Ailantha
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

You've got to be carefully taught

5/12/2014

1 Comment

 
    A year behind everyone else, I just saw "The Butler", the movie about the son of a poor Georgia field worker who became the butler who served presidents from Eisenhower through Reagan.
    I was really moved by the story, and amazed.
    I was amazed by a scene of a 1960 Woolworth lunch counter sit-in in by black and white college students from Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. 
    Now, of course, this wasn't the first time I'd ever heard of the lunch counter sit-in across the South in the 60's;  but it still amazes me, less
that the students had the courage to walk into the store and sit at the counter than that there were people in that Woolworth's who were so morally outraged and self-righteously angered by a group of peaceful young people trying to order lunch that they felt justified in screaming at these students, emptying the ketchup and mustard bottles on their heads, throwing sugar and hot coffee in their faces, attacking them, throwing them to the floor, and finally watching them being roughed up and  dragged off by the police.
    The movie also showed scenes of murdered Freedom Riders, civil rights protesters being attacked by police dogs and with fire hoses, and the famous photo of
federalized National Guard troops protecting two black students as they entered the University of Alabama amidst a jeering crowd.
    It amazes me that things used to be that way.  That people used to think the way they did.
    And yet there were people in this country, millions of them, who believed with all their souls that racial segregation was God's will and that any action was permissible to preserve it.  They  believed that equal rights for people of color was against the laws of God,  man and the natural order of things.
     People can be taught to believe in the most unjust, most unkind, most primitive and just plain most ridiculous notions.  People can be taught to believe in anything.
  
And yet if I had been brought up  in the South in the  first half of the 20th Century, how do I know what my beliefs would have been in the early 1960's? Would I have been someone who could have broken through the dogma I'd been taught my whole life and  supported integration and the civil rights movement?
    And even if I'd  supported  the civil rights movement, would I have been brave enough to take a public stand?  Those were, after all, dangerous times.  Civil rights demonstrators got hurt in the South.  They were killed.  
    I don't know what my beliefs or actions would have been had I lived in that time and place. 
   But I do know what my beliefs and actions are today.
   Below are photos of myself and
Theresa at a demonstration in downtown Columbus protesting the firing of a gay teacher from Bishop Watterson High School.
Picture
Picture
1 Comment
Romaine
5/12/2014 05:44:59 am

If you are interested there is a very good book "My First White Friend" by Patricia Raybon that speaks to the experience of African Americans that really made me think in a different way.
We had to read it for my Cultural Diversity and Social Justice class.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    "Hail Mary"
    by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    https://www.amzn.com/1684334888

    Picture
    "Equal And Opposite Reactions"
     by Patti Liszkay
    Buy it on Amazon:

    http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
    or from
    The Book Loft
    of German Village,
    Columbus, Ohio
    Picture
    Or check it out at the Columbus Metropolitan Library
    Picture

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013

    RSS Feed

    I am a traveler just visiting this planet and reporting various and sundry observations,
    hopefully of interest to my fellow travelers.

    Categories

    All


























































































Proudly powered by Weebly