past that is all too often left out of the history books. It is one, among many reason's that I'm delighted Y2K has caused few serious problems thus far...

See The Past In All Its Glory...

"During the peak years, most victims were black men accused of offenses ranging from murder and rape to not stepping off the sidewalk to let a white person pass...."

...One photo in the collection is dated 1960.

Not stepping off the sidewalk? What a heinous crime!

1960? I grew up in Oklahoma City in the early 60s. I never witnessed such an atrocity myself back then but the attitude of my father and those around him left me with little doubt that such things did happen. My father did not consider blacks to be humans. He quoted numerous Bible verses day after day to support his position and was absolutely convinced that God put blacks on the planet to serve humans (i.e. 'superior' whites). His southern Baptist church very much encouraged these beliefs.

It took me a very long time (and a mother who was much wiser than my father) to understand just how wrong my father and his church were in such beliefs. I wonder just how many people were trampled because God was on my father's side?

To quote a phrase from Not Again!:

"Do they want ghosts in their souls?".

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), January 14, 2000

Answers

Arnie,

The sad thing is the mentality that brought
these atrocities is still the master paradigm.
Secular education and integration will help a
lot in turning bigotry aroung.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), January 14, 2000.

Crimes committed in the name of religious belief are often the most heinous and horrible (Hitler, the Crusades, ethnic cleansing in Eastern European countries today).

If only the Democrats would dispense with their continued promotion of W.E.B. DuBois-like division of ethnic groups (affirmative action, quotas, profiling, Ebonics) and let us get on with the process of just being people! Especially in this age of electronic communication, where no one can see the color of a person's skin-it would be so much easier to accomplish that goal today.

-- Etta James (ej@umkc.edu), January 14, 2000.

Affirmative action did not go far enough. Profiling
is a real and pervasive problem. It will not go away
just by sticking your head in the sand.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), January 14, 2000.

Is this arnie or Ace Rimmer?

Just a note from the boys on the Drawf,

'we miss ya man.'

-- lister and cat and kryton (lister@red.dwarf.found), January 14, 2000.

Arnie,

I don't know much about Southern Baptists but I think that people (I don't mean you) who identify bigotry and slavery as a Christian thing are intellectually lazy and dishonest. Christianity was born to a world where slave holding was the norm. It took far too long but slavery finally became taboo, largely because of Christian leadership. Abolitionists were Christians, not Muslims. It's true that slavery no longer has an economic imperative (except in China), but it took Christian leadership to make it morally repugnant.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), January 14, 2000.

Arnie,

ANYONE who takes even a SHORT, CURSORY, Dilettante-esque, journey through the Bettman Archives will understand that the Good Old Days never were.

Chuck

-- Chuck, a night driver (rienzoo@en.com), January 14, 2000.

Spider-affirmative action just pisses whites and males off and further increases the divisiveness between races and genders. My post was serious. We were much closer to racial equality in the early 1980's than we are today. Attempting to focus on our similarities as Americans and humans instead of our differences in skin type (as Dr. Seuss' Sneetches did) is NOT the same as sticking one's head in the sand.

Why would I want to spend my day worrying about who I must hire and how I must speak to people instead of getting things done with those best qualified for the task at hand? To make money, I DO NOT CARE what those people look like. No business owner/manager with any sense would.

And Lars, it will relieve you to know that the African-American Baptist church movement is one of the strongest growing Christian church movements in the American Bible Belt, including the South, and Kansas/Oklahoma, despite the Rev. Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan.

-- Etta James (ej@umkc.edu), January 14, 2000.

I've been fortunate enough in later years to meet many people who's religeon is a source of strength and peace rather than of hate, anger, and self-promotion.

But my early exposure to the church was, shall we say, more than a bit unbalanced. Later experiences helped me to understand that such behavior is not the exclusive property of a few churches but rather an intrinsic part of what, from time to time, makes us inhuman.

One of the most valuable lesson my mother ever taught me was this: "Respect must never be confused with common courtesy. Respect should never be given to anyone because of the color of their skin, the title they hold in church, politics or in business, the arrangement of letters in their last name, the papers on their office walls or the amount of money in their bank account. Respect must be earned - over time - through deeds and actions. Common courtesy, however, can and should be extended to all but the most undeserving."

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), January 14, 2000.

italics off! Sorry.

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), January 14, 2000.

Arnie, you say: " It is one, among many reason's that I'm delighted Y2K has caused few serious problems thus far..." and I have to say that there I lose your meaning. What, if anything, do you think that Y2K having been serious, would this have done to set race relations back further? There is a disconnect here somewhere.

Also, my first marriage was to a New England American Baptist minister. In my Christian colleges (one in Chicago and the second in South Carolina) I did things in the mid-fifties to express hatred of racial bigotry and foster black people. When we were in the ministry for 15 years, I worked for civil rights in the difficult Boston area in several venues. Our church in Lynn, Mass., was connected via a tunnel under the Commons to a synagogue on the other side of this grassy island, through which runaway slaves were able to be passed as they were being helped by the underground railroad. Since our side of the passage had been walled over, I took an entire Sunday School department to the synagogue to see their original entrance to the tunnel. (They were there treated to cookies and punch and a history lesson.) I am sorry that your experience was different, but the other side of the story needs to be told, as Lars pointed out.

Today in Sudan, which my Episcopal church helps via Bishop Deng Bul there, the Muslims are enslaving thousands of black citizens who happen to be Christians. Christians in America and elsewhere are raising money and actually buying back and freeing these poor souls.

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), January 14, 2000.

affirmative action just pisses whites and males off

and bigotry pisses people off also.
There is a great divide in wealth and educational
opportunity between whites and people of color.
This is a result of the institutional racism
of the last 200 years. The statement that we
should be color blind will not rectify the problem.

racial equality in the early 1980's than we are today.

We are nowhere close to racial equality in this
country and the people are not going to wait for
some pie in the sky theory to take hold while
they are suffering from the poverty imposed on
them from a society that does little to nothing
to rectify the problem.

is NOT the same as sticking one's head in the sand.

No it's much worse. And an explosion will happen
even if there a those that don't understand the cause.

-- spider (spider0@usa.net), January 14, 2000.

Folks, the ruling classes have fostered a "cult of white supremacy" on our society. In short, this cult promotes the notion that the ideal for all to strive for is the blond haired, blue eyed white anglo-saxon, all else is inferior and sub-human. It is the source of much of our social problems to this day. It is means of controlling the masses.

Please read Tony Brown's book, "Empower the People" for a thorough explanation.

-- Ishkabibble (ishman@home.com), January 14, 2000.

Oh, please. If you care to believe the lies told to you by Farrakhan, Sharpton, and Jackson (no better than Swaggart, Baker, or Roberts in the white community, if you ask me), then I guess you can sit around feeling sorry for yourself while other black people go to college, get an education, and GET those good jobs that you would let pass you by in a storm of self-pity.

When I lived in St. Louis, poor, inner-city white children were not bussed to rich, suburban schools. The black children were bussed out. (Is that racist? Of course. The decision was based on race, therefore, it is a racist decision). What did that accomplish? Inner-city white kids were racially discriminated against. Inner-city black kids had to ride the bus for 3 hours every day.

The money would have been better spent making the inner city schools better. Democrats wasting our taxes again.

How is that going to help heal this country and bring it closer together? Don't kid yourself. Reverse discrimination is very real, and serves to feed charlatans like Farrakhan so he can help keep our society divided. These "leaders" of the black community love racial divisivness because it feeds on hatred and gives them power.

In a college class of mine (school was in the city, about 65% black, teacher of the class was black, as well), a student was complaining one day because "THEY" on the St. Louis school board wouldn't allow any African-American studies classes in the high school. The teacher turned around and told him he was a fool-that they, the school board, were ninety percent black, and if the student didn't like what they were doing, he should get out and vote once in a while.

That student was a total victim of the propaganda that our country's black "leaders spout today.

And so, obviously, are you. Quit crying. Vote. Go to college. Don't subscribe to so much divisiveness and hate.

-- Etta James (ej@umkc.edu), January 14, 2000.

Anne--I really question whether the entire baptist church supported slavery and a view that blacks were inferior to whites. But if they did, they erred because the bible does not say we are different ("There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."). And Christ himself was very radical in promoting equality of everyone--much against the views of society at that time. Although he did recognize that slavery was a part of that society and taught slaves (and any Christian) to be obedient to whatever masters they had and to learn to be content with whatever situation they were in until God saw fit to change it.

The "church" is not perfect and is comprised of imperfect beings who are on their way to being made into the image of Christ (if they choose to take their faith to that level). NO ONE IS PERFECT-- INCLUDING NON CHRISTIAN AND/OR NON RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. Yet for some reason people like to make wholesale judgments against the church. You should be consistent, if you are going to make judgments against those who promoted slavery in the church, you ought to include those OUTSIDE THE CHURCH WHO PROMOTED IT TOO (unless of course your real beef is with the church period??).

Etta, what did you mean when you included Hitler in your list of crimes committed in the name of religion. Did you mean because of the religion of the jews? Not because of the German Christians, I hope? I believe many may have been "hoodwinked" as were the german masses but many Christians also died for supporting or helping the Jews.

I believe Hitler was very much an occultist. Personally I think he was demonically inspired (which I think a number of our current world leaders are) if not possessed. It has been said (and I am sorry I can't quote the source because I don't have it at my fingertips) that the night before major battles he had a occultic ritual he would perform.??? I can find it if you really want me to.

I think honestly that secular humanism should be considered a religion as well if we are going to be consistent. Darwin's theories and the writings of his peers (and Hitler was very much a student of their writings), supported racism, a lessening of the value/worth of human life, and a devaluing of moral belief--and it is because of these writings that many hideous acts have been perpetrated because we no longer accept the belief of a God and his love and purpose for humans. Hence it has affected our world view.

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 14, 2000.

That will soon end. Did anyone see on the news and on one of the magazine shows this week (can never recall if it's 20/20, 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, Dateline) that already whites in America are becoming much less a percentage, and that in the next 20 years Hispanics will be the predominant race, followed by Asians, then whites? I can only hope that there isn't reverse discrimination then. I've fought for civil rights, but I've also seen vicious hatred of whites in this country, and so have you on national news.

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), January 14, 2000.

Arnie,

There lots of events and statements that strike a raw nerve with me.

But I don't vent them on this board. Do you really think, you are doing something helpful for anyone? Why do you need group theraphy?

-- W (me@home.now), January 14, 2000.

etta, i do agree with your statement on just getting on with the business of living, etc. all of this focus on "preferential treatment" i think is actually creating "class warfare". but then again, maybe that is what the "globalists" or elite want is to have us at each other's throats. I HATE THE TERM DIVERSITY--I THINK IT IS DIVISIVE BECAUSE IT CAUSES US TO FOCUS ON WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT US. I PREFER THE CONCEPT OF UNITY--LETS FOCUS ON WHAT WE SHARE.

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 14, 2000.

sorrrrryyy arnie....i called you anne. my bad eyesight. it alllll just musssshhhhhes intogether.

-- tt (CUDDLUPPY@AOL.COM), January 14, 2000.

I'm not sure I'm well enough to enter into such an intense discussion, however interesting it is to me. It's true that bigotry, etc. remains in some places and is even encouraged. And it is true that Affirmative Action has not really made as much opportunity as much as it has granted questionable privileges in certain circumstances. And as true as it is that there remains a very real need for affirmative opportunities, it is also true that there are strong currents in black American culture which alienate the black person from the real world. Had Y2K hit hard and fast as some had anticipated, I think that race relations would have taken a turn for the worse. But so would human relations in general would likely have taken a turn for the worse. As much collaboration, cooperation, and sympathy as was fostered in communities such as the TB2000 discussion forum, we (us) did not seem to connect and cooperate in the real world (generally speaking) in order to effect a true collective resistance against our potential demise and the potential demise of our way of life. Rightly or wrongly, I feel that most of us (perhaps, all of us) were not individually prepared for the worst ala Milne's anticipations, and we are fortunate and blessed that things did not go so badly. Ultimately, I doubt that even Paul Milne was prepared for a 10. I think he once admitted that on a preparation scale in which a "Milne 10" represented the most suitable preparations for an attempt to survive a 10 scneario, he said he was about a 4 or so in his preparations. As I imagine it, individual preparations for the worst (8-10) would always be insufficient. This is something that has really made me think when I think about preparedness for any events that could go to an 8 or more.

Sincerely, Stan Faryna

-- Stan Faryna (faryna@groupmail.com), January 14, 2000.

Elaine: Thanks for the comments. To clarify: There are many reasons that I am delighted that we've seen few problems from Y2K. One reason is that, in any event where people suffer, those people look for someone or something to blame. Often that 'someone' is merely a scapegoat and not the true source of their troubles. Had Y2K caused serious problems, I have no doubt that the witchhunt to end all witchhunts would have resulted.

It would have been the government's fault, the bank's fault, the oil industry's fault. Very few would have asked themselves "Isn't it really MY fault because I heard the warnings but chose to ignore them?"

My father was very good at blaming everyone except himself for the situations he found himself in. Call me jaded, but I've met many people in my life all too similar to my father. Fortunately, I learned there are also many people quite different from him as well.

Perhaps this thought is expressed best in the following quote from Rod Serling (The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street):

"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices -- to be found in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own -- for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone."

I'm not attempting to discredit or diminish the many good works that many churches have accomplished. Nor am I attempting to sweep the dirt under the rug. Too frequently, humans justify their actions by invoking God when all too often God had very little to do with it.

In my later years, I've come to realize that labels like "Southern Baptist", "Republican", "Democrat", "Liberal", "Conservative", "Catholic", "Islamic" actually tell you precious little about the honesty, integrity, morals, trustworthyness, politics, or even personal beliefs of the person to whom the label is applied. Each person's actions must be taken individually without respect to such labels. Labels often serve only to antagonize.

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), January 14, 2000.

tt: You are correct and I certainly do not accuse 'all' Baptists of anything. But you have to understand that, as a child, such reasonings were beyond my capability. At the time, I thought my father and his church WERE the Southern Baptists. They certainly said that they were - and they were the only experience I could draw from. I thought they were the ONLY Christians. They frightened me at the time. Those kinds of people still scare me today. Churches cannot be bigots - only people can be bigots and these people certainly were.

(Prior to my mother divorcing my father and moving to Iowa, I was not allowed to associate nor even speak to black people. According to dad, white children could be sent to Hell for associating with sub- humans. This was entirely my father's doing - my mother wasn't given much choice. Imagine my surprise when, as a child, I met my first black Baptist - the mother of a close friend from Boy Scouts. But, but, but... It was at that point that I began to realize that the world was not a simple and straight-forward as my father had claimed.)

I do not claim that my early experiences were indicative of any specific religeon, only of certain aspects of human nature. Clearly, people who insist on hating exist in all the world's major religeons. My point is just this: if you are willing, for whatever reason, to consider people who are different from you (in religeon, race, language, politics, national origin, etc.) as a separate species, eliminating them becomes just so much paper suffling...

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), January 14, 2000.

One of the things many of us discovered is that Y2K prepping against a calendar deadline exposed the rawness of our skills and supplies in a variety of areas. It takes five to ten years to truly become self- reliant -- not self-sufficient (that's never) but self-reliant. Might be worth doing a thread on what we've learned and still have to learn on that score ..... think I'll open one on the prep forum this evening.

-- BigDog (BigDog@duffer.com), January 14, 2000.

It seems my mind has not returned to my full disposal as I struggle against bronchitus. Anyway, my point about preparation was to illustrate how even among the most and best prepped people who have shared deep and intense sympathies with each other for a year or more (myself included, though I was moderately prepped at best), there was an apparent (and real, I think) reluctance to really pull together with others and build a spirited resilience against potential misfortunes in the real world. And I don't mean that communal life was the most appropriate solution. Such reluctance among friends who share a common purpose and face a common challenge suggests to me how unlikely cooperation might have been among people in general had Y2K gone really bad. Obviously, there would have been heroes, but how many more would've taken a more narrow view of self interest and survival? When some had written of shooting neighbors, I did not at all believe that such words were said in jest.

-- Stan Faryna (faryna@groupmail.com), January 14, 2000.

Hateful? Ignorant? Was King Solomon black? Were the jews enslaved by the Egyptians for 400 years? Are the Nazi's employed by global biological warfare R&D's? Questions questions. WWII won't end until the Nazi gold is melted and distributed; be careful you and yours don't get suckered into their propaganda which continues to pervade global politics.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 14, 2000.

P.S. Add to the simpler times (some would say, meaner times) the complexities of Y2K's worst and each of us would have faced something terrifying and god-awful. Ultimately, I'm very glad the Polly's won the wager so far.

-- Stan Faryna (faryna@groupmail.com), January 14, 2000.

What I mean to suggest is that TPTB continue to employ the Nazi mode of operandi; divide and conquer, for the good of the children... And we suck right into it and believe it really is a race thing, not a gold=power thing. And so, the masses remain engaged in the deception, enabling the elite to do as they please with total and utter disregard to God as well as humanity.

Has anyone noticed that Clinton's EO's abolish what's left of the constitution? Does anyone care?

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 14, 2000.

I think that we all need to be a little more exact with our use of the language. There is no such thing as "reverse" discrimination. We can speak of "directed", "targeted", or a host of other adjetives/adverbs; but not "reverse". Discrimination is pretty straight forward. A society can never, ever make up for past injustices by identifying a new group to victimize.

I am sorry for all you who grew up in an atmosphere that proposed that one group of people were inherently inferior to another and therefore there was justification to attitudes, behaviors, and actions that harmed (physically, spiritually, or psychologically) these folks. But as adults (sic) there should be the ability to move past our backgrounds.

As an Operating Room RN, I can assure anyone in doubt that the depth of melanin has no bearing on the "sameness" of what is found inside. Male/female is another issue.

Bill

-- Bill (Bill@SHF.com), January 14, 2000.

Bill: I agree with your position. Indeed, there is certainly no reason to feel sorry for me - I feel I have overcome those initial obstacles. I no longer harbor the attitudes that were planted in me at an early age. Still, their ghosts haunt me from time to time. Articles such as the one I referenced in this post are sharp reminders of that fact.

I have seen others post here calling for 'simpler' times. I share their frustration with the problems our society faces today but as you can see, earlier times do not appeal to me since I spent a long time overcoming them. My hope is to keep moving forward.

-- Arnie Rimmer (Arnie_Rimmer@usa.net), January 14, 2000.

Samuel Clemens takes a lot of heat nowadays for alleged racism -- but that's misreading him. This commentary on a passage from Huckleberry Finn is an example:

For Twain's critics, the novel is racist on the face of it, and for the most obvious reason: many characters use the word "nigger" throughout. But since the action of the book takes place in the south twenty years before the Civil War, it would be amazing if they didn't use that word.

A closer reading also reveals Twain's serious satiric intent. In one scene, for instance, Aunt Sally hears of a steamboat explosion.

"Good gracious! anybody hurt?" she asks.

"No'm," comes the answer. "Killed a nigger."

But anyone who imagines that Mark Twain meant this literally is missing the point. Rather, Twain is using this casual dialogue ironically, as a way to underscore the chilling truth about the old south, that it was a society where perfectly "nice" people didn't consider the death of a black person worth their notice. To drive the point home, Twain has the lady continue:

"Well, it's lucky, because sometimes people do get hurt."

(Taken from Is Huck Finn a Racist Book?)

Clemens knew his times were not so fine as some now imagine.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 15, 2000.

Arnie-I do not "feel" sorry for you or anyone. I am only sorry for the atmosphere in which you and so many others grew up. A sincere congradulations to you and others who have made whatever progress past these imposed childhood perceptions/preceptions. Before anyone thinks I have some santimonious attitude; I grew up rurally in upstate NY and while "racism" may not have been part of my upbringing, there were many other attitudes and beliefs I have spent my lifetime sorting out and defining for myself. A difficult, but rewarding chore, for us all.

When I hear the term "simpler times", my ire tends to go immediately to the top of my personal scale. I grew up in the 50's, with a large family, at the lower end of the socio-economic scale. There was nothing, I repeat, nothing "SIMPLE" about out life. It was just as demanding, challenging, and downright depressing at times, as anyone's is today. The difference was an attitude of self (and unit/family) reliance that was much more universal than that found today. The complexity and dimensions of that attitude was again, anything but simple. If by "simple" we mean "technologically less challenged", I would submit to that arguement. However, there-in lies the paradox. All this techno-stuff was supposed to make our lives more "simple". Go figger.

Take care

Bill

-- Bill (Bill@SHF.com), January 15, 2000.