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This is a really difficult but possibly very worthwhile discussion Helms has kicked off (absolutely no pun intended). And your point here is, of course, very well taken. It is a fine line to say the least, especially for one like me, a southerner raised to be different from most of my cousins (I was an only child), brought up by a father who, though very secretive during much of his life, ultimately stood head and shoulders above most of those around him and a mother who taught me that I must never use the word "hate" nor to feel it as an emotion. Then I was turned loose among my less-educated, dirt-poor cousins in southern Maryland and flatland Viriginia, to practice the art of loving -- not just simple tolerance. I agree, tolerance does not mean sainthood, and there is a time and a place for everything. Jesse Helms, for instance, was alive for a long time -- seemingly centuries -- and during his life there were plenty of opportunities to not tolerate him nor his veiws nor his hate-driven work. I might well have cursed him to his face, but I was raised not to lower myself to the level of that which I found intolerable in others. It's not easy being this way, especially when most of the clan is a self-hating, mixed-race hillbilly mess who no doubt will be talking fondly of ol' Jesse when I arrive at the family reunion tomorrow. At least they'll start doing it when they see me coming.
Mother, blood and soil; it's a tough one.
When I go down there tomorrow, into the dragon's jaws once again, I will be among people who have very mixed feelings about me, and it is largely mutual. Still, if I need them I know they'll show up for me, and I will for them, at least so long as it isn't because of some unspeakable deed which, so far, has exceeded their reach. Then again, some of them are pretty ok. Especially the visibly black ones. The ones who are more Potowamac Indian and Irish are the most insecure (and, interestingly, the most ignorant, often willfully so). It is that last cluster which grew up in a three room shack, 12 of them, without indoor plumbing, seven boys in one bed, one separate (because he'd had polio and was more fragile); the two girls slept on daybeds (I guess that's what they were) in the "big room" where the wood stove was. When I stayed over, I made eight in a bed. Yes, there was the mandatory car up on blocks.
The mostly Irish contingent are almost as bad, except for a couple who were closest to me in age coming up. I've won them over. They even laugh at the fact that we're "racially confused." And one of the Dozen now has an actually black grandson, upon whom he dotes. The others mutter, but they show up anyway. One we refer to as "The Grand Dragon." Each year he gets a little more upset by that. Evolution takes time.
An aside here: while dragged along on a fishing trip in 1949 I accidentally found a lynching victim. I was four years old. I didn't quite understand what it was I briefly saw, but I never forgot it, nor the smell, nor the pervasive feeling of something more terrible than my tiny mind could take in.
But back to Helms. Yes, the people who lynched Negroes shared his views, and he pandered to those views in order to get where he wanted to be: at the top of that truncated pyramid.
There does, indeed, sometimes come what we call "killing time."
Each year the reunion is a little less tense. Tomorrow I will be there as my youngest daughter introduces her Indian (eastern type) fiance to them. Some are excited. Some have no idea what's coming. It will be interesting, possibly entertaining, and it could even wind up being one of those times when I have to spit in someone's face.
But I won't leave til I'm ready.
Nobody said it was easy.
