The thing is that many, many racists are really nice people. Cathy
and I worked with over 3,000 men and women over the past 25 years.
Most of them were good, decent people. But all of them...all of us
have been raised in the same prejudicial waters. We who are White,
"middle class" and upper middle class, and even many working class
folks never give a thought as to whether they(we)are racists or
prejudiced. But we are. As strong an influence as my parents were, I
grew up surrounded by neighborhood children, teachers, preachers,
parents of my school mates, family members who thought my mother
should save her children from that bad Commie husband, and on and on.
Of course I was confused. And so are we all. Some of us wise up
early, and some of us are slow learners. But some of us simply don't
want to deal with it, and we tell ourselves that we are not political.
And we go about life being nice to other similar people, and avoiding
those folks who are "different". As my grandmother Jarvis loved to
say, "The Colored folks are alright...in their place." "Grandma," I
would ask, "Where is their place?" "Oh get out of here," she would
say. Both my grandmothers were self proclaimed "Lincoln Republicans".
Whatever that was.
But I don't expect that anything I say is going to change how another
person feels...especially people around my own age. But I did finally
decide that I might as well say what I think, so other folks
understand where I'm coming from...at that particular moment.
Carl Jarvis
On 7/3/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There's a lovely man, an older white man, who is a podiatrist, who comes to
my house every 6 weeks to care for my feet. He is a kind, gentle person.
That's about all I know about him and I know that because of the way in
which he relates to me. He's never had experience with blind people before,
but he does the best he can. I also know that he's divorced, has one adult
daughter, and he lives alone in a house, not far from where I live. He
asked
me today if I follow the news and I said that I did and I said that I don't
watch the news on TV, but that I do read a lot of articles on the internet
and that I listen to podcasts. I suspect that he doesn't know what a
podcast
is, but that's neither here nor there. He said that things seemed to be
really bad in this country, and I agreed. A bit later when we were talking
about what he is doing in his free time now that his activities are limited
by the pandemic, he said that he couldn't stand watching TV anymore because
it was so upsetting, learning about all of the statues being torn down and
all of our country's history being disrespected. I responded, "You don't
get
why that's happening, do you." And that was the end of the conversation
because he was about to leave. Something similar came up the last time he
was here when he said something about people not liking to call Columbus
Day
by its name anymore, and I said that I understand why people feel that way.
The thing is, he really doesn't get it. It's not that he's an overt racist.
It's that he's grown up with a set of beliefs about this country that he
was
taught in school and that were reinforced by the media and all of the
people
in his family and community. He is a typical white Long Island resident.
I'm
quite sure that he voted for Trump in 2016. He's the kind of voter that the
Democratic Party leadership thinks they can lure with Biden, but I wouldn't
bet any money on that.
Miriam
