“Black History month should celebrate the whites who stood up to segregation like my father...”
This is a good point. My dad went to Ft Benning, Georgia for training with a bunch of fellow new recruits from Chicago; they went to town during a furlough. One of them gave up their seat for a older black lady. She was told to go to the back of the bus. My dad and his friends had to “explain” to the driver and the locals on the bus just how impolite that was. Apparently, the MP’s saw nothing and there was no evidence of anything and the whole thing got covered up between the city and Army.
When he came back from the war, my dad was one of the last REAL liberals who walked the walk. He taught and was later a principal in an increasingly dangerous “changing” neighborhood. He got his jaw broken breaking up a fight. He pleaded to rioters not to burn the school down in 1968. The stress of that environment probably took 10 years off of his life and a few off of other family members. My mom could never be certain when or even if he would be coming home. He sure didn’t get paid what it was worth.
These are some of the reasons that it really PISSES me off when I see what hard-won “equality” degenerated into. A lot of people (black AND white) took risks, got scorned, got beat up, got shot at and so on because they didn’t like people being called the “N” word. Now, the only people that can call people the “N” word are people whose parents and grandparents used to be called the “N” word.
These are some of the reasons that it really PISSES me off when I see what hard-won “equality” degenerated into. A lot of people (black AND white) took risks, got scorned, got beat up, got shot at and so on because they didn’t like people being called the “N” word. Now, the only people that can call people the “N” word are people whose parents and grandparents used to be called the “N” word.
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I was on vacation, speaking to an engineer, who happened to be black. He was wearing a “Black Dive Master” tshirt. I asked him why he felt there had to be a *black* dive master association. He mumbled something about people not listening to blacks within regular organizations. Being 30 years his senior, I reminded him that the battle was fought by many, many whites, back in the day, and told him he was obviating all those hard-won gains by participating in separatism. He looked sheepish, but didn’t budge.
As a child, our neighborhood had a history of racial and religious covenants. We were Jewish. When the Polish man across the street tried to organize the block against a black university professor and his family, my Dad told him that two minorities should think twice before ganging up on a third. Dad used to say that we were all just people and needed to be evaluated as individuals. He’s gone now, but he would not have been happy with how things have deteriorated.