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This is a difficult one to write. Lots of anger out there. Lots of suspicion. Lots of folks looking at each other and saying to themselves “If he weren’t around, my life would be so much better.” Before I get started, I just want to remind everyone of something that we all know in the abstract but sometimes forget in the particular: we are all necessary. We are all important. We are all human.
She was brought up the youngest of eight kids in a Catholic family in a large southern city. There was a photo of JFK on the wall next to the picture of the Virgin Mary. The priest at the parochial school she attended would pray for peace in Vietnam during the mass. The school was integrated. Catholic families too large or poor to afford tuition for their children would receive scholarships. Good thing, too. Dad had a good job as a plant foreman and Mom had a dress shop, and the family always owned its own home, but it wasn’t easy raising eight kids.
She was brought up during the Civil Rights era in a large southern city. Her mother never, ever used the N- word. Ever. Her father occasionally did, but never in his wife’s presence. Mom was very active in charity. She volunteered at the local Catholic Hospital and would host charitable events in her home.
When she was sixteen, her father died suddenly. Dad’s company had good benefits, so her mother was financially well off. However, Mom’s health deteriorated after her husband’s death. She was a straight A student, praised by all her teachers, and she meant to go to college, but she ended up staying home to take care of her mother. Denied a college education, she decided to get married and raise a family instead. Her husband had a good job at a good company with good benefits, just like the one her father had and her grandfather had---
And then Reaganomics swept across the country, and her husband’s plant closed down. Then her mother’s health went from bad to worse. She and her husband took over the dress shop---it was their sole source of income once Dad’s life insurance money was used up taking care of Mom’s medical bills. They struggled to raise their two kids. Things got a little better in the 90s, but they turned sour again under W. Their oldest son, married and with a child on the way, lost his job and then lost his home. Their youngest son could not get treatment for his medical problems, since the family had no insurance. That’s what hurt the most, knowing that there was help out there for her baby, but she could not afford it. When she was growing up, her parents always gave their kids the best education and health care money could buy.
During the long afternoons at the dress shop, when no one was buying, she would pass the time listening to the radio. At first, she chose music stations. Then, she discovered talk radio. She began to listen to Rush and the other right wingers. They told her that her husband could not get a good job, because the federal government had reserved all the good jobs for Blacks. They told her that she could not afford health care for her son, because that was reserved for Black folks, too. They did not say it in so many words, but the message was clear. The reason her parents had so much and she had so little was because the people who were once attacked by police armed with fire hoses for demanding the right to vote had decided to get even with her and her family, even though she had never done them any harm. It was not fair. It was not right. She had grown up believing that she mattered, and now she had to beg money from friends to pay for her cancer treatments. The rich folks who used to attend her mother’s charity fund raisers didn’t know her from Adam. But it wasn’t their fault. It was all the Blacks and Mexicans and Asians.
She knows that the hate speech she hears on the radio is not right. She is careful to turn the volume down when certain customers come in the shop, and she never, ever uses the N- word---except when around people who think the way that she does. She would no more pick up a rifle and shoot an immigrant than she would run over a puppy, but when she hears about these things happening, she can not suppress a little feeling of satisfaction---
Quickly suppressed, because she knows that her God would not approve. Maybe if God would speak to her directly, the seemingly senseless tragedy of her life would make more sense. But the only one who acknowledges her existence, the only one who seems to see her is Rush and all the Rush wannabes. They feel her pain. They tell her that it is ok to be angry. When she talks, they listen.
Can you hear her now? Do you have anything you want to say to her?
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