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<< the symbols of segregation NEED to be in museums today>>
Thanx for this. RT. I grew up a Bama football fan. And remained so
subsequent to moving to LA in S '63 after finishing 9th grade. My girl and
I went to Saban's first Bama championship at the Rose Bowl in 2010. I
missed the UA's integration but my older sister knew Vivian Malone. I
missed that but here are some of the things that happened while there:
I grew up in Mobile, AL until I was 15. Went to Catholic school. As all
boys thought I wanted to be a priest. My barely older first cousin was and
became Monsignor before his early death from MS.
The South. I was at a Mardi Gras parade about 10 years old. There was
another black kid next to me bout the same age. And a third kid same age,
white, walking in front of the coming parade and selling peanuts. Little
black kid held out a dime and the white kid said "Y'all want some
pie-nuts?" The black kid said "Yes, sir.
Or playing stickball and running after a well hit liner. Getting ball and
throwing back to infield. Saw a station wagon with a carload of nuns.
"Damn, they must be lost." Ran over to help and got within 20ft and saw
the driver needed a shave.
White man In a summer suit comes to our door. 5 or 6 years old, I open
it. Probably selling insurance or something. Man looks down at me and
said, "Damn. You look just like a li'l ole Jew." I beamed at such a
description. Meant I was white-like.
15 years later at LACC, 1967. Saw paramilitary-looking brothers slowly
marching in formation onto the school grounds. In camouflage jackets and
holding a Red Book in their hands in their crooked arms. I'm thinking,
"They must be communists or something". I felt sorry for them. "They
don't even know God".
Two years later, I'm BMoC. Chairman of Political Affairs. Teaching 'Mao
Tes-Tung Thought ' to LACC BSU and Section 3A of the Black Panther Party.
Walking across main drag, Vermont Ave, and a older cop on a motorcycle says
"How do you do?" I knew who the cops were from Selma and whole bunch of
sht. Viciously I let out a blur of obscenities punctuated with "Pig" and
"Donuts" and a bunch of "Fuck You's". The guy almost cried, saying, "I'ma
Christian man. I got this job to look out for the poor and the weak." As
I told a nun, I am in recontact with after my 50th class reunion in 2016,
"I went from 7 feet tall, to 7 inches small".
I still hate the cops but, against all odds, there can be and are
exceptions. But their prime directive is the preservation of the sanctity
of private property and (to paraphrase) it is not the nature of the men
that determine their social roles, it is their social roles that determine
the nature of the men. 90% of good men and women who go into that function
are changed from their evangelist roles that prompted them to sign on. And
these only a minority of all those who go into that so-called 'profession'.
No one, today, is a born communist. In truth, save in extreme fortunate
circumstances ('Red Diaper babies') we are closer to being 'natural born
capitalists' because of the pervasive invasive ethos that starts at birth
and continually bombard us with 'me-isms'. Those of us who have changed,
who have moved 'leftwards', all have been through stages in life. We all
have learned from these or we did not. But we all had the chance to
learn.
What I am saying is, maybe I look at things the way I do cause of the way
I've been. And I could be wrong. Always that proposition exists. But I
ain't changing unless I change. And I don't care who likes it or not. If
I went back to that motorcycle cop today I would be saying "I truly,
seriously and whole-heartedly do not give a fuck that you are a cop, you
are a good man. A good man in a god-awful career". "I was so much older
then, I'm younger than that now."
This is why the symbols need not destroying but relegation to comrade
Wythe's museum.
JAI
On Fri, Jun 19, 2020 at 9:21 AM <wytheh...@cox.net> wrote:
> The top Klansmen didn't have white robes, but brightly hued ones. I
> discovered this when my grandfather died in the summer of 1953 and I was
> deemed old enough at 11 to help my dad and uncle clear out his huge old
> house. I was allotted the task of seeing what was in the attic. I opened
> a closet door and discovered hanging there a dust-ridden orange Klan robe
> complete with pointy top. My deeply embarrassed dad, over my supposedly
> childish objections that this was important to history, immediately burned
> the robe along with most of the other effects of my grandfather in a
> bonfire in the yard. I now muse about the irony that, the more important
> the rank of the Klansman, the more colored his robe was. Wythe
> PS -- John, when I landed the job at the University of Alabama and got to
> Tuscaloosa in September 1966, there were signs on public water fountains
> designating the proper race of a drinker therefrom. When I left Alabama in
> 2007 a group of us were working on getting actually desegregated elementary
> school classes in the state's Black Belt (the school boards were grouping
> the pupils by supposed ability, and lo and behold! almost all the most
> "able" children turned out to be white!). Given the doggedness of
> continued racist intransigence, the symbols of segregation NEED to be in
> museums today, such as the one in Selma founded by Rose Sanders (one of my
> heroes, a friend, and a fellow worker in the desegregation trenches) which
> shows Selma's struggles -- desegregation, the marches, the
> bridge-crossings, the demonstrations, and the federal legislation such as
> the Voting Rights Act which has resulted from continuing mostly-black
> activism centered in Selma.
>
> On June 18, 2020 at 10:18 PM John A Imani via Marxism <
> marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
>
> > << Indeed I can imagine a world in which these symbols are removed while
> > the racist conditions that gave rise to them remain.>>
> >
> > And indeed I can imagine a world in which the racist conditions are gone
> > while these 'symbols' remain: in books and museums where they belong.
>
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