GUEST EDITORIAL: Why can’t just “Willie’ be enough?
Leonard Pelter
St. Augustine Record
February 26, 2017
I want to thank The Record for publishing the ongoing series of pictures during Black History Month relating to the racial unrest that plagued our city during the early 1960s. While I can’t say that I enjoyed looking into the ugly face of racism each morning, I do appreciate being reminded of where we came from and how far we still need to go in order to provide all Americans with equal protection under the Constitution.
I feel blessed to have grown up in St. Augustine in the 1950s and ‘60s; for those in my generation it was the “sweet spot” of American culture, our very own little American Graffiti.
Of course, I didn’t grow up as a member of the black community where things were separate, but certainly not equal. When I think back on those days, I can’t believe I was so unattuned to what it was like to be black in a segregated society. There were no black children in the schools I attended and I didn’t even know any black people. Members of the African-American community were routinely forced to endure unimaginable, dehumanizing indignities, by being denied equal access to both public and private facilities not to mention equality of job opportunities, education, housing, medical care — the list is endless.
Perhaps the most egregious part of the black/white divide during those days was that, for the most part, white society didn’t see anything wrong with the status quo. I’m ashamed to admit now that I never questioned the social order. Like almost everyone else I knew, I assumed that things were exactly the way they were supposed to be, or as Robert Browning put it, “God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.”
Of course, like many generations of children before, I had been socialized to accept the status quo by people who I trusted and loved.
A good friend, J. David Smith, in his book, “In Search of Better Angels,” suggested that prejudice is a kind of disease that we catch from others:
Prejudice is a form of mental illness —I ’m convinced of it. Unfortunately, it is often a form of shared mania that results in great hurt to those who are objects of its madness. Most people with other forms of mental illness are dangerous only to themselves. Prejudice is different. Its primary symptom is hatred of others and those who are hated are at high risk of being hurt.
It would be wonderful if we, as a society, could get beyond our differences so that they would no longer divide us, but rather serve to make us stronger. If we want to live in the best world possible, it will never be enough to simply tolerate differences, we must accept them and, ideally, come to celebrate them.
We live in a very divided country within a very divided world and need to be reminded from time to time that we are getting better, even if it doesn’t always feel that way.
The pictures in The Record this month are solid evidence of growth and I have great confidence that we will continue to grow in the future.
I was student teaching back in the late ‘60s when the “black pride movement” came into vogue. My supervising teacher wanted to be sensitive to the black students in our class so one day she asked an African American student, “Willie, tell me honestly, do you prefer to be called colored, negro or black?” Without hesitation, the young man responded, “Can you just call me Willie, Mrs. Peterson?”
1 comment:
Leonard Pelllicer said. "It would be wonderful if we, as a society, could get beyond our differences so that they would no longer divide us, but rather serve to make us stronger. If we want to live in the best world possible, it will never be enough to simply tolerate differences, we must accept them and, ideally, come to celebrate them."
Our differences ARE NOT the problem!
When left to their own devices most people do accept and do celebrate our differences.
The problem — our problem — is that a very few individuals — and yes they are afflicted with a contagious mental disease called xtrevilism — spend vast sums of money (your money that they have conned you out of) over amplifying some few of those natural differences in their menticide media; and creating legislation that serves to saddle those who have been so targeted with onerous and stigmatizing murderous repressive regulations that diminishes their spirits and sends them to early graves.
Racism, religious hatred, homophobia, misogyny, etc., are all intentional over amplification constructs created by the xtrevilist self anointed elite amongst us in order to oppress, exploit, and divide and conquer us all, and at the same time — and this is the most important rationale here — deflect from the piggish incomes and asset wealth that they have so criminally amassed.
Constantly rerunning that oppressive past history without ever addressing the causative gangsters, their psychopathic divisive methodology, and the piggish resultant incomes, assets, and power that they now have is in essence a continuation of and a co-option of that oppressive past history. It also provides an opportunity to rewrite that history through lies of omission by not publishing a complete history of what the Record omitted at the time as Ed has pointed out.
This incomplete article is not solid evidence of "growth" (what ever the hell that is) rather it is solid evidence that xtrevilism and its cover up is alive and well in Saint Augustine.
Why can't just "the truth" be enough Leonard?
http://saintaugdog.com/sadarticles/murderissue.html
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