dear Donna Lawson ... :) Im not comparing white and black poverty... Im comparing poverty to non poverty... as I think black and white poverty are too similar to concern over little differences ... one of the differences tho seems to be that whites in abject poverty, when motivated to act about it,,, act towards the chasm between haves and have-nots ... in a strictly wealth vs poverty perspective... that has seemed often to create changes... while American blacks seem to focus on the color of the wealthy, vs the have-nots which I suspect inhibits the successes of their action... there are far to many black people following a path to success and getting it, same as anyone else,, to actually believe blacks have anything more than the decision to work hard,,, standing between them and success... in my opinion, if some action influenced wealth, to treat poverty differently,,, the colors or lack of, between the two would not matter. the blacks in poverty do not need white skin,,, they need financial access to the opportunities money and education provides... my neighbor is one of many examples I personally know of this... he was in the ghetto, in the Crap everything and decided he was going to struggle out,,, he did... I did... no one helped either one of us... no one handed me my free white skin path to success ticket. in north Carolina, at about age 28 when I first got brave enough to seek therapy for my childhood issues... youll never guess who the mental health department assigned as my psychiatrist... a black man... he said he was 55, and graduated from NC state university as a licenced psychiatrist in 1957. after I got to know him better I did end up talking to him about my family kkk ties and hate mongering... he was awesome detached, seemingly sincerely curious, and professional about questioning me about this ... especially since we were only 30ish miles from the usa leader of the kkk home in Benson nc. his office was in Smithfield NC and the 80 ft tall klan sign at the Smithfield NC city limits was not torn down until, the mid 70s. he told me one day...,,, saying that white prejudice as real as it was, had any effect on my decision to stay in school, go to college and become a black licenced psychiatrist in a town with a kkk sign at the edge of it,,, would be the same as saying a NASA space mission failed because a few people refused to believe it actually was real, and didnt like it ... for my 28th birthday, my mom bought me a book called, Hating Whitey, about race relations in America by Horowitz ... I glanced at it... she had marked lots of places I was supposed to read to bring me around to her racist thinking. I might still have it in a box somewhere... I showed it to him and hed heard of it... I asked him if when he went to sign up for college were there any white people trying to stop him or interfere. he said, no of course not, there were plenty of whites that probably didnt like me being there and with black student grants, but their opinion cant lock a door and I never saw any reason to respect their opinion with my attention. he was the first black person I talked to about my parents hate. I mean talked in great detail about it... there were kkk crosses burned in yards in Johnson county in the 50s through even the early 70s. what effect did it have on my psychiatrist beyond what he cared for it to ? it didnt greatly affect the people interviewed in the Smithfield news paper who had crosses burned in their yards other than its sad they hate, and its vandalism... about a third of the people who had crosses burned in their yards were white families, being hated for too much open support of blacks... so, I hope you dont imagine that whites will never know what its like to be intimidated by a kkk cross burning in their yards at three am... some certainly did... In my high school town... there are many well regarded positive thinking instructors, trying to teach about how we react to negativity around us and towards us... and lots of them teach that the way we choose to focus on it or dwell on it can certainly change its affect on us. my shrink taught me a lot about that... he said I should shrug off the hate of my family about my atheism, my black friendliness, my shunning their stupid uneducated ways, just like he walked past the race haters when he went right into that college door paying them no mind
Posted on: Thu, 27 Nov 2014 11:58:01 +0000
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