Well, you're only 63 once in your life. Today is Cathy's turn. We
have a full day planned, including dinner out and bringing her mother
home for the weekend...to play cards. Looks like this old computer
will gather dust for a couple of days.
Oh yes, it's going to top 90 degrees here. The weatherman tells us
that it is a "heat wave". That's funny. In most of the nation, 90
degrees is just another nice summer day.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/27/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I want to say something about sighted people's perception of blindness. I
think that blind people who are very capable and can function independently
and competently, have no insight into or patience with, the responses of
sighted people, to blindness. Partly, that's because blind people have to
deal with all of the responses of sighted people which are, to say the
least, irritating. And the blind people who have never had sight, have no
comprehension of how sighted people perceive the world and what the idea of
losing sight, means to them. The blind people who have either had full
sight
or very could partial sight at one time, have managed to forget or repress
what kinds of emotional trauma and difficult learning experience they
endured, to be able to function as they do now. It's unrealistic to think
that a majority of sighted people, even many who know blind people
personally, have real understanding of what blind people can do. And the
fact that blind people vary in their capabilities, just complicates the
situation. It has always been a real challenge to go out into the world and
deal with interactions with sighted people. So much of what happens that is
upsetting to us, arises from the ignorance, fear, and anxiety of sighted
people. I had someone driving me to a medical appointment the other day.
Jill is new. She's only been doing this for a few months. I've been going
to
this medical office for more than 45 years. I gave her very specific
written
directions and, of course, I was in the car. She turned on her GPS. I think
Siri had a brain fever. Some of her directions were not quite correct like
saying, "turn right", when it should have been left. And so I had to say,
"No, that's wrong. You need to turn left here." So I'm this old blind lady
and how can poor Jill trust me rather than her trusty little computarized
device. Well, she did begin to understand that I knew what I was saying
because the road signs confirmed it. But she said, "But how do you know if
you can't see where you are?" Instead of answering that, I just told her
about my husband who could tell where he was while riding in a subway train
by the turns the train made. The experience reminded me of the sighted
person with whom I was walking who felt it necessary to tell me that the
ground we were walking on was rough. Perhaps there should be a statement
on
every website of advocacy organizations and rehab agencies which says to
sighted people, "Not every piece of information that you have, comes to you
through your eyes". Do you suppose they would ever believe that?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2015 11:03 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: "It's Not Polite to Say Nigger in
Public...."
I wish I had a dollar for every stupid and sometimes harmful thing I have
said or done. I could retire.
Academically we understand that for every action there is a reaction.
But in the real world we often go about, "doing good", and being stunned
when the whole thing backfires.
We, B Word, (Blind), are just as guilty. We try changing our label, to no
avail. We are still seen as Blind, in all that the word says to the sighted
world. We reorganize and attempt to educate our members, and at the same
time to educate the world at large. Then we are surprised by the mix of
reactions we receive. We are the "Super Blind", or the Unfortunate Blind,
or the Forgotten Blind, or the Angry Blind. But no matter what we do, we
are still confronted by what the word Blind means to a world that has
thousands of years of conditioning to believe that being blind is
tantamount
to being helpless and bungling. And even though great numbers of the B
Word
achieve a decent life, we are seen as the exception.
And so it is, and will be for long years, for Black Americans. Barak Obama
is an exception. So are the thousands and even millions of Black Americans
who go about working and contributing, and raising good decent children.
They are exceptions. exceptions to our basic conditioning of what being
Black in America, means.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/27/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yes! Yes! Yes!Chinese American family.
And I have to say that every time I hear someone say "the N word" when
purporting to quote a racist but feeling that if they utter the actual
word "nigger" which is the word that the racist used, it drives me
crazy. Amy Goodman does it all the time on Democracy Now. So does
everyone else. What is accomplished by not saying the actual word,
I'll never know. But I have ranted about this before on this list when
the phrase involved, is mentally retarded as opposed to cognitively
impaired or developmentally disabled. We all began using what was
supposed to be the socially acceptable term, Native Americans, until I
discovered from reading and listening to interviews that the people to
whom we refer, wish to be called American Indians. In our zeal to
undo the sins of the past, well of the present as well, we can act
very foolishly. Way back when white Americans began adopting children
from Korea in the 50's, they pretended that race didn't exist. The
initial adoptive parents tended to be white Evangelical Christians who
lived in the West and Midwest. Some of the children whom they adopted
had identity problems because their country of origin and racial
identity were treated as if they were nonexistent. Some did not.
Practises in international adoption of children who aaren't white,
changed after the black consciousness movements of the late 60's
although no one worried much about the cultural identity of children
from Russia or Romania. So by the time people began adopting children
from China in the 90's, a whole set of rules and practises were
developed by these adoptive parents, most of whom initially, came from
the east and west coasts, and were highly educated and financially
well off.
People dragged their children, who had come here as infants, to
Chinese language schools and Chinese culture camps. They hired Chinese
babysitters, sometimes to the extreme distress of their babies and
toddlers. They organized trips back to visit China, to visit the
orphanages from which the children came originally. They learned to
cook Chinese food. For some children, this worked out. For many, it
did not and I could take hours to explain why. What brought this
situation to mind is a book I found on Bookshare called, The Year We
Lost Her by Kathryn Ma, a novel about a girl adopted from China into a
audience.
But I bring this up to illustrate Carl's point more fully and to say
that the guilt and well meaning gestures of people who consider
themselves to be liberal and fair minded, can sometimes lead them to
do stupid and even harmful things.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Saturday, June 27, 2015 1:10 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: "It's Not Polite to Say Nigger in
Public...."
First of all, I'd been thinking for some time now that Pat Boone was
dead.
I had to quickly resurrect him. Born June 1, 1934, Boone is about 11
and a half months older than me. But we are millions of light years
apart. The difference between his wealth and mine would be enough.
But that is not the million of light years I am referring to. It is
the difference in how each of us see our fellow human beings.
But that's not what I set out to talk about. Pat Boone can talk for
himself.
I want to focus on our strange habit of creating a bunch of symbols,
declaring that they have a certain meaning and then keep changing what
that meaning really means.
Take the word Gay, for example. My mother loved her gay coat. It was
a multicolored cloth coat. Mother took good care of her things,
having been a young mother during the Great Depression. So that coat
lasted her for many years. But she was greatly disturbed when she
mentioned to some friends that she was wearing her Gay Coat. They
quietly advised her not to say that word. "Gay?" mother asked.
"What's wrong with Gay?"
Tinker Bell was a little Fairy. Enough said about that. A fagot
referred to a young boy who gathered fire sticks in the forests of
Europe. Later the word was shortened to Fag, meaning a cigarette.
Sort of a short fire stick.
But when I was teaching Braille, one of my students, a young Lesbian,
objected violently to the word Fag in her Braille lesson book.
Naturally, knowing her to be a bright and understanding person, I
believed I could explain the meaning of the word back when the Braille
lesson book was put together. 1960. But it would not do. So I took
my handy Braille eraser and she and I rubbed out one Braille dot from
the "F", turning it into a "B", and the word became, Bag. I did not
tell my student that in the storage room I had an entire shelf of the
identical Braille books.
For me, the hardest word to push out of my mouth was, "Fuck". Four
letters succinctly defining a very fundamental activity. But we
decided that Fuck was a dirty word, while copulate was much "nicer".
Both describe the same activity. But although I write the word here,
I would most likely never say it in a presentation before a mixed
Nigger is a word that was part of the language of the Old South. ThatBorder.
Old South still exists in many places, and not all of them South of the
But I have to tell you, I am damned sick and fucking tired of saying,exists.
"The N Word". As if that makes it just hunky Dorey.
We used to say, Negroes. But we changed to Blacks as the word of
choice by Negroes. I have no idea if that's true or not. My grandma
Jarvis, born in Missouri back in 1874, said, "Niggrah". She talked
about her "Colored wet nurse". And the Black Mammy who cooked for the
family. And the little Pica ninnies, the little children who lived on
the plantation. Did I mention that my grandma Jarvis was raised on a
plantation? And her father had two or three slaves prior to the Civil
War. My own great grandfather Tom Hickman. Judged to be a fair and
kind man, by his family and the other white neighbors. But no one
ever wrote down what his slaves thought him to be. He owned other
human beings, for Gods Sake! And yet, my grandma adored her dad. She
followed him about the plantation, avoiding the Women's work inside
the house. Grandma ended up living on an old age pension, but always
believed she was better than the Niggrahs she lived among.
The word Niggrah was not what made my grandma think the way she did.
Force her to say, "Black People", and she would continue to think of
them as she had been trained to think of them back in the 1880's as a
young girl.
I know blind folk who avoid the word, "blind". But you know what?
They are just as blind as if they used the word. And the entire world
sees them as blind.
While I do not believe we can easily change people's attitudes, that
is the place we must work. And if stopping our use of certain words
or tearing down old rags of Confederate dogma helps, let's do it. But
only as a starting place.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/26/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Boardman writes: "An unintendedly brilliant example of self-induced
moral blindness to racist behavior comes from Pat Boone, the
octogenarian multi-millionaire musician whose fortune was built on
racist exploitation of black music in a racist music industry devoted
to catering to America's white racism."
CNN discusses President Obama's use of the N-word. (photo: CNN)
"It's Not Polite to Say Nigger in Public...."
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
26 June 15
"Racism, we are not cured of it. And, and, and it's not just a matter
of, uh, it not being polite to say nigger in public. That's not the
measure of whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter
of overt discrimination. Societies don't, overnight, completely erase
everything that happened two to three hundred years prior."
- President Obama, June 22,
on Marc Maron podcast
This piece will end with a brief personal experience I had recently,
an experience that illuminates what the President is saying and
raises the question of whether it's polite to say "nigger" in
private. My experience underscores that what the President is saying
is obviously and profoundly true, and has been since long before he
was born. And my recent experience illustrates the abiding armor of
denial and determined ignorance that allows people to enjoy the
advantages of a racist society without having to acknowledge that it
exists.An unintendedly brilliant example of self-induced moral blindness torole of the free press as a guardian of liberty."
racist behavior comes from Pat Boone, the octogenarian
multi-millionaire musician whose fortune was built on racist
exploitation of black music in a racist music industry devoted to
catering to America's white racism. Boone's fundamentalist Christian
self-delusions about race appeared on WND (aka WorldNetDaily),
self-described as "an independent news company dedicated to
uncompromising journalism, seeking truth and justice and revitalizing
the
According to Boone, it's President Obama's fault for not preachinghaving a "racist element,"
that "racial divides and prejudice had greatly diminished and that
our society was truly becoming colorblind." Having said that, Boone
provided a white racist analysis of the killing of two black
children, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, unarmed and shot by
reckless white men. As for Charleston, where an avowed white racist
killed nine black people in church in hope of starting a race war,
Boone explains it away as
but being "inspired by Satan"! While blaming Obama for "erasing" God"nigger"
from public life, Boone pleads for a return to America as a Christian
nation - but he does not mention that American Christianity was a
powerful defender of American slavery.
This mode of thinking, or rather this mode of avoiding real thought,
is endemic to a large section of the American population and has
been, in one form or another, since before there was a United States.
How else do you get a Constitution in which slaves don't get to vote,
but do get counted as three-fifths of a person in order to inflate
Congressional representation of slave owners? Orwell called it
Doublethink in "1984," but it's a much older American tradition.
One form of denial is feigned shock that "Obama said the N-word!"
Assorted television babble-heads on CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, Fox and
elsewhere got all a-twitter over the President's saying "nigger,"
which they sanitized to "the N-word" with such characterizations as
"extremely direct language"
and "shock value" and "jarring comment" and "electric" and "one of
the most charged racial slurs in the English language" - all of which
are projections of the commentators' subjectivity. They are not at
all accurate descriptions of what the President said, which was
detached, measured, analytical, and precisely accurate. But who wants
to hear that on TV? As Wolf Blitzer put it on CNN, "Many people may
find this offensive." CNN's black legal analyst said the word should
never be used. In sharp disagreement, CNN black anchor Don Lemon
articulately defended adult conversation about difficult issues on
television (for example, on Democracy NOW).
By paying attention only to the President's use of the word "nigger"
and not to his much broader context, television's purveyors of
conventional wisdom manage to deny the relevance of the President's
larger point: that racism has been endemic to American (and
pre-American) culture for some 300 years and that racist thinking
remains alive and well in many forms. Focusing on the President's use
of "nigger" as an excuse not to talk about racism in America is,
arguably, just another form of racism in America.
Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show reduced the TV babble to its
ultimate Fox-accusing absurdity, President Obama saying "nigger" in a
State of the Union speech. Wilmore also played clips of other
presidents saying "nigger,"
albeit in a less thoughtful way than Obama:
. Nixon: "Our niggers are better than their niggers"
. LBJ: "there's more niggers voting there than white folks"
Wilmore also indicated that, while there's apparently no record of
presidents like Washington or Jefferson saying "nigger," they did own
one or more.
Another effect of all the empty blather about the President saying
is to distract from the empty gestures about various Confederate flags.
American devotion to the Confederate flag is, literally, insane or
dishonest or hypocritical, or all three, or pick your word. Why? All
Confederate flags are symbols of treason against the United States of
America, and somehow it's OK to celebrate them and merchandise them
and pretend they're something they never were. The Confederacy
committed treason as defined by the Constitution and too many people
would do it all over again, for the same racist reasons.
What does one young South Carolinian tell us about America today?
So here's the personal experience I mentioned. Over the weekend of
June 20-21, I was at a family wedding in northern Maryland. The
Sunday before Obama's podcast became public, I was at a post-wedding
cookout with maybe 20 people of various ages, many in their twenties.
It was a definitely non-political social gathering.
One young man in his mid-twenties was there as the new beau of the
bride's sister. He was pleasant, attractive, well-spoken, polite, and
had grown up in South Carolina. During our first conversation with
several other people in the kitchen, David (not his real name) spoke
enthusiastically of his work with horses and Brahma cattle. He
described a roping gone wrong when he was forced to jump his horse
over a fallen Brahma cow, whose horn scored his horse's underbelly.
He seemed comfortable and at ease as the conversation shifted from
person to person. He gave no hint of any socially disruptive opinions
or behavior. But he was drinking.
Some time later I wandered into a conversation David was having with
the bride's mother on the screen porch. This conversation was already
political.
David was complaining about Jon Stewart on The Daily Show for calling
out Charleston for having streets named after Civil War generals and
otherwise ridiculing South Carolina's history. Stewart was about to
start a race war, David argued, without mentioning Dylann Roof
killing nine people. David said he was concerned about a race war
because someone had already shot at the Confederate flag at the
Capitol. David said we should just let history be history, and
besides some people treated their slaves well.
By the time our hostess came into this conversation, David was
talking about Obama being Kenyan and like that. Our hostess told him
firmly not to talk like that in her house. When he didn't seem to get
the point, I leaned in and suggested that maybe we should both be quiet.
He admitted he'd been drinking, but throughout this conversation he
remained polite, friendly, quiet, apparently sincere in beliefs he
didn't seem to think anyone would find unusual. He came across as a
basically sweet kid.
The last thing he said to me, before others took him swimming, he
said with the same earnest pleasantness. He said, "I don't hate
niggers."
________________________________________
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio,
TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the
Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of
America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine,
and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
valid.
CNN discusses President Obama's use of the N-word. (photo: CNN)
http://readersupportednews.org/http://readersupportednews.org/
"It's Not Polite to Say Nigger in Public...."
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
26 June 15
"Racism, we are not cured of it. And, and, and it's not just a matter
of, uh, it not being polite to say nigger in public. That's not the
measure of whether racism still exists or not. It's not just a matter
of overt discrimination. Societies don't, overnight, completely erase
everything that happened two to three hundred years prior."
- President Obama, June 22,
on Marc Maron podcast
his piece will end with a brief personal experience I had recently,
an experience that illuminates what the President is saying and
raises the question of whether it's polite to say "nigger" in
private. My experience underscores that what the President is saying
is obviously and profoundly true, and has been since long before he
was born. And my recent experience illustrates the abiding armor of
denial and determined ignorance that allows people to enjoy the
advantages of a racist society without having to acknowledge that it
An unintendedly brilliant example of self-induced moral blindness torole of the free press as a guardian of liberty."
racist behavior comes from Pat Boone, the octogenarian
multi-millionaire musician whose fortune was built on racist
exploitation of black music in a racist music industry devoted to
catering to America's white racism. Boone's fundamentalist Christian
self-delusions about race appeared on WND (aka WorldNetDaily),
self-described as "an independent news company dedicated to
uncompromising journalism, seeking truth and justice and revitalizing
the
According to Boone, it's President Obama's fault for not preachinghaving a "racist element,"
that "racial divides and prejudice had greatly diminished and that
our society was truly becoming colorblind." Having said that, Boone
provided a white racist analysis of the killing of two black
children, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, unarmed and shot by
reckless white men. As for Charleston, where an avowed white racist
killed nine black people in church in hope of starting a race war,
Boone explains it away as
but being "inspired by Satan"! While blaming Obama for "erasing" God"nigger"
from public life, Boone pleads for a return to America as a Christian
nation - but he does not mention that American Christianity was a
powerful defender of American slavery.
This mode of thinking, or rather this mode of avoiding real thought,
is endemic to a large section of the American population and has
been, in one form or another, since before there was a United States.
How else do you get a Constitution in which slaves don't get to vote,
but do get counted as three-fifths of a person in order to inflate
Congressional representation of slave owners? Orwell called it
Doublethink in "1984," but it's a much older American tradition.
One form of denial is feigned shock that "Obama said the N-word!"
Assorted television babble-heads on CNN, NBC, MSNBC, CBS, Fox and
elsewhere got all a-twitter over the President's saying "nigger,"
which they sanitized to "the N-word" with such characterizations as
"extremely direct language"
and "shock value" and "jarring comment" and "electric" and "one of
the most charged racial slurs in the English language" - all of which
are projections of the commentators' subjectivity. They are not at
all accurate descriptions of what the President said, which was
detached, measured, analytical, and precisely accurate. But who wants
to hear that on TV? As Wolf Blitzer put it on CNN, "Many people may
find this offensive." CNN's black legal analyst said the word should
never be used. In sharp disagreement, CNN black anchor Don Lemon
articulately defended adult conversation about difficult issues on
television (for example, on Democracy NOW).
By paying attention only to the President's use of the word "nigger"
and not to his much broader context, television's purveyors of
conventional wisdom manage to deny the relevance of the President's
larger point: that racism has been endemic to American (and
pre-American) culture for some 300 years and that racist thinking
remains alive and well in many forms. Focusing on the President's use
of "nigger" as an excuse not to talk about racism in America is,
arguably, just another form of racism in America.
Larry Wilmore on The Nightly Show reduced the TV babble to its
ultimate Fox-accusing absurdity, President Obama saying "nigger" in a
State of the Union speech. Wilmore also played clips of other
presidents saying "nigger,"
albeit in a less thoughtful way than Obama:
. Nixon: "Our niggers are better than their niggers"
. LBJ: "there's more niggers voting there than white folks"
Wilmore also indicated that, while there's apparently no record of
presidents like Washington or Jefferson saying "nigger," they did own
one or more.
Another effect of all the empty blather about the President saying
is to distract from the empty gestures about various Confederate flags.
American devotion to the Confederate flag is, literally, insane or
dishonest or hypocritical, or all three, or pick your word. Why? All
Confederate flags are symbols of treason against the United States of
America, and somehow it's OK to celebrate them and merchandise them
and pretend they're something they never were. The Confederacy
committed treason as defined by the Constitution and too many people
would do it all over again, for the same racist reasons.
What does one young South Carolinian tell us about America today?
So here's the personal experience I mentioned. Over the weekend of
June 20-21, I was at a family wedding in northern Maryland. The
Sunday before Obama's podcast became public, I was at a post-wedding
cookout with maybe 20 people of various ages, many in their twenties.
It was a definitely non-political social gathering.
One young man in his mid-twenties was there as the new beau of the
bride's sister. He was pleasant, attractive, well-spoken, polite, and
had grown up in South Carolina. During our first conversation with
several other people in the kitchen, David (not his real name) spoke
enthusiastically of his work with horses and Brahma cattle. He
described a roping gone wrong when he was forced to jump his horse
over a fallen Brahma cow, whose horn scored his horse's underbelly.
He seemed comfortable and at ease as the conversation shifted from
person to person. He gave no hint of any socially disruptive opinions
or behavior. But he was drinking.
Some time later I wandered into a conversation David was having with
the bride's mother on the screen porch. This conversation was already
political.
David was complaining about Jon Stewart on The Daily Show for calling
out Charleston for having streets named after Civil War generals and
otherwise ridiculing South Carolina's history. Stewart was about to
start a race war, David argued, without mentioning Dylann Roof
killing nine people. David said he was concerned about a race war
because someone had already shot at the Confederate flag at the
Capitol. David said we should just let history be history, and
besides some people treated their slaves well.
By the time our hostess came into this conversation, David was
talking about Obama being Kenyan and like that. Our hostess told him
firmly not to talk like that in her house. When he didn't seem to get
the point, I leaned in and suggested that maybe we should both be quiet.
He admitted he'd been drinking, but throughout this conversation he
remained polite, friendly, quiet, apparently sincere in beliefs he
didn't seem to think anyone would find unusual. He came across as a
basically sweet kid.
The last thing he said to me, before others took him swimming, he
said with the same earnest pleasantness. He said, "I don't hate
niggers."
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience in theatre, radio,
TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20 years in the
Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers Guild of
America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life magazine,
and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work.
Permission
to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader
Supported News.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
