I AM A RACIST?

S. Hullen in a comment on my last post called me a racist.

Racist?

I went to Hullen's profile to pay a courtesy call to her/his blog.  

There is none.  So I will have to reply on my own.

"I have a huge, HUGE problem with the things you're saying here."

Though you disagree with me and call me names, I do not have a problem with you.  I am merely saddened.

"First of all, no matter how much it offends you, black people are NOT proving their critics right or hurting their own cause by burning a flag 

which represents, to them, the system that released a man who murdered an eighteen-year-old, a system that protects white men and persecutes minorities. 

And no, they aren't mocking any sacrifice of their own people, either, as they can attest to more than any white person can. 

They weren't the ones who burned down their own church or other businesses. Those were looters and rioters, some affiliated with the KKK."

Odd, I saw no KKK hoods in the Ferguson coverage.  

The KKK did, indeed, bomb churches and killed Black, Jewish, and White Civil Rights advocates in the 60's.

My mother's People live in the world's largest concentration camp: the Rosebud Reservation.

No barb wire is needed just hundreds of miles of harsh desert.

Again, I am not offended by those burning the flag -- 

just saddened that they are acting out in rage against the flag which stands for the justice that sooner or later will visit those bigots in Ferguson.

Were you on that Grand Jury?  I was not.  I can suspect foul play, but I cannot prove it. 

The young man's parents can sue the policeman for denying their son his civil rights which will go to a Federal Court not a local one.

It is far from a perfect solution but O.J. finally received justice in the murdering of his wife in a similar fashion.

"THEY are not infected with any illness, except the wariness of having their children shot for crossing paths with the police. 

THEY are not robbing, and it is sickening that you would blame people who are peacefully protesting 

(yes, peacefully, why don't you look it up on Twitter or Facebook) for what some jerks are doing."

I know many are peacefully protesting.  The young man's father is pleading for calm.  It seems a small minority.

As a child, I was spat on, beat up, rousted by white policemen, denied access to the public swimming pool, or local Boy Scouts --

No dirty Indians allowed you see.

It hurt both physically and emotionally.  

My Lakota mother urged me not to let their hate infect me, for she assured me it was a disease.

I bought gas at a station whose sign read: NO DOGS, NO SPICS, NO INDIANS.

On the streets of New Orleans after Katrina, I lived in fear of the few remaining policemen who acted out their own rage and fear, beating and shooting some of us.  Was it fair?

No.  And it took YEARS for them to be prosecuted.  But in Putin's Russia nothing would have been thought of it.

I do not get my news from FB or Twitter whose reliability is questionable at times.  

I get my news from THE WASHINGTON POST which can hardly be called a conservative paper.

"You should be ashamed for appropriating Martin Luther King's words."

I did not know I have to be of the same race as the man whose words I quote, only of the same mind-set and have the courtesy of quoting him correctly.



 "It doesn't matter if he experienced worse. 




"They are experiencing their children getting shot in the street with no justice and that seems pretty damn protest-worthy to me. 

You please think about how you know nothing about what these people are suffering through. Neither do I, to tell the truth, but at least I realize that."

I did not say it was NOT protest-worthy. I even gave an example of WASHING the flag instead of BURNING IT.

I did not say that their suffering was not grievous. 

 I have lived long years of being the brunt of prejudice, and I have tried to honor my mother by living out her wisdom of not giving in to hate.

"You are part of the system that tells black people they should stay quiet 

and wait for white people to acknowledge their rights because any protest (unlike throwing tea into the ocean to protest taxes, I guess) is violence."

I advocate fighting a larger adversary intelligently and in a manner that does not aid your opponents ... 

and has a chance of obtaining lasting results as did Rev. King's struggle and ultimate sacrifice.




 "You are a racist, Roland."


That I disagree with senseless violence and advocate fighting bigotry with the laws already in place makes me a racist?

I think it makes me someone who does not want any more black mothers crying over slain sons or daughters.

It makes me someone who wants to see the black citizens of Ferguson to tap their outrage 

to unite to fight injustice in ways that preach nonviolence and stress fighting smart.