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FReepers. I know these people. They were my family. They were my neighbors, my friends, my teachers and my Doctors. They were my father. I grew up a white girl in a small SE Texas town during the 1960's. Not to far from Jasper, where, in 1998 James Byrd, Jr., a black man, was chained to a pick-up truck and dragged to his death by three white men. Just south of Vidor, a "sundown towns," a place where blacks were not welcome after dark, and the KKK made sure the rules were followed. Yeah, I knew lots of these people.
My Dad was born in southern LA in the 1920's, and moved to the area during WWII for work in the oil refineries. Racism was alive and kicking during that time, and it's still going on. Strong. Fortunately for me, Dad was an intelligent man, and over the course of his life came to realize that he was wrong. I was also fortunate enough to have gone down some of that path with him. By the end of his life, he had come to respect all peoples equally,(of course, having a lesbian daughter that he loved dearly helped) and had taught me the same thing.
In turn, I have passed along those lessons to my own children, whose friends come in all colors and persuasions.
These people are taught their ugly racism generation after generation. They are fools. They have no minds of their own, they only mimic what they see and hear. They are scared and they are weak. They are afraid to even contemplate that their racism is wrong, and the more scared they become, the more dangerous they become.
The good news is that it only takes a few men with the courage my father had to change things. Instead of producing 5 good little racist, Dad produced 5 good people who fight against it when and where we can. It may not be today, or tomorrow, but eventually, they will die out and go away for good. That was my fathers dream, and he passed that on to me...and my kids, and one day, my grand-kids.
Yes We Can!!
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