( – promoted by Armando)
In Armando’s diary this morning, Stranger in a Strange Land asked if there was a possibility for a truce on some of the issues that have been dividing us about race. I see that there are arguments to be made on both sides for many of the people commenting and think we might be able to get at least a majority of people to agree. Here’s my comment:
How about we
identify some stipulations for a “truce” and see if folks want to sign on.
I’d say I see two possibilities in this thread:
1. We need both personal change and legal/structural change to solve the problem of racism. Neither one is going to be completely effective alone.
2. The Latino youth in the library needed to be held accountable for his behavior AND given the opportunity to have someone validate the racism he lives with.
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This is how understanding each other happens. Hashing it through until we can reach some sort of agreement.
It’s often ugly, but if we can stick to it through to the end of the process it DOES work.
(I Hope!)
…my mind is likely to be elsewhere much of the time.
Thoughts pile upon thoughts and as much as I want everything orderly I have not the energy at present…nor possibly the ability…to make it so.
I can hold only so much pain inside before I have to shut down.
I don’t think it will prevent further battles, but I do think it will effectively resolve this one.
I want to add that I am sorry that the arguments may have caused some people to leave. I admit that I thought about that, too. It would be good if there could be some kind of reconciliation included in the truce. I don’t know how anybody would go about that.
If someone ‘speaks’ to you here in a fashion you find offensive, simply don’t reply. If you find your self being irritated by a person’s approach to the issue, ask yourself first what it is in you that is made afraid by that approach, what are you protecting, what do you not want to face. If you are able to step back and take the energy off the response you want to make, its more than likely gonna be better than if you just fire off a missile in ‘self-defense’.
The operative word here is ‘self’ and what we understand that to be. Since there is a decidedly buddhist tilt to this place (or at least I thought there was) remembering the tatagatha’s teachings on no-self might be helpful in solving the wars going on here both in a relative and absolute sense.
When I’m confronted by my own fearfulness, I often respond out of hatred which is what fear breeds. I seem to be seeing an awful lot of that here lately. Some may argue that it is passion. Bullshit. Its fear and most passion is borne out of fear and projection onto the other. The more heat than light meme is a good one, since, despite the megabytes of bandwidth expended recently, no one seems any closer to understanding themselves or the issues. It seems to me, at least, that the mode of communication has become more polarizing. If thats the desired effect, keep on keeping on. If not, maybe its time to switch gears?
It’s about hate. Deal with the hate and the race becomes irrelevant.
Author
throw out some words here:
racism
unintentional bias
ignorance
willful ingorance
institutional racism
anyone have more?
What I’d like to suggest is that often, when someone gets accused of racism, they think they are being accused of KKK like overt hate. And that’s why they react. When in reality, what the person doing the accusing is saying is that you have exhibited one of the other forms of racism. The fact of the matter is, I’ve been surprised how many things I have yet to learn about what its like to grow up in this country as a person of color. That is my form of racism. Perhaps we need to understand what these different words mean to different people.
But I’ll put out my own feelings.
I write about this a lot. My feeling is that this issue, like many others that seem so inflammatory and important at the time, will fade away, that folks won’t blog about it and will return to whatever normally interests them.
And that’s fine.
But I won’t be going anywhere. This is an important issue to me, it was before this fight and it will be long after everyone’s moved on.
I wonder how many people here really want to talk about racism, prejudice, and how many will speak of it as more of a community issue, how to communicate.
Either path is equally valid.
I’m just trying to lay out my own position so I am not misinterpreted when I respond to others’ comments.
some honest, angry, frank discussions this is a pretty tenuous community. This little illusion that we all agree on everything and life with us is all hugs, poetry, and giggles probably needed to get punctured anyway.
I am glad the discussion emerged, it was pretty interesting. We don’t need a truce, we need to realize that butting heads and getting pissed is going to happen. False harmony is just as off putting as conflict that cannot ever be contained.
That is the title of a fascinating book by a forensic anthropologist who, among other feats, identified the members of the Russian royal family and attendants after they were slaughtered by the Bolsheviks, the bodies burned and the bones thrown in a swamp. The man even did an autopsy once on an urn filled with ashes.
This was all before DNA came into prominence as a forensic tool. I was curious as to how the science of DNA identification might have differed from the anthropologist’s findings but I would make a hefty bet the findings were much the same with DNA. There would, in fact, be some omissions with the DNA since the bones told a story of life experience that is not captured by DNA analysis.
One of the things that the anthropologist could do was identify the race of the deceased from nothing more than some desiccated bones.
Something he could not do was be sure of the skin pigmentation of the deceased.
Those who insist that the color of one’s skin is of primary importance in determining the heart, mind and soul of individuals are not people I want any kind of truce with.
Of course, we may indeed talk of other things.
Appreciate the thought that angry words take us nowhere. I agree totally with that.
Best, Terry