A Blown Opportunity For A Valuable Lesson

What are teachers supposed to say to their students about what happened in Buffalo?  I suppose it depends on where they live.  For those who live in red states, they are hamstrung about how they can discuss the massacre thanks to GQP/Rethuglican legislators who don’t want the white kids to feel “uncomfortable.” 

I just read an article by NBC in which a teacher in TX was interviewed (URL at end).  The teacher has to provide more than one perspective of what happened: some would say the killings were racially motivated; some would say the shooter was just trying to defend his beliefs.  Some might say whatever blah de blah blah.  It’s absolutely a blown opportunity for a valuable teaching lesson because white male legislators are afraid the truth will be taught.

I don’t know if this teacher will leave the profession at the end of the year because of the restrictions placed on educators by red legislators.  I wouldn’t blame her if she did.  If I was her, I’d take my teaching degree and GTFO of TX and go to a more enlightened state, one that isn’t terrified of discussing our violent past.

Fear is what caused the red states to react the way they have been.  White male supremacists in and out of government are scared to death they’re losing control.  Since before the US was a country, white males have been in charge of everything and anyone “other”: Native Americans, black slaves, women, and non-WASPs. 

They were afraid of being replaced when Catholics and Jewish people immigrated to the US before the Civil War.  Then they were afraid when Chinese and Japanese immigrants came to the West Coast to work on their railroads.  Instead of going back home, as the white men desired, these Asian immigrants stayed and voila!  Purity in danger again.  Then they were alarmed by the slaves being freed and tried to control being “replaced” with all sorts of Jim Crow laws. 

After that?  Well, then blacks began to legally acquire civil rights.  If that wasn’t bad enough, here came the women!  Women got the vote and steadily gained independence from the misogynistic men.  Meanwhile, more civil rights were passed for people of color and women.  Even “handicapped” people began to receive “equal” rights.

And then: a black President!  It doesn’t matter that former President Barack Obama is one of the best Presidents ever.  That he is black and won by large numbers was a huge affront to white supremacists.  Their heads are still in the “bad” old days, when a person of color was considered property and was considered no better than a beast.

For ages, white supremacists have believed there was a conspiracy to replace them through inter-marriage with people of color and different religions.  Throughout the years of this country, there have been times when their rage has spilled into violence and killings, murders.  The newest surge came with President Obama’s presidency. 

Another reason violent white supremacy keeps rearing their vicious, ignorant heads is because our history has been white washed from the beginning.  I was in the school system from 1960-73.  Not once did I learn anything about racial inequality and injustice in this country.  Oh, it existed elsewhere in the world, all right, but not in pure, perfect America.

Hatred and ignorance amongst voters led to a marginal victory by TFG (the former guy), surely the worst President ever.  He was worse than any of our inadequate or corrupt leaders but he sure did cater to those hate groups, his “base.”  He legitimized the actions of groups like the Proud Boys, Q-Anon followers, neo-Nazis and other hate groups.

All of that poison led to the coup attempt at the Capitol January 6, 2021.

Even though TFG is gone, his followers aren’t.  His base continues to elect Q-Anon, supremacist, conspiracy-addled and thuggish candidates to office in the House, the Senate, local & state governments and even school boards.  Some of these vile people have openly advocated for violence against Democrats and “others”, especially immigrants of color.

Because their behavior is openly condoned, white shooters like that kid in Buffalo are publishing crazy untrue manifestos, grabbing their automatics and shooting up as many “other” people as they can get away with: blacks, Muslims, Jews, Asian, gays.

The Rethuglicans are quick to deny, deflect and cast blame.  They say it’s not the gun that kills, it’s the mentally afflicted shooter.  Note:  not a white supremacist, just deranged.  Besides, the fault lies with the immigrants, doesn’t it?

Thoughts and prayers, that’s the ticket.

The House passed a bill that would prevent domestic terrorism.  The Democrats have a majority there so it passed 222-203.  Only one of the red legislators crossed party lines to vote in favor, and that was Rep. Adam Kinzinger.

It’ll be a different story in the Senate which is divided between the parties.  If all the Democrats voted together, Vice President Harris could break the tie.  The bill would pass the Senate.  No GQP/Rethug will cross the aisle because their leader (Mitch McConnell)’s agenda would be to block anything the Democrats want to pass.  There are at least 2 DINOs (Democrats In Name Only) in the Senate, Joe Manchin of WV and Krysten Sinema of AZ, who will vote against it.

And so, we just spin our wheels while the red legislators continue dismantling our fundamental rights.  We won’t be a democracy anymore, and that would be fine with the white supremacists and legislators who believe democracy and freedom don’t go together anymore.

I love my country.  I believe that freedom and democracy are twined together.  I don't want to lose that, especially because I know we can do better.

People, don’t fear examining our history because it’s painful, shameful and “uncomfortable”.  Sometimes you get a cut and although it scabs, there’s redness under it.  Maybe you can see pus.  How can you let the infection out if you don’t remove the scab?  We need to do that with our violent past.

Most of all, we need to vote.

This is the URL to the article I read.  I know the html language to create a link but it doesn’t seem to work here anymore. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/buffalo-shooting-teachers-racism-laws-rcna29500?cid=eml_nbn_20220519&user_email=13660bfeb26f12d44f84b122ca5ed8d5f1acd1ca439a25e7fe835ee487c11d11&%243p=e_sailthru&_branch_match_id=897534115306322423&utm_medium=Email%20Sailthru&_branch_referrer=H4sIAAAAAAAAAzWO7WrEIBBFn8b%2By4ejZpPCUgplXyOMOm5kjQka8fXrQgsDcziXGe52XWf%2BHIaoTaSaezzPPvj4GsT5xUCK805rRh%2BuLZWPJo7knz5iWEsK9%2B19zMQ3g0ebWmv%2F%2F8YcezNvbKvk7o90cQ7D0eXtOC4fn91FaDZKuUtofN67gLWxiQiLGkcmHsZbJn5oD2vUcYURYFR8YTCVTGmlvVVrORfTNGpHGibHwUrpZqk5gEFFdrbKcTSWG5RiQVB0czQLRSTnm

What White Supremacists Fail To Realize ...

 …is that No One appointed them the superior race.  They may have gotten that unfortunate idea from church, but they were mistaken.

When I was a little girl, I remember going to Sunday School.  My whole family attended the Islip Presbyterian Church.  My grandparents, parents, aunts & uncles went in for church service; I went to Sunday School.  It was there I saw my first picture of Jesus: blonde, blue-eyed, hands in prayer and looking blissfully up to heaven.

Imagine my surprise when, years later, I learned that Jesus was from the Middle East and was NOT a white, blue-eyed, blonde-haired man.  Even Jesus Christ Superstar got it wrong.  Through the years I went to church, I never heard about how racism and churches (all of them) were intertwined.  It was the same in school: all the history I learned was pretty well white washed.

I learned the truth out of school, reading.

Before America was even colonized, white European ministers and priests fed their congregations on the idea that they could follow Jesus and still brutalize people who were “other” and therefore “different.”  White Europeans, especially England, colonized everywhere and they found lots of “others”.  These “others” had to be subjugated and to follow the white Christian way.  Never mind the fact that “others” had civilizations and cultures and religions going back thousands of years.

In the movie 1776, we see John Adams taking umbrage at the Southern colonies because they wanted to be able to keep their slaves.  What happened to the Declaration was not quite the drama in the movie.  These white men were lawyers and businessmen and came to the conclusion that slavery might be vile but it was profitable.

Yesterday I wrote about the Know Nothings and how the present GQP is so similar.  I wrote about how white supremacy keeps rearing its ugly head over and over and over.  One reason I wrote about was the sanitization of our history, the white bread bland stuff fed to school children.  Nothing wrong here, kiddos; we’re all the good guys.

The other reason white supremacy keeps reappearing is the racist roots in churches.  I’ll admit to feeling a bit stunned when I saw a picture showing what Jesus probably looked like.  But it makes sense.  Of course, he would have dark hair, eyes and skin.  He was from the Middle East with a warm, sunny climate.  But why aren’t the churches changing their pictures of him? I’m specifically talking about churches attended by mostly white people.  Why don’t I see more white church leaders condemning what happened in Buffalo?  Why don’t we have black Jesus at Christmas?

I would like to ask a so-called Christian white supremacist: “Where exactly does it say in the Bible that white people are in control?”

You see these white supremacists with their signs that proclaim how much they love Jesus but I don’t see the evidence that they do.  Jesus said feed my people.  Shelter them.  Yet how did these groups react when Afghan refugees needed to come to the United States?  Oh, the horror!  More “others” to replace white people!

I see that supremacists will advocate violence against “others” even though Jesus said that the Greatest Commandment of all was to love God and love your neighbor as you love yourself.  “Your neighbor” is not just a White Anglo Saxon Protestant.  “Your neighbor” is Jewish, Asian, Hispanic, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, of color, gay, straight, trans, non-binary, Deaf, blind, wheelchair bound, depressed, schizophrenic, and every other variation of people born.

We are not all the same.  We should celebrate our differences and learn from each other.

All this hate being generated has led to bloodshed and death.  And here’s the thing:  no matter who or what we are, we all bleed red.

Rethuglicans didn’t waste any time with deflection and blame.  It’s not white supremacy, they said.  It’s mental illness.  It’s not the gun.  The immigrants are to blame.  Racists are eager to lap it all up.  Other supporters apparently aren’t aware enough to know that this BS has been on going for hundreds of years.  They don’t learn it in school and don’t bother to learn the truth.  The truth is painful.  They don’t want to face it so it’s just easier to blame the mentally ill killer and the stress immigrants bring that brought on the mass shooting.

So many of us are sickened by all this hate and violence against our brothers and sisters.  I really hope that we take President Biden’s words to heart.  We have to speak up.  Contact our legislators.  Write.  Speak out.  Protest.  Above all VOTE.

"The Great Replacement Theory"

You know that old saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same”?  Well, one reason that happens is because we don’t learn from our history.  We don’t learn from our history because it’s been white washed.  There is a lot of hysteria from very right wing ultra conservative and white supremacist individuals over Critical Race Theory.  It’s not taught in schools, although these conservatives believe it is, and they are hysterical about it because we learn just how unjust and cruel US history is – especially toward “others”, meaning other than  White Anglo-Saxon Protestant males.

This past Saturday, May 14, 2022, an 18 year old white boy named Payton Gendron drove about 200 miles from his home to a supermarket in Buffalo, NY.  He went there because it was in an area where people of color (blacks) lived.  He wore full armor and a helmet, and he was armed with a rifle.  He started shooting first at people in the parking lot.  Then he went inside the store and began shooting it up.  He killed 10 people and wounded 3.  Eleven of the people were black.

What made this kid carry out such a horrible massacre?  He’s a white supremacist, radicalized when he was 16.  He was “bored” during the pandemic and went onto dark websites, learning about this bullshit “replacement theory.”  It’s the paranoid belief white supremacists have that there’s a conspiracy to replace whites with minorities through intermarriages and immigration.  This kid wrote a whole long manifesto and published it online before carrying out the massacre.

If killing wasn’t enough, he wore a camera so he could live stream the slaughter as he went around shooting people down.  He also planned to go on to other places and kill more people.

One of the people he killed was the store security guard, a retired policeman.  The guard shot at this kid but was unable to stop him because of the armor the punk wore.  The guard wasn’t wearing armor and so he was killed, a hero who tried to save lives.

I might have thought to blame people like Tucker Carlson of Fox News or GQP legislators like Elise Stefanik, Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor Greene and other trumper types except that I started reading The Immortal Irishman  by Timothy Egan last week.  Almost right away I had topics in mind to write about: how some humans just seem to want to be inhumane against other humans and about the Know-Nothings, who seemed to be like today’s GQP.

And then the shooting in Buffalo with the ongoing reminder that white supremacy is rearing its very ugly head yet again.  Then I thought: oh—white supremacy = GQP = Know Nothings!  I had a five second course on the Know Nothings in school, probably high school.  They were some political party that claimed to “know nothing” was what I got out of it.  Ho hum.  Well, reading The Immortal Irishman, I’ve been learning a hell of a lot more.

The Know-Nothings were a bunch of white men pre-Civil War that were angry about all the Irish Catholics coming to the US from Ireland during the Great Hunger (potato famine).  They also didn’t care for Jewish people, other Catholics, and people of color.  They were very violent about it, too, terrorizing the immigrants, burning their churches, homes and places of businesses.  Some were killers.  And if they were asked about their activities, they’d say “I know nothing.”  Yeah.  That’s where the name came from.  The Know Nothings became a party of nationalism.  Know Nothing politicians began winning elections.  Gee, this sure does sound familiar, doesn’t it?

White supremacy is rooted right in the beginnings of this country with the earliest settlers.  Colonies were led by white men.  Women had no say in anything and people of color were slaves or servants or driven off their land (Native Americans).  White supremacy is a disease of evil and hatred.  The only way to get past it is to expose, look at it, feel the hurt and shame, make amends and then begin healing as a country.

We can’t do that because the GQP, trumpers and white supremacists don’t want to do that.  They don’t want the shame of this country to be out in the open where everyone would have to deal with it.  That’s why they are so against any kind of critical race theory (CRT) in education.  Even though it’s not taught in schools, there’s a rabid reaction among these people to stop the remote possibility of it happening.  We need it to understand the injustice and inequality still going on to this day.

I believe white supremacy goes beyond a hatred of “other” (races, religions, sexuality).  I think the white supremacists are determined to subjugate women because they’re under the mistaken belief that they are supposed to be in charge.  They want to control women’s health now but what’s next?

They’ll want to outlaw interracial marriage to keep whites “pure”.

They’ll want to outlaw all forms of birth control to keep women at home having babies.

They’ll want to outlaw same sex marriage and LGBTQ rights

They’ll want to end civil rights and other fundamental rights.

They are the Know-Nothings of this age.  I believe this is so with Tucker Carlson pushing this vile replacement theory on Fox News everyday and GQP legislators either embracing it or looking the other way.

If we’d been taught true history instead of being fed a white wash, maybe we wouldn’t be in such a mess.  Maybe we would have learned something?

Instead, we have more and more mass shootings based on racial hatred.  Charleston.  El Paso.  San Diego.  Philly.  And against the LGBTQ community, Orlando.  That’s just off the top of my head.

This can’t stand.

President Biden said, “We must all work together to address the hate that remains a stain on the soul of America.”  Not a few of us, not some of us.  All of us who believe that we all bleed red no matter our race or color and who believe that God created us all equal.

CNN just reported on the emotional speech President Biden gave in Buffalo.  CNN quoted him as saying: "White supremacy is a poison, it's a poison ... running through our body politic," Biden said, adding that silence is "complicity."

"And it's been allowed to grow and fester right before our eyes. No more, no more. We need to say as clearly and as forcefully as we can that the ideology of White supremacy has no place in America. None."

He added, "In America, evil will not win, I promise you. Hate will not prevail. White supremacy will not have the last word. The evil did come to Buffalo and it's come to all too many places, manifested in gunmen who massacred innocent people in the name of hateful and perverse ideology, rooted in fear and racism. It's taken so much."

I say again that it takes all of us who believe we are all equal to speak up.  If we look the other way, there’s just going to be another racially motivated mass shooting somewhere else.