The call has gone out - white South Africans need help:
Really?
Or do you mean, after a whole lot of bullshit and blood, the pattern seems to be that somebody, eventually, may get around to it?
But anyway, that's not "any other country" - as whites used to proudly remind us - it's South Africa.
And South Africa, now, is no longer the country that whites used, to accumulate vast wealth, while blacks were forced to live in poverty to the sound of their whips and guns.
Incredible irony - especially when coupled with the out-of-this-world expectation anyone would come to help - when (if you're looking at the country's history through a post-racial lens) no one ever really has before.
Or are you seriously going to tell us, during these last few centuries of abuse, white South Africans - or anyone else - held a reasonable expectation of the Calvary running in whenever a black person was forcibly having their fingernails (or other body parts) removed?
I don't know which tips the scales of insanity the most:
The murderous enterprises, whites seemingly have always erected, or the lies they've told themselves about them,...
Abraham Lincoln is the great hero of my hometown in downstate Illinois. He's an icon. Every boy in Illinois grows up wanting to be him.
ReplyDeleteNelson Mandela must be that to you.
I grew up revering Honest Abe.
Living on the West Coast and in New England, I was floored to discover that Lincoln was viewed by many people as a cold blooded butcher, a tyrant, a whore for the railroads during his career as a lawyer and the muscle behind the genocide that brought the U.S. into creation.
Depends on who's ox is getting gored, huh?
By the way, the artist who designed my avatar was the late and great Cathera Lane, a black woman and longtime friend.
While I am against violence being visited upon people wholesale, people who may or may not be guilty of anything individually, it is always important to look for the truth.
ReplyDeleteAnd the truth in S.A. is that the situation there is not so neatly summed up as many here would like to think:
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Doubts-over-Griekwastad-AWB-murder-claims-20131101
Does race and history complicate things there? Oh indeed yes. Is it the sum total of everything (and thus the sum total of South Africans of any racial background)? Of course not.
They have many things balled up in that entire mess that they will have to address and overcome -- but I think it is wrong to consider the S.Africans as just "A" or "B" and not give them the benefit of considering them as a more complex group of people (and thus capable of a complex range of actions and responses).
I think Americans would be wise to consider that as well.
Just like it is wise to not turn men into gods (ergo, Lincoln was a great, great man...but of course he was not a god, nor a devil, and made big mistakes, made some great decisions too).
PW
And I have to ask -- what downstate IL town is your hometown?
ReplyDeletePW
O/T, but a pretty good commentary on what's ailing us:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx-two-americas-wire
Which relates to the massive freak out people had concerning the Pope's comments about capitalism, and points to where Reagan made his big mistake -- we did need to revamp our way of looking at capital in the '80s, but the big mistake was in not considering what could go wrong with trickle down economics: in short, they failed to consider that the fellas at the top might be short sighted and greedy enough to destroy the system for quick profit margins...or that libertarians just might be able to lobby themselves into a position of influence; they forgot in short, the banality of evil that lies in the human heart and mind as it were.
And now we are going to start paying for it.
PW