ON WINNING MARRIAGE EQUALITY: Bigotry is a dumb thing, in the old sense of dumb - it cannot speak beyond what it knows to be true. Its eyes are veiled and can only see the world in one specific way. If, especially when a person is old, and has lived a long time, that veil is torn away, it really, really, really stings. James Baldwin as always said it best, in a letter to his nephew in 1962: Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks ones sense of ones own reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white mans world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to its foundations. You, dont be afraid. I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white mans definitions, by never being allowed to spell your proper name . . . but these men are your brothers - your lost, younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it. Hopefully, as we win, we can refrain from bullying the deaf and the dumb and hold their hand if and when theyre willing to extend it.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 13:40:00 +0000
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