Where are the black friends?

[thesummerqueen]

Parse that shit, lol.

This made me laugh pretty hard. Now I have asthma problems.

My dad is like this - pretty fuckin' racist (and classist, for all his redneck Romanian peasant roots) and yet all throughout most of my parents' marriage, and a good portion of his Army career, one of the two friends he stuck with was black. They got shipped overseas together, lived there together, the two of them would take all the kids fishing together, etc. I remember them sitting on the dock kvetching about wives 'coddling' us kids (by coddling, I now know meant 'keeping us alive' vs their 'shit yeah, go try that' attitudes, lol).

The boys on the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast talked about this a lot too, considering good ol' HP's racist and classist leanings. The funny thing about racists is that they're always shitty to a point, and then they "know" someone who's the sole exception. Xenophobia seems to be really just a fear of "the other" and it doesn't always matter what the race of the other person is - and 60 years ago white people were being shitty to other whites as well. But the minute they get to know that one black guy, or that one gay guy, or whatever... Well, then THAT one dude isn't so bad. It's just all the rest, who they aren't personally acquainted with. The Podcast guys thought it was hysterical to read all the terrible things HP wrote, yet see the contradictions as he included an elderly black couple he was friends with into one of his novellas in a kindly fashion, or the fact that he married an Eastern European Jew (I mean, can you blame him...we're awesome), or the fact that his best friend Sam Loveman was gay, etc.

Hell, that's why people will often say, upon finding out that someone is an atheist, "oh but you seem so nice!" Damn stereotypes.

[Joods]

Skin is skin and no matter the color, we ALL have red blood underneath.

Why can't people understand that? Honestly, is it really that difficult to treat your fellow humans with some dignity, regardless of the color of their skin?

[The Grand Nudger]

Heheh, ikr.  My grandfather has loved me more than he hated a darker man, easily, for all of his life.  He raised me like I was his son because I was th first male child in my family in two generations (he himself only had one brother, who died when he was very, very young).  He had to deal with the fact that I was surrounded by jews, and hispanics, and worse....that every girl I brought home was nemed Rebecca, Isabella, Angel.  

He knew, ofc, that he wasn't...... exactly, "white" himself.  I like to think that my siblings and I had a softening effect, that his friendship with his token black had a softening effect.  I know, though, that this isn't true.  When I was a -very- small child, he handed me a coke bottle full of gasoline from the pup tank on our evinrude..., lit with a piece of flannel from his shirt...and had me toss it, from our prow, into the catboat of some darkies who were fishing "his" spot....smack dab in the middle of a 400 acre lake.  I think they were the only other boat on the lake that morning.  If there was anyone else there, I can't...for the life of me, remember seeing them.

(lol, I'm honestly considering recording this shit, so yall can hear this in my quiet, country, baritone. I'm trying to get my grandparents to tell these stories on record before they die too...it' s a dream of mine, to write fact that people will automatically assume to be fiction, because it's both horrible and undeniably, joyously.... human. My well runs uncommonly deep, and I have my racist grandparents to thank for it.)

[Drich]

My business mentor is black. (the guy I go to for ethically related business questions.)

The best man at my wedding was black. (best friend literally)

His dad/The preacher who did the wedding is black, he was also the scholar who taught me the basics of exegetical study (he is the reason I can be here and throw down b, c, v and educate you knot heads on some Jesus. (He looked like Jax from the mortal kombat series)

Plus there are about 1/2 a dozen honorable mentions. (Singing coach, her daughter [went out on the group dating thing I spoke of a few times] two of my best employees, and various other co workers I had over the years.)

This doesn't include the 'project people'/People I helped, did work for over the years (The hundreds of inner city kids, the food pantry people, and on and on and on. Literally 1/2 our church is black. Never once did i ever feel a seperation between myself and anyone in the black community. Now after this president's administration I do.

I have never changed my view on the police and for the most part the people I know have not either black or white. but I have noticed a sharp divide forming in the church. from those who feel entitled or want special dispensation/to be treated as if they were above the law.

I grew up around poor black people all my life and I've only ever heard a cry for equality. Now the cry has turned to dominance/segregation. A segregation that favors black people. I've even lost a few face book friends over it, why? because As I said in the beginning of my other thread these feeling of 'superiority/segregation' is what the confederacy was born out of..

Do the black people I know agree with me? no not always, but the fact of the matter is they know where I stand, and I make no apology for it.

treated everyone as an equal until they gave me reason not to.. F-them or anyone else who demands to be treated better. Earn it. Show me you are a respectable man and i will treat you as such. demand it and I will not want to have anything to do with you.

As far as the proof? In Nov I am scheduled to go to Dallas and meet my buddy and then to Austin to meet his parents then we are planning a road trip through the grand canyon to end in San Francisco i believe. maybe I'll post some pics..

I do have some pics of the intercity ministries I did as a young man. I'll see if I can dig some of that stuff out.

[The Grand Nudger]

There goes the thread. Don't you have a sinner to chastise, somewhere, for something?

[vorlon13]

Skin is skin and no matter the color, we ALL have red blood underneath.

Why can't people understand that? Honestly, is it really that difficult to treat your fellow humans with some dignity, regardless of the color of their skin?

Indeed.

Let's discriminate on something that really does matter.


Penis size.

[Thumpalumpacus]

So, I guess I can say I'm not a racist (at least, I don't think I am), but I can't claim to have black friends to prove it.

I've often wondered why racists think that having black friends -could- prove they weren;t racists.  My grandfather is as racist a person as anyone here has ever met, probably quite a bit more racist than anyone some of you are ever likely to meet.  

-and yet, for 30 years, his constant fishing companion.....has been an elderly black man who calls him boss with a less-than-subtle contempting treble in his voice.  The irony, is that this man is one of my grandfathers remaining, living, friends...and looks set to outlive his other equally racist, white, friend hands down.  Sometime, in the not too distant future, they will be the sole survivors of their peers, just the two of them (both racist as hell), sitting in a little 8 foot john boat for 15+ hours a day, everyday....until they both finally just give up and die of sunstroke.

Parse that shit, lol.

Yeah, my dad was as racist as the day was long, and yet had his minority buddies, of all stripes, over for beer and barbecue often enough. Funny thing -- when my sis told him she was marrying a black man, he refused to give her away at her wedding; said duty I was happy to perform. The issue cemented my mom's insistent rejection of his racism in my mind, because to me he was rejecting the only other person who'd came out of the same womb as I had.

Odd how it works out, how racists separate things in their own minds, and then unwittingly pass on lessons they never intended to impart. Closest thing to karma I can think of, y'know?

[Thumpalumpacus]

lol, "honorable mentions". What an honor, Drich regards you as one of the good ones.

[The Grand Nudger]

Ya now the day aint long for yankees? They have no idea what we mean when we say that.

Then the north tells us that we're the retrogrades, who don't "get" racism.  

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I don't have any 'black friends'. I have friends who come in an assortment of skin tones.

But I understand what BQ was getting at, and it isn't just black. People who continually prattle on that, 'Some of my best friends are [enter appropriate ethnicity/religion/geographic origin here]' never seem to be seen in company with members of whatever group is under discussion.

Puts me in mind of the time when someone accused Harlan Ellison of being anti-Semitic. His reply: 'I'm sorry you feel that way - some of my best friends are Jewish. Like my mother. My father. Me.'

Boru