I'm not. Don't know how. Don't know where to start. I was born 40 miles from the infamous Central High School in Arkansas, and was just a babe when Governor Orval Faubus called out the Arkansas National Guard to prevent nine black students from going to the all-white high school. Civil Rights was just getting going full-throttle among the much-oppressed blacks of the time. We didn't call them blacks then. To do so--if ever in their presence, which we were not, we were led to believe--would result in our throats being slit with a straight razor(s). Maybe true. I still don't know. People didn't use straight razors much by then to shave with, but my grand-pa had one, and it was formidable looking to me.
The fairgrounds where the county fair took place in the fall and little league baseball was played in the spring and summer was used by both black and white folks--but not at the same time, as I recall. There were separate restrooms for each race. Its just the way it was. Just like at the movie theater, the balcony was reserved for the blacks. Black students went to school across town at Pine Street. They shopped at different stores than did we, for the most part. Yes, we were very segregated.
I seldom saw any Negroes up close. I recall seeing a black lady walk out of a store once, passing by our car, where we kids were sitting sweltering in the heat while Mom shopped for groceries. We were not allowed to go in because we hounded Mom for orange slice candies or or Carmel squares. I simply said aloud, honestly, through an open window of our 58 Ford, "Look Earn, there's a nigger." The lady smiled at me kindly. If my comment was out-of-place, it was certainly lost to me. But Ernie, my brother four years older than I, then told me that it was not a good thing to say the N-word. I didn't understand why. It is what everyone called them as for as I knew. He educated me by saying the correct word was, Ni'-gra. It was confusing, but I complied, for the most part, from then on.
My family were nomads, just like the Indians we were. Our travels probably gave us a broader outlook on such things. But this was not generally so of our peers and even our relatives. sporting black jokes along with other jokes, was great sport. I can't remember if my conscience bothered me when I participated in such activities, but I also knew an abundance of dirty-jokes to. and they didn't bother me much. although, I don't think I told them in front of adults. Black, Pollock (I didn't know what a Pollock was), Wap, Wet-back, and virtually any other group was fair game.
Old lady Thompson, for whom we mowed her large yard, called them black pecker-woods. I didn't think that was right, but she seemed convicted in her belief and I didn't give it much thought other than thinking it was a pretty funny thing for the old lady to say. She was about ninety, and she said they were just getting out of hand. I didn't know about that.
There were the so-called race riots later on in the early sixties. Hell the media was just about like it is now. There were no race riots. The first I knew of it was when I read an incredulous article in Reader's Digest. There were National Guardsmen posted at strategic places once, to see to that, as I saw once on the way to summer camp about fifty miles the other side of Little Rock. I think there may have been some bottles thrown back and forth by a few trouble-makers on both sides of the racial lines. That was the racial riots referred to. Now some bad things did happen--mostly in Tennessee, and Mississippi, and one in my own home-town. A Black service-man home on leave was beaten to death in jail for fooling around with a white woman--but I didn't know about that for a long time. There was no foul found by the courts. Bill Clinton, as governor, was instrumental in re-opening the case in the seventies, or early eighties, but there was no convictions. But we all knew the truth.
As a budding young would-be hippie with slightly long hair and a camera as stringer for news pictures, I was once told to beat it!, at the scene of a car wreck, by one of the same offending cops,then a State Trooper. I started to object, on the grounds of a free press. I was told that I would be made to eat my camera, until an older journalist intervened and told me to beat it, really kid, do what he says. so I did. Besides, the storm-trooper was pretty scary. I had had my ass kicked twice before for having slightly long hair, so I figured I'd let it go. The intolerance was not reserved for blacks.
I once heard Mom say that Martin Luther King, who was in the news a lot, was a trouble-maker. And I guess she was right. I used to like to hang out at the court house especially around election time. Arkansas politics were something else. Government was rife with graft and corruption. Ern and I listened to Ear on Arkansas, a satire of the odd politics of the state. We were pretty well-informed for kids.
There was a lot more going on in Arkansas than racial stuff during those days. Bobby Darin wrote a catchy song abound all the inmates down at tucker prison whose bones had been dug up, uncovering another awful thing that had been going on for no telling how long. Illegal gambling ran rampant in Hot Springs. It was said to be controlled by the Dixie Mafia, dating back to the days of Al Capone. Bill Clinton played lounges down there on his sax. He lived not far from Hot Springs.
Mom and Dad were products of the dust-bowl depression era. They had nearly starved to death then, and it made them humble to say the least. We were also substantially Indian. When Dad was young, being Indian was worse than being black. Dad was tough though and people tended to respect him by the time I came along. We were poor enough, but I didn't know or care until I was old enough to earn my own money. I was tough too, although I didn't really know how tough, because Dad held a high bar for toughness. But if I couldn't kick ass for some derogatory remark, I'd go get my older brothers and they would back me up sufficiently.
I was probably persecuted more than blacks were, because we were not segregated. I had a chip on my shoulder, but I didn't know it. And I didn't really care. We hunted and fished and ate out of the garden a lot. Dad's dad was a mostly Anglo-Saxon Baptist preacher and their whole family were grounds-keepers for the local golf course. They also had kept the one in Hope previously, where Bill Clinton was from. I've often thought there were family resemblances.
Anyway, Dad was small, but wiry and a scratch golfer and a sought after caddy. He and his brothers. Dad played and beat many of the professional golfers of the time. But it was not a respectable profession, or maybe he just couldn't break the race barrier himself, because he looked the part of an Indian. A good-looking, mean one. He had a look in his eyes, that put most people off a bit. I was the baby and Dad was older when I came to be, but word was, that my dad was a bad-assed young man. Dad and my brothers taught me more about blades and fighting and such stuff that I didn't realize that no black with a straight-razor had a thing on me, until much later.
1966 was the year they integrated our school. They sent eight black students as I recall, as a sort of phase-in. We whites, as I considered myself to be, because I had gray eyes, were scared to death. Seventh grade. We didn't use the N-word by then--at least not to their faces--most of the time. Three guys were good athletes, I got along well enough with them. But a fourth one was a scary, rabid trouble-maker. One of the girls was as pretty as any white girl I had ever seen. One girl was as dumb as a stump. We picked on her a lot. One girl was gigantic, and she picked on us quite a bit. Mean! What you talking about. She was surely a razor-toting woman.
They phased in a few more black students in the next three years and then they shut down Pine Street and they were all bussed over to our side of the tracks. There was still a place where all the blacks lived. I mean no disrespect, but anytime I go back there and drive down that main street, I think to myself, Nigger-town. That's what it was called. Even by the blacks. Blacks didn't attend church with whites. It simply was not allowed back then. Man.
I have always used the colloquialism slang man, as an emphatic expression; not but a few years ago, a black guy in Memphis wanted to gut me for saying, Okay man; he was way taller than me. I had a gun, or two, and a few knives. I always do. But he didn't know it. I apologized four times for any offense, assuring him that I intended no insult--but it was only when I got pissed and threatened to kill him--I was going through some anger problems then, and it was not an ideal threat, and I DO have that same look that Dad had in his eyes, that someone said was an out-law look--that he backed off and left me alone. But he did that only after raising his shirt to show me his five supposed bullet wounds in his lower right abdomen. All I could say is, I'm a better shot than that, but I don't need a gun. This was the first time I decided that political-correctness had gotten out of hand among blacks.
Let me digress. There are too-many crazy people loose on our streets today just barely hanging on the edge, to be acting the fool. This cat was mad at the world and I was mad at the world, and our worlds very nearly collided over an imagined insult that day. Blood, his or mine, or both was very nearly spilt. Lives ended or ruined forever. Over what? Some imagined slight. Piss on this word-game crap! I always do my best to treat every man with dignity. I know what's out here. The grocery clerk you slight today, may execute you tonight. It has got to stop somewhere though.
Dad had a TV shop right close to the marginal section but not quite over the tracks. We Say the aftermath of a man shot dead over a woman. all were white. No black lived beyond the tracks. That's the way it was. I was pretty gutsy as a teen, and I would go over to that side of town and visit Issac the bootlegger. He had a sofa that he folded out and kept his stuff in. And as I got to know him he would even sell me quarts of beer, cold out of the refrigerator. He paid off the cops. He lived in absolute squalor. I couldn't even understand his dialect. The last time I went there, I noticed the bony dog tied out front was deader than a rock. It made me feel bad. I never went back to Issac's.
My best friend in junior high and part of high school was a firm racist. He ran for Student Council President and I was his campaign manager, or at least a strong supporter. He won. His Mom was on the school board. His Dad was a businessman and a drunk. My friend led a public outcry when the pretty black girl was elected Home-Coming Queen. I was torn. We parted company later in high-school. I feel sure he is still a bigot, but I may be wrong. Things do change. Thank God. They really do. BTW, out of eight "bosses" that I have had in my life, two were Black, one was Polish, one was German, and one was Japanese, and the rest were white, I guess. If there is a point to this recollection, the ones I regarded as the best bosses, were: 1)Polish 2)Black/white/female 3)Black 4)Serbian 5)Irish 6)Jewish 7) Italian 8)Italian, in that order of preference. Does that mean anything? I'm not sure. But it sure doesn't mean that I hate blacks. I don't think I hate Italians either, but these two sure sucked as bosses. Hardly a scientific study, however.
I suppose some person of color would equate my observation as the stereo-typical statement sometimes heard to be offensive to people of color, "Some of my best friends are black." You can not acuse me of that. I don't have many friends these days, most of them are family, and only one of my family is black/white/Indian. I respect her, but don't know her well enough to really call her my friend. However, her dad is and always has been most consisitently, my FRIEND. But he'snot black and he is my brother, so that doesn't counbt. While speaking stereo-typically, however, my house-keeper is black. Black as an ace of spades. She is also a friend, I think. And so double-sorry Reverend Sharp, she is also witty and articulate. There. But does it really matter to anyone besides me?
We moved around quite a bit sense my dad worked for the FAA on and off. I caught a lot of flack over being from Arkansas. People called my Faubus-boy. It gave me a different perspective, but I can tell you straight up that the biggest bigots are not from the South. They are from the North and the West.
I got into a fight with one of the black guys in Athletics in my old hometown that seventh-grade year, in the dressing room. I don't remember what it was over. He was a tough sucker, and known as a fighter. He jumped across two rows of benches and I swear was horizontal in a mid-air lunge, when I smacked him up side of the head with one of the heavy metal baskets we put our clothes in while working out. That was that.
One of those first blacks became a well-known lawyer in Little Rock, one became a prison warden or so I was told. I lost track of one of them entirely, and the bad one was executed for killing three people including a police-officer. One of the girls worked at City Hall and always fixed my parking tickets thereafter. I don't know about the others.
Do I see color? Sometimes I do. Sometimes I don't--I swear--I don't sometimes. Things have changed a lot. And I don't want to say the N-word, mainly because my brother, Ernie married a black woman, who was a real piece of work; but they produced a daughter who is as fine a person and smart as anyone I know. She is liberal, but what do you expect, it is not because she is part black or part white. It is because she is a brainy academic. I know some good Mormon's who have worse reasons for being liberal--like belonging to labor unions. Mom and Dad thought FDR hung the moon. And he probably did. They were democrats. But then everyone in the south were democrats then. I am not a Republican, but I am a bit right of center. Not on race, though. I feel that inter-racial marriage can add to problems that married couples already face. I even think people ought to have the same religion, if they want to enhance their odds of staying married. But that's just my thoughts. I didn't write the book of rules. Nor did I revise it. It needs revisions far too often.
Should nigger be eradicated from our vocabulary? I guess. But I don't think Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn should be out-lawed from the library. Samuel Clements was clearly an open-minded progressive liberal and an abolitionist. He was pointing some things out that needed pointing out. But even so, free speech should mean free speech, shouldn't it? I don't want to insult anyone unnecessarily. But the bad ole days of by-gone eras are not my damned fault. I have converted to Mormonism, so I should not have cursed. Mitt Romney shouldn't have supported gay rights, nor abortion, nor an assault-weapon ban (it's just a farce)--but that in MY book. And in the USA, I have a right to say that. I try hard to be a good person. But being good by my definition, may conflict with another's. That's freedom of worship.
When I here the word nigger these days, I wince noticably. Why? Because I have been conditioned in the last 35 years or so to understand that this is inflamatory to black people. Back in the day, cultured and considerate caucasions, said, "Colored." I feel like that if a differentiation was to be made, that that's a reasonable term. It was born of southern politeness.
And since colors, or tones of black to faint tan seems to add creadence to the term. But I am, and most caucations, most people, vary widely in skin hues. Does it make me mad to be called red? No, although it was probably applied by whites to be a derogatory term. How many times did we hear in the old Western Cowboy shows, "You dirty red-skin." But I am redder than most Indians, probably because of the slight bit of fair caucasion in me. Chinese have been called Yellow-skinnned. I don't see it. Maybe they have bad livers and are jaundices. I have a bad liver and on a bad day, when I am jaundiced, what color am I? Green. No s__t!
Blacks certainly have their contingent of deragatory terms for whites, reds, yellows, latinos, etc. Do whites come apart when called honky or redneck, two of the more familiar terms used by blacks to describe whites. It's often an apt description, especially among the irish, or the fair-skinned who get sunburned. Rednecks is another one of those words that mean different things to different people. It has come to be associated with the bigoted Southerner, who is uncultured, uneducated, stupid, and generally intolerant. Often it means the so-called working-class, whom I'd be happy to be associated with, as opposed to those tht never lift a finger due to laziness. Sometimes the term simply menas countrfied, and by those sho take pride in that status, the term is okay with them. sometimes it refers to anyone driving a hopped-up pick'em up truck--and at other times only those who drive pcik-ups who have Confederate flags in them.
I guess the latter are the ones blacks are referring to. Oddly enough, as any true historian knows, our current subjectively-written united states history makes the Confederacy out to be a symbol of race. It was not much about race at all. President Lincoln actually declared The Emancipation Proclamation as a clever strategy of war because the North was losing the Great American Civil War, and he wanted to create futher chaos in the Confederate States of America. The Civil War was fought over States Rights as opposed to the superiority of a Central or Federal Government. Great debates raged for years prior to the Civil War over this matter. Some citizens felt or found it convenient for their own causes to declare that our form of government was either a Federalist Government, or a Confederacy. One thing it certainly was not ever, was a Democracy. Although a representative form of government, aq true democracy has been far too cumbersome to be practical since the time of the Ancient Greek City States such as Athens. Those were true governments.
At the beginning of the war a great many of the politicians who leaned toward the more-industrialized Northern states, favored keeping the status-quo in the states that favored a Confederacy, because under the policy set up much earlier in American history gave slaves at least a partial count toward the number of Representatives in Congress--being based on a state's total poulation.
But the term red-neck, as far as my reseach has been able to uncover, was a Northern States term used to describe Dutch immigrants mostly settling in Ohio, who were farmers and worked in the fields. Therefore, since these Dutch immigranbts tended to be fair-skinned--working in the fields long and hard, tended to leave their necks sunburned. So if one is to be entirely correct, the term red-neck is a also-caucasion racial bias toward a poor working class of agrigarians who merely wnated to work their lands, be left alone, and earn an honest living.
Virtually every race and/or nationality of original-origin, who has lived in the United States, has been a minority has at one time or another, to use an other word of modern slang, has been dis'd by the collective melded majority. EVERY ONE! I don't want to say the N-word, but I hear the just stated replacement, "N-word", has come to remind me even more strongly, of the word which it replaces. Why can't we just say person, woman, man, and leave it at that? It seems that it is sikmploy not that simple. Color apparently does matter to almost everyone.
One great American religionist of the 19th century had perhaps the best solution for the freeing of the enslaved peoples of that century was simply to allow them to return to Africa. Another solution was to create a reservation upon which they could freely live. Right! Like my American Indian kinsmen, live in to some degree to this day.
But since it was primarily rival black tribes in africa who were selling their black enemy kinsmen (or minorities) into slavery in the first place, it might not have been very fruitful to return black slaves to Africa. But then again, Africa was, and is, a very large continent. Surely there would have been enough unoccupied room found in Africa for tose who wanted to return to their homeland. HMMM . . . BUT what if they didn't want to go? My Indian kinsmen didn't want to GO either--and it was their land to begin with. They had no choice. Savery? Or ship out to a new-found freedom? Or be driven out like minority religious populations like the so-called Mormons? Maybe we'll consider that a bit later.
If Al Sharpton wants to get down on people for using racially charged names and words, he should at least define them. What does nappy-headed MEAN? I don't care for Imus's hate speech, but it went way over my head on that one. Did he know even know what it meant? I do understand Ho--sort of. It no longer means prostitute though!
But maybe we give Imus too much credit. Not that I ever even listened to him. Too liberal for me. And Sharpton shouldn't talk badly about Mormons. But that's free speech. It only reflects on him and his ignorance. Did you know, as a matter of far-grasping but related trivia-- that I now live in a county in Tennessee where the French and the English took young men and women from the various indigenous tribes, before they drove them Westward, and sold them for slaves. This was done before and during the black slave trade began, by other blacks. Now I am a Mormon Indian. That's a double-whammy.
And nothing can hold a candle to the persecution endured in America by both groups of those people. But I wasn't there. Neither was Al Sharpton. I do still get persecuted. Quite a lot. More than most blacks I'd wager. But you know what? When we lived in Bethel, Fairbanks, and Kotzebue, Alaska, and in OKC and Hobart, Oklahoma I got beat-up by Indians, Eskimos, Whites, Half-and-Multi-breeds. It's just a mean world sometimes. That's the way it is. For now, for sure.
Get over it. The United States Government are not going to give either the Mormons nor the Indians back the lands they disenfranchised from "us". But we are getting over it. I say to AL Sharpton, "get over it". You now what I heard that he said about the Abortion Bill? I done paid that.
Now this joke is both red-necked, bigoted, derisive, and funny to some people. And it was only intended to illustrate a point. Sort of like prominent black leaders saying, "While you whites were still living in caves, we were building pyramids." Both of the declarations in that last quote are at best debatable. The black Nubians, accoring to the best archeological science of this day, indicates that the Nubian blacks had about 100 years of supremacy over Egypt, after the pyramids were already built--of course the politicians may be referring to black slave-labor used by the non-black Egyptians. AND, in defence of the Gauls(White Anglo-Saxon Europeans), it has recently come to light (again), that this group had, very early, highly sophisticated societies that included the most sophisticated bankinbg system and retirement plan ever devised until the advent of the computer
So please forgive my crude joke. It was merely being used, as in the context of the rap-artists, as a means to capture and explain something. But it is an example of free speech--certainly not hate-speach. Get over it!
