Blog 175: Odds and Ends

We have out of town guests, so my blog is brief this week.

Odds and ends:

1. I read an excellent article. A mixed racial man wrote a very honest article about hatred between races and meeting his white mother for the first time as a young man.

What a Black man discovered when he met the White mother he never knew (msn.com)

•  Recently I wrote of the importance of the Blue Square campaign to stand up against hatred of Jews. The importance of that movement was underscored this week as I learned “Hitler was right” was tweeted over 17,000 times last year. This is a very sad statement of bigotry in America.

• I learned a new word. Recently, when I say grace I have tried to thank not just the hands that prepared the meal but all of the work that went into the growing and delivery of the food. If you think about the list, it is quite long. The Japanese have a single word – Itatakimasu — that is a thanks giving for all the labor that went into having the food available for preparation. If you break it into three parts, it is not too tough to remember ita – taki – masu.

• Last week I gave a list of McWorter’s lose-lose situations in which whites are racists if they do and racist if they don’t. I thought of a another situation that demonstrates the illogical nature of the Third Wave Antiracism movement. If a white tries to account for black behavior they are dismissed for  “Whitesplaining,” but “blacksplaining” whiteness as racism is acceptable.

McWorter Part 3.  McWorter’s second of three big questions is — “Why do they get away with it?”  His answer is brief and very clear – we are afraid. Being called a racist or white supremacist is a situation to be feared. He believes in modern America being called a racist is – “all but equivalent to being called a pedophile.”

I believe the analogy is apt. I have a good friend who has been unfairly labeled a pedophile and it is not a pleasant situation.

 He has a clever colloquial way to express the situation. “We have become a nation of smart people attesting that they ‘get it’ while peeing on themselves. “Third Wave Antiracism exploits modern Americans’ fear of being thought racist to promulgate not just antiracism, but an obsessive, self-involved, totalitarian, and utterly unnecessary cultural reprogramming. Its adherents, now situated in the most prestigious institutions in the land, preach with such contemptuous indignation that on their good days they can seem awfully ‘correct.’”

Next week the question is “Are we going to let them continue?”

Good News

Modern Day First Responders

Drone Captures Moment Lost Child Is Found (sunnyskyz.com)

Hero

7th Grader Stops School Bus From Crashing After Driver Loses Consciousness (sunnyskyz.com)

Hard to Believe but it Worked

Revolutionary Music Therapy Helps Paralyzed Man Walk and Talk Again – It ‘Unlocked the Brain’ (goodnewsnetwork.org)

Peace

Jerry