Reply #90: "Innocent until proven guilty"--true. But even if it was relatively [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

innocent (--and her apology doesn't make her guilty, in my opinion), it is important to be SENSITIVE to PERCEPTIONS of black people, who, only forty years ago--in LIVING MEMORY--endured "colored" drinking fountains, "colored" schools, "colored" exclusion from voting, and from even minor positions of power, from white restaurants, from white hotels, from white hospital entrances, from white doctor's offices and from white neighborhoods, and WORSE (beatings, rape, death)--Every. Day. Of. Their. Lives.

I saw it myself. I have never been so shocked in my life as when I first saw "colored" drinking fountain/"white" drinking fountain--marked with signs in a public park. This is America? I experienced it myself--in a "white" laundromat in Alabama, I was told not to mixed "colored" and "white" clothes. I was living with blacks, as a civil rights worker, and took everybody's clothes to the laundromat. The laundromat proprietor (a white Alabama woman) knew who I was (small town). She said the machines did not generate hot enough water to sterilize them against the influence of black clothing.

:wow:

Just try to imagine living with that EVERY DAY. The damage to children is especially terrible. And it is extremely difficult not to pass the loss of self esteem--the loss of personhood, the pervasive attitude towards you that you are some sort of subhuman--from generation to generation.

So I'm all for blacks fighting back--and whites and others with them--at even the slightest hint of a return of this UNPARALLELED SHAME OF OUR NATION. Only the slaughter of Native Americans equals it in sinfulness and crime.

Bigotry is certainly not gone--and with tinpot dictators like Bush fanning the flames of every kind of bigotry they think they need as a 'talking point' for why they "won" stolen elections--bigotry against gays, bigotry against brown immigrants, bigotry against women, bigotry against Muslims, bigotry against Venezuelans--you name it--it is never far from infecting our nation once again, or at least FOOLING it.

The de-institutionalization of slavery and segregation--and the removal of bigotry as a socially acceptable attitude in most circles--was THE finest accomplishment in our history. Nothing makes me prouder of our country. I know it's not over. But, by God, I never thought we'd get as far as we've gotten. Looking forward from back then, I could not imagine black mayors and sheriffs, black Senators, black candidates for president, and all the rest, happening as fast as it did. It was the WILL OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE to end the terrible legacy of slavery, and it was accomplished through the incredible courage of black citizens themselves.

If this bus driver has dared to institute segregation on her bus, she should be fired--and she and those who permitted this to happen should be sued! Segregation is only one step away from lynchings and death! Never again! NEVER AGAIN!!!


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(Edited: to change him to her--the white bus driver. I made the sexist assumption that it was a white male. Interesting.)