Letters to the Editor
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and I'm really not sure that "bear baiting" is part of the solution ...
While it may feel good to go toe-to-toe with a racist but really, aside from that self-righteous rush, I think it tends to polarize and alienate ....
I'm not talking about responding to racist hateful acts or word at minorities ... I'm talking about brow-beating, condescending, how-can-you-possibly-be-so-stupid/wrong/neanderthal/etc. rants.
Often it appears on the surface to be just another form of intolerance -- that all too familiar smug know-it-all NPR "morally relative" liberal voice -- y'know?
I sure as hell don't appreciate anyone aggressively "adjusting" my attitudes.
Time and space and a certain amount of acceptance often work wonders ...
I don't think "closing the door on" and/or shunning people is somehow morally superior, even if it's faster, cleaner and relatively painless.
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susan: a real shallow empty insights from you..I will make sure to ignore them when I get
trashed by white bigots...
Must be nice being white and above it all.....
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Er, uh...
Cary doesn't really make clear, at least to me, why the LW should try so hard to maintain friendship with this man. His response seems to boil down to, "nobody's perfect"; "can't judge." Well, er, you CAN judge. Some things, you can. So there. I can, and will, judge people who think women are stupider than men, or that all Black people are stupider than whites.
I think there is something pernicious and dangerous in refusing to make certain calls, refusing to say, finally, about the most important things, "Yeah, that's not okay. It's poison. I won't be around it."
I'm also imagining the future of the friendship with this guy, the feeling I get when he's in the room with me and a Black friend, how sick I would feel. I guess it will be alright if the LW lives in a small white town where she'll never have to confront the actual world with this guy as her wing man. But that's not the real world, not the world we should strive to live in.
There ARE deal breakers. This is one.
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the herd that jostles and snuffles
Dear Cary~ I am not prone at all to write to advice columns, but I did want to tell you how much I enjoyed your words to the New Engl. correspondent struggling with racism in her (husband's) friend. You put me in mind of my senior year in college (in New Engl.!) 3 decades ago. That winter I really got to know Lear, and love Shakespeare. You doubtless do not feel like the latter (very often?), but your exhortation meant almost as much to me.
Okay. So I wanted to say thank you, for owning the junk in your head, reminding the disappointed seeker that we ALL have junk, and for speaking on the level about getting the hell over ourselves.
I don't know what that column cost you...but I just wanted to send you a quotation that I love. I don't even know who Leon Bloy is, but this continually comforts me. (Just in the interest of full (?) disclosure etc., I live north of you and am married to a clergy guy...)
"Any Christian who is not a hero is a pig, which is
a harder way of saying the same thing. From time to
time I find a kind of heroism momentarily possible--
a seeing, doing, telling of Christly truth--but most
of the time I am indistinguishable from the rest of
the herd that jostles and snuffles at the great
trough of life. Part-time novelist, Christian, pig."
Today I printed your column to give to a member of my family who actually believes that humans can live OUT of the creative tension you describe. I am with you on the subject: not doubting yourself is a nice privilege...
Regards to you.
Please don't give up on the vast virtue around us!
Warmly,
Catie
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We are going to hell in a handbasket...
...because of moral relativism. Why can't we just stand up and say certain things are wrong JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE! Racism is one of those things, especially in this modern age when there is so much evidence that no race is superior to others.
LW, you deserve better friends than this guy! There has to be a way of meeting decent people in your neck of the woods. And arcangelica, you must live in the desert somewhere with only 3 freaky neighbors, because I have a large group of friends, many since childhood, that have NEVER uttered a racist, bigoted, etc, word within my earshot. There are lots of good folks out there, and this guy isn't one of them. He is an ugly growth on a healthy body - do you wait and hope it's not cancer, or do you cut it out before it can metastasize?
God gave us the ability to form judgements - we are not supposed to like everyone we meet. He doesn't have to like black people, and you don't have to like him. Tell him so, and go find good people to share your life with.
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing." - Edmund Burke
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Anyone who cites Dan Bern lyrics...
deserves to be editor's choice. Anyway, I appreciated it, samsson.
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Per willie the pimp " he thinks he is cool but he just a doggone fool"
my favorite poet....lol,lol,lol
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@ Thrasher
Thrasher, please beg someone in your life to buy you a mirror:
Stop making long winded excuses for underdeveloped white racists!!!!
Such a behavior makes life difficult for Black folks like me!! We need demonstrative behaviors to cure our country of it's white racism diease!!
How to cure country of white racism diease:
1. Whenever/Wherever object/reject/defeat/destroy all acts of public/private/personal white racism
2. Request private health insurance coverages to provide therapy for both the victims and carriers of white racism
3. All educational systems both public and private must have mandatory classes on the orgins of this country( original illegal aliens were pligrims & puritans) and the history of our 2 domestic holocausts on this soil [oops, you forgot to mention WHITE RACISM]
4.Those who have been afflicted with the diease of white racism and damaged by white racism must seek redress/damages caused by the persistency of white racism ( I am 300 years old nor was i around during slavery why should I still be subject to white racism now in the year 2008)...