Statement And Counterstance: Racism In The USA

racism-black-and-white

I’ve been upset to read that some blacks in the USA want to burn down white people’s properties and homes or take them over. It reminds of events currently happening in some African nations wherein whites are being murdered and their properties are being taken over by others.

I’ve been unhappy with our recent strife in Charlottesville, VA and elsewhere located in the USA. Likewise disturbing is the thought that the USA is heading toward another Civil War based on political views, ideology and skin color. (It could happen since our country is in a broil right now.)

So I was very glad to receive an emailed message from an associate of mine from one of the “Black Life Matter” leaders, along with the latter’s email address.

It gave me a chance to set up a dialogue – one rather painful to me to review as I had to go into awful moments in my life, as you will note. I did it, anyway, since we need to heal as a nation.

Please feel free to write to Chanelle, the leader, yourself. She needs the further education, obviously, as we all do.

So here is Chanelle and my vision right back to her:

White people, here are 10 requests from a Black Lives Matter leader

8/16/17

https://www.leoweekly.com/2017/08/white-people/

Chanelle Helm, a Black Lives Matter of Louisville organizer, gives a list of Slavery reparations that Whites need to relinquish to Blacks

NEWS

White people, here are 10 requests from a Black Lives Matter leader

AUG162017

46.3K1.5K

BY CHANELLE HELM

[This article is part of a package covering Louisville’s reaction to Charlottesville. Check out the other pieces, including Ricky Jones’ column “Black People Should Arm Themselves Now!” and Erica Rucker’s “America… where are you going?”]

Some things I’m thinking about that should change (in that Southern, black grandmama voice):

  1. White people, if you don’t have any descendants, will your property to a black or brown family. Preferably one that lives in generational poverty.
  2. White people, if you’re inheriting property you intend to sell upon acceptance, give it to a black or brown family. You’re bound to make that money in some other white privileged way.
  3. If you are a developer or realty owner of multi-family housing, build a sustainable complex in a black or brown blighted neighborhood and let black and brown people live in it for free.
  4. White people, if you can afford to downsize, give up the home you own to a black or brown family. Preferably a family from generational poverty.
  5. White people, if any of the people you intend to leave your property to are racists assholes, change the will, and will your property to a black or brown family. Preferably a family from generational poverty.
  6. White people, re-budget your monthly so you can donate to black funds for land purchasing.
  7. White people, especially white women (because this is yaw specialty — Nosey Jenny and Meddling Kathy), get a racist fired. Yaw know what the fuck they be saying. You are complicit when you ignore them. Get your boss fired cause they racist too.
  8. Backing up No. 7, this should be easy but all those sheetless Klan, Nazi’s and Other lil’ dick-white men will all be returning to work. Get they ass fired. Call the police even: they look suspicious.
  9. OK, backing up No. 8, if any white person at your work, or as you enter in spaces and you overhear a white person praising the actions from yesterday, first, get a pic. Get their name and more info. Hell, find out where they work — Get Them Fired. But certainly address them, and, if you need to, you got hands: use them.
  10. Commit to two things: Fighting white supremacy where and how you can (this doesn’t mean taking up knitting, unless you’re making scarves for black and brown kids in need), and funding black and brown people and their work.

#RunUsOurLand #Reparations #YouGonLearnToday #RunUsOurMoney •

Chanelle Helm is cofounder and core organizer of Black Lives Matter Louisville.

PayPal: [email protected]

Venmo: chanellehelm

Cashapp: CBHelm

To contribute to:

BLM Louisville: bit.ly/BLMLou

Louisville Community Bail Fund: bit.ly/LCBFund

BLM Louisville Education and Training: bit.ly/2uIzxuW

Emergent Strategy Louisville event: http://bit.ly/2vys4Bx

Black Mental Health Care/Healing Team: PayPal: [email protected] note: Healing…


My response to the above writing (which for the sake of this essay has been a bit embellished):

Hi Chanelle,

I’ll be frank with you. Many aspects of our US society and mainstream culture sicken me. This was always the case since I was VERY young.

I was so deeply furious about Jim Crow laws that I decided to rise up! 

Jim Crow laws—sometimes, as in Florida, part of state constitutions —mandated the segregation of public schools, public places, and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants, and drinking fountains for whites and blacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws

In support of the Selma March, I, a blond white living in Sarasota, FL at age 13 (1963), was collecting Green Stamps from strangers after school at a grocery store. Then I’d ride my bike home with them (around two miles) and paste them into booklets to send to my friend, Jackie M. (whose German father started Dannon, a struggling company in the 1960’s, and who’d endured WWII events as a German Jewish child).

She’d turn them over to her father and he had made arrangements to turn them over to a bus company for FREE N/C rides out of NYC to Selma, Alabama for protests. … Time was of the essence so I worked like the devil to get as many stamps as I could day after day. (Their existence was a free perk from the grocery market.) … Do you think that it could be fun to be a 13 year old collecting and pasting stamps for hours on end each day?

One day, a white couple asked about the reason for my collecting. Then I got spit on IN THE FACE and sworn at. I drove my bike home crying and shaking. I also decided to NOT tell my parents since they might forbid me to return to the action as it could be dangerous to me.

I decided, too, that I will NOT be intimidated. I would not be cowed any more than would be my two Freedom Rider friends, Irwin Wadler and Andy Goodman of whom the latter was beaten, bludgeoned and and kicked to death while Freedom Riding a year later. So I was out there the next day scared to death while collecting more Green Stamps.

You think I’m some white blond 67 year old Honky or something?  First of all, I’m going to tell you that I am a Masai. That’s right. I became one through my father, who is of Scottish descendancy. And if anyone messed with me, I’d have some of my brothers come over from Kenya without their spears and give a tongue-lashing (because the Masai are really good in language skills) the likes of which few people have seen.

It may be time for you to learn some history from an elder in case you don’t already know it. So let’s go:

Yes, first of all, I’m going to tell you that I am a Masai. That’s right. I became one through my father, who is Scottish in ethnicity. … Here’s the scoop:

The Perfect Necklace | Countercurrents

www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/07/the-perfect-necklace/

Mar 7, 2017 – Many years ago, my parents visited a Masai village in Kenya. Many of the … Age of the Sage. Sally Dugman is a writer in Massachusetts, USA.

And concerning language skills, mentioned above — I don’t know whether you know it, but Black English (BE) has eleven tenses as compared to eight in King’s Standard (British) English and American English. In short, it more complex and replete.

Oh, and here’s another factoid. In USA, the poor Hispanic people were looked down on when I was a kid by the mainstream culture. So middle class and upper class children were taught French in schools. In Canada, because the people of French background were the underclass (along with the Native Americans and other outsiders), Spanish language was considered superior.

Now you tell me: Were my five years of French language studies helpful in a utilitarian way– a language that I never used in discourse except once or would be my having learned Spanish? … Oh, how I wished that I’d learned Spanish, a useful language in the USA to know, rather than French.

Yeah, but let’s get onward here. … You can share my writings with anyone that you like. I’m posted here at CC where my friend of ten years, the editor, probably has darker skin than yours.

You can look up  Sally Dugman. You can get my writings.

Now, why would I write under the name, Sally Dugman, a pretend name? The main reason is that I was severely threatened years ago about a writing that posted on the internet about the immorality of the Iraq war. … My life was threatened and some of the military people attacking me found out where I lived. … Man, I can’t win for losing with assorted people coming after me! … Called a Honky by some blacks, spit on by white racists, attacked by the military: Where does it end?

To be clear and as a sort of summary, I’ve been traumatized practically my whole life. It started with the Hiroshima maidens, who I saw when aged five. It continued with the Cuban Missile Crisis when I lived in FL as a kid. It continued with my seeing signs of racism and watching my friends Freedom Ride. It continued with the Vietnam War and so much more.

Let me tell you about the way that it is with me. While being emotionally very sensitive, I can get spit on and sworn at by white-skinned people  as happened to me in FL. I can get spit on and sworn at by black or brown-skinned people if that were to ever happen. I can get threatened by military people and others, as has happened.

… Yet, I will not be stopped. Nor will my sister: The Good Sister, A Model For US All! | Countercurrents

FYI: My sister heard of a black family with four kids and the family had to take on five more since the wife’s sister and the sister’s husband died in, I think it was, a car crash. Nine children and their washing machine and dryer broke down … 

My sister got them a brand new washing machine and dryer donated. She found them more beds and other furniture, all of which were delivered to their home. … It took her days upon days to get these tasks done, as it did when she was much younger helping a family from Cambodia suddenly in the USA after the Vietnam War. … Anyone want to disparage us because we are white, go right ahead, but we aren’t stopping the directions of the thrusts that we’ve taken and continue to take. No way!

Indeed, my sister and I are relentless. You can go look at her again here, and don’t think for a moment that it’s only the blacks that get stiffed by our society. … Here’s my sister going at it again:

Preventing Starvation By Filling Backpacks

  Any amount of income above these amounts listed below translates to one’s family presumably not being in poverty in the USA. So no or very few government benefits accrue for those involved in low income status if above the federal impoverishment guidelines. To put it all in a realistic perspective, let’s look at the monthly cost for a one[Read More…]

I do know about whom belongs to me. It’s people like these of all skin colors, cultures and so on — the vast majority described at these next two links. … Do YOU belong to me, too? … Take a peek at my clan:

I stand corrected. Some estimates put the crowd as being 40,000 people (whereas I had heard that it was 20,000-30,000) in Boston. There were something like thirty-seven arrests amongst the demonstrators. The rest — the many, many thousands — were peaceful.

Stopping Hate Crimes!Sally Dugman

Here’s some more about it in case you’re interested:

Sunday, Aug 20th 2017

Trump now APPLAUDS 40,000 protesters for ‘speaking out against hate’ after first condemning ‘anti-police agitators’ among huge anti-fascist crowd that took on ‘free speech’ activists in Boston

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4805070/Boston-braces-rally-activists-clash.html#ixzz4qI7rOVCz

I’m going to really lay it out here: My brother-in-law, a white Jew, was asked by International Red Cross out of Geneva, Switzerland  to inspect Laotian refugee camps while having machine guns casually pointed at him by laughing guards. He left my sister with three babies (two of whom were adopted) at home while they both knew that he might not come back and she cried. Is he an atrocious white?

How about my friend Scott, who took voluntary vows of poverty as a Catholic Worker and who used his body as a human shield against Serbs wanting to gun down Bosnians? They would have shot through him to get to their targets except that he was a USA citizen according to the plaque that he had slung around his neck and facing his chest, a piece of paper with his identity and his nationality strung on a slender string as his only protection.

So the potential gunners were afraid to shoot through him due to repercussions from the US government. (He didn’t know about the way that the incident would turn out to be, and he’s been jailed for acts of civil disobedient in the USA.) Is he an atrocious white?

Maybe imprisoned Randy Kehler, who lost his home in civil disobedience and my childhood friend, is. Maybe imprisoned Howard Fast, my parents friend, was. Maybe my parents’ friend, Dick Gregory, was a pretend white. … I don’t think so, but you and anyone else are entitled to an “own opinion.”

Randy Kehler – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Kehler

Randy Kehler is an American pacifist activist and advocate for social justice. Kehler objected to America’s involvement in the Vietnam war and refused to …

Howard Fast – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Fast

Howard Melvin Fast (November 11, 1914 – March 12, 2003) was an American novelist and television writer. Fast also wrote under the pen names E. V. ..

Dick Gregory – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Gregory

Richard Claxton Gregory (October 12, 1932 – August 19, 2017) was a African comedian, civil rights activist, social critic, writer, entrepreneur, conspiracy theorist, …

Oh, I’m on a roll now. Let’s not forget Andy Goodman’s brother, who started the Andrew Goodman Foundation. Maybe he’s an atrocious white. Is Andy?

Andrew Goodman – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Goodman

Andrew Goodman (November 23, 1943 – June 21, 1964) was one of three American activists of the Civil Rights Movement and also a Social Worker, murdered …

Early life and education · ‎Civil rights activism · ‎Reinvestigation · ‎Legacy and honors

Andrew Goodman Foundation

https://andrewgoodman.org/

The Andrew Goodman Foundation works to make young voices and votes a powerful force in democracy. We partner with colleges and universities to cultivate …

If it gets to the point that we have a potential new civil war, one largely centered on skin color and ethnic background in the USA  that my goodly relatives and friends start facing, I have plans. We will not face some of the throat slitting or gunning down that is going on for whites in South Africa and other African nations right now.

If it starts getting too rough, I will call up my Lakota friends, my Algonquin friends, my Mohawk friends, my Nitmuck friends my American black friends, my Masais and others, who know my ilk and my family’s ilk. They would willingly surround us and make a human shield as did Scott, who didn’t even know the Bosnians, who he’d protected from being murdered.

I’m not trying to be mean to you. Yet if you know any blacks who hate all whites (including the financially poor or moderate ones, who try to serve humanity and environmental causes instead of getting wealthy), they definitely need straightening out.

Free Victorian School Clipart, 2 pages of Public Domain Clip Art

I’ve been at the fight way longer and maybe harder than you, young lady. I cried bitterly when Megar Evers and Steve Biko died. It was like a stab in the heart to me regarding both of their deaths, but their deaths only, in the final reckoning, made me more forceful since someone has to take up their mantle, the slack from their deaths, and then stand even harder than before on account of the loss. …

No, I’m no Honky — the Nigg*r word for whites. So work with me since I can teach you much due to my trying so hard since being a little girl to fix our society and culture.

Medgar Evers – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medgar_Evers

Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an American civil rights activist from Mississippi who worked to overturn segregation at the University of …

Byron De La Beckwith · ‎Charles Evers · ‎Medgar Evers College · ‎T-AKE-13

Steve Biko – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biko

Bantu Stephen Biko (18 December 1946 – 12 September 1977) was a South African anti-apartheid activist. Ideologically an African nationalist and African …

Biography · ‎Early life: 1946–66 · ‎Founding the South … · ‎Death: 1977

Some of my friends/Friends (Quakers, Religious Society of Friends) started the AVP project. Maybe you might want to start using this model to train others to push society and culture forward.

Alternatives to Violence Project – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternatives_to_Violence_Project

The Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) is a volunteer-run conflict transformation program. … Although the original workshops were designed and facilitated with Quaker oversight, the project is a non-profit, non-denominational organization.

[PDF]AVP-Rwanda Assessment – African Great Lakes Initiative

aglifpt.org/publications/articles/avp/pdf/peaceplaces.pdf

partnership with Rwandan Quakers since 2001 to bring AVP to. Rwanda. We would also like to acknowledge the work of Adrien. Niyongabo and Peter Yeomans …

Prince Vega – Prince Vega is disappointed that black and white people are still letting the media hype tensions between them after everything that has …

Kindly,

Emily

P.S., Gandhi was “on the mark”, so to speak. If we do have another civil war in the USA, then people need to adopt children orphaned due to the strife and raise them according to their own cultures and religions. Ha – what rough justice is that, which Gandhi proposed? …

What Does It Mean To Be Human?

by Sally Dugman — July 13, 2017

I asked my employer yesterday about the way that he dealt with tragedy in life, especially since there is so much of it always erupting everywhere. He answered that he tries to find something of joy to celebrate in every day and tries to bring something good to others – other people, other animals and other life as a whole.

His response reminded me of my favorite part of this movie, which I saw shortly after its release many years ago. I recommend it to anyone, who wants to understand the mind of M. Gandhi and there are a number of cost free versions of it online. Here is one:

Gandhi (1982) Gandhi’s character is fully explained as a man of nonviolence. Through his patience, he is …

Gandhi (film) – Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi_(film)

Gandhi is a 1982 British-Indian epic biographical drama film which dramatises the life of …. play the role of Gandhi. The choice was Ben Kingsley, who is partly of Indian heritage (his father was Gujarati and his birth name is Krishna Bhanji).

 

My preferred part of the movie concerned the anguish that a Hindu husband and his Hindu wife felt after they killed a Muslim child after a Muslim had killed their only child, a young son. Filled with almost unbearable grief over their own loss and their subsequent actions, they were beside themselves in anguish and guilt to the point that their lives were falling apart.

So they went to Gandhi and asked about whatever they could do to make everything as all right as possible under such dire circumstances that created such unendurable losses as they had both endured AND, then, perpetuated. They just couldn’t bear their painful situation any longer.

He replied that they needed to adopt a Muslim boy, who had been orphaned in the fighting. Then they were to raise him as if he were their own child … and they were to raise him as a Muslim. (How’s that as a way to promote communal harmony?)

Another narrative that I like about Gandhi came from my parents:

My parents knew the young American featured in the account during the 1940’s. As an aside, he was nineteen years old at the time of his return to the USA from India. …

After having lived at Gandhi’s ashram and shortly before his departure back to the US, a young man requested an exit interview with Gandhi (who brought his Hindi interpreter along). Upon meeting for this final time, the eager young man asked, “How can I ensure that your message of peace and universal brotherhood can be made a successful realization in America? What can I do to make certain that this WILL happen?”

In response, old Gandhi shakily rose to leave and answered the query in Hindi (despite that he could speak in perfect King’s Standard English as he had been trained as a lawyer in Great Britain). Meanwhile, the interpreter translated into English, “Interview is ended.”

The young man pleaded, “But why? What is wrong? I do not understand.”

Gandhi, turning back from leaving the room, replied, “It is because we are not speaking the same language. You see, you speak of success and think of failure. Your vision and your words are wrong… Instead, you must think of yourself and all of us as birth attendants upon the world. We will and must try to do our utmost to bring about a good delivery as it is our responsibility.

However, we, absolutely, cannot think in terms of success and failure. We simply must do all that we can in the best way that we know to help the world irrespective of any presumed outcome. Our effort, in and by itself, must be our whole focus.”

In a similar vein, we know where personally isolating ourselves from personal and global difficulties, while doing nothing to try to address them, leads. We, also, know where indulging in various forms of self-advancement, at the exclusion of others, does.

What we do not know, though, is the way that intentional changes in some life choices can make a difference. Nonetheless, we have to try out these alternatives. After all, it is the only viable way to proceed toward our world’s future!

We need to all rise up with courage of conviction across the world. If we do so, there is no stopping our momentum, as the Quaker pacifist Pete Seeger sang again and again to provide inspiration and an ever growing challenge to the status quo:

Pete Seeger sings We Shall Overcome. … no more Eric Garners, Mike Browns, Walter Scotts, Tamir Rices …

For years, I used to sing this above song as a child as it helped define my identity and ethics in my eyes. Indeed, my friends and I added verses to it, such as “we will end all wars,” “we will ban the bomb,” we’ll walk hand in hand,” and “we will end all poverty,” “we will stop all racism,” etc.

Using this song became a very powerful tool to fight bigotry, battles carried out by various religious or ethnic groups, government oppression, resource wars and so on when my friends and I would stand in vigil and mourn the dead, who were murdered in conflicts like the racial violence in the 1960’s and the Viet Nam War. It was our way of protest.

We’d link arms or hold hands and sway together in rhythm to the music at such sad gatherings. We simultaneously sang with great fervor and intention to bring about a new way forward for life against the unacceptable travesty against us all, and without our resorting to retaliatory violence.

These sorts of events brought very powerful moments of shoveling forward a song’s capability to bring about change. They pushed us ever more forward to define ourselves through resistance against wrongs and through love. They gave us heart and courage to ever carry onward even when events looked grim. Look at M. L. King, Jr., et al doing the same action with this song.

Why, the song grew so monumental as a seamless protest across the entire nation that we were collectively unstoppable as our numbers grew in singing this same song again and again. We could not be stopped!

So I recommend that this song be used across any land that is having conflicts amongst groups or between groups and their governments. This is because it is a very powerful way to bring and teach unity, as well as a sense of courage, purpose and conviction to the singers and song listeners alike. In short, it brings people together against the oppressors whomever they may be. It’s a potent stand-up against them without harming them in return for the slaughter or other grave wrongs that they already inflicted and may still continue to afflict. … Yes, we resist and won’t be stopped by your viciousness!

Heck, people can even make up their own new verses for the simple tune that the song has, such as “we will end beef ban” or “we’ll protect ALL people,” etc. Indeed, one is only limited by imagination for making up the new needed verse that fits a particular situation, such as the murder of people from other religious groups. So please take the lead from Pete Seeger and others:

Yes, please take this simple, caring song and use it anew in the same way that we previously did to build solidarity, an impressive amount of new strength in numbers as others joined our ranks upon their exposure to it and our monumental unity of purpose. Feel free to honor its rich history of prior helpfulness if you wish to do so as it was very affective as a means to gather support in the USA in the 1960’s, and it can be as powerful now as it ever was!

… and look at how much it was of value in terms of teaching unity in cause and reinforcing our shared values. Why, it became our slogan, a new national anthem of sorts. … No stopping us now with such a monumental song bringing us all together! The power of song lights a spark, and that can create a shared and huge spreading fire as more and ever more people are drawn out of apathy into its all-encompassing bright light! … Yes, yes, we shall come together in increasing droves to overcome!

In the end, it is up to each and every one of us to decide the type of world that we want to help create. What version of the future do we want? If we truly want it, what can we do to try to help it come into place? What will happen if we don’t try to help that birthing process of which Gandhi spoke to my parents’ friend to bring about a new and better world?

So what does it mean to be human? It means, in my thinking, someone putting in his best effort to revere and respect life by supporting it as my employer tries to do. Forget indifference or apathy. Forget leaving it to the next guy or gal to solve the difficult issues as a problem.

We can each add our part by singing a protest song or doing something else to improve the world around us. If we join together in this cause and link up as I learned to do in this song and related efforts, we will be unstoppable!

Sally Dugman is a writer in MA, USA.

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