The Old Jarhead http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/>

    Thursday, February 19, 2009

      I'm Tired
 http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2009/02/robert.html>

 I'll be 63 soon. Except for one semester in college when jobs
 were scarce, and a six-month period when I was between jobs, but
 job-hunting every day, I've worked, hard, since I was 18.

 ...

 I believe "a man should be judged by the content of his
 character, not by the color of his skin."

 I'm tired of being told that "race doesn't matter" in the
 post-racial world of President Obama, when it's all that matters
 in affirmative action jobs, lower college admission and
 graduation standards for minorities (harming them the most),
 government contract set-asides, tolerance for the ghetto
 culture of violence and fatherless children that hurts
 minorities more than anyone, and in the appointment of US
 Senators from Illinois.

 I think it's very cool that we have a black president and that a
 black child is doing her homework at the desk where Lincoln
 wrote the emancipation proclamation. I just wish the black
 president was Condi Rice, or someone who believes more in
 freedom and the individual and less in an all-knowing
 government.

 **************************************************************************

 Mr Hall, you are the same age I am within a few months. And we
 are both white. You were born into a world where your skin color
 gave you an instant advantage, and you are complaining about how
 that advantage is disappearing. So, let's take a look at your
 black counterpart in his 60s.

 He was raised by parents who grew up seeing bodies hanging from
 trees.

 His parents grew up in an America that spent close to literally
 half as much educating the average black student.

 His parents worked in a world where being black meant being shut
 out of a great many good jobs.

 There was a good chance his parents didn't graduate from high
 school, not because they didn't want to, but because their
 segregated school system didn't even have a 4 year high school
 for blacks.

 His father spent most of his life working at menial jobs, with
 little or no opportunity to advance, regardless of his work
 ethic or ability.

 His mother probably also worked at menial jobs, but she had an
 easier time getting jobs because black women have always been
 more tolerated by white America than black men.

 If he was lucky one of his parents got a job with the
 government, and it was good enough to be worth tolerating
 people like you complaining about his kind and their government
 jobs.

 When he went to a friend's house whose father worked for the
 government, he was amazed that the refrigerator was full of
 food.

 Perhaps his father served in the Army in WWII, in a black
 outfit, and came back to an America where he couldn't even apply
 for a lot of good jobs.

 His parents idolized Harry Truman for integrating the military.

 Your black counterpart is old enough he saw Whites only drinking
 fountains, lunch counters, and entrances.

 He grew up hearing about Emmit Till, Rosa Parks, marches and
 dogs and fire hoses, even clubs and whips. (Selma, Bloody
 Sunday)

 There was Medgar Evers, the 4 young girls in the Birmingham
 church bombings, and much more.

 He grew up in an America where the black press published the
 Negro Motorist's Green Book, a listing of places where Black
 people would get served. Think about that, needing a list of
 places you can count on being served when you travel.

 He was taught early on not to stop in small towns.

 He went to a segregated school, even after Brown vs Board of
 Education.

 While in high school he watched one of his brothers nearly die
 when a hospital turned away the black family, and they had to
 hunt for a hospital that would admit him.

 When an adult another brother died for lack of medical care
 because he didn't have insurance.

 All through this time poverty was the norm.

 Assume he went to college...

 Unless he went to a Historically Black College he was probably
 one of the few Blacks in his class.

 He could be walking down the street, and surrounded by a group
 of white students and harrassed, and intimidated. Not even
 unusual then.

 If he spoke in a less deep and resonant tone, he might even
 sound white on a telephone. So, when he called to ask about an
 apartment offered for rent, he was told it's available. When he
 showed up to see the apartment, surprise, it had been rented.

 White frats had booze parties, black frats had food and dancing
 parties. Just for your edification.

 When he graduated he found himself paid on the level of a white
 high school grad.

 He lives in a country where 5,000 black babies a year died who
 would not have had they had the advantages white babies do.

 He lives in a country where black poverty and black unemployment
 is twice that of whites.

 He lives in a country where blacks are imprisoned at twice the
 rate whites are compared to their relative crime rates,
 considering only serious crimes.

 When he had children he watched them go to still by far majority
 black schools, 20 or 30 years after Brown vs Board of Education.

 He voted for levies for his kids schools, which were still
 underfunded compared to white suburban schools.

 His son came home from high school and told him he was stopped
 by the police, because some black man was seen breaking into a
 house in the neighborhood.

 His daughter went to the mall with a group of white friends,
 and was followed around while some of the white friends were
 going around shoplifting. She realized they used her to distract
 security who would automatically suspect the honest black girl
 and not the white thieves. She didn't hang around with those
 girls anymore.

 His sons and daughter graduated from college, she found a job
 easily, the boys found nothing but part time years after
 graduation.

 He knew of white child molesters released from prison and
 finding jobs, while his clean record college grads can't.

 He voted for Obama, and lots of your readers said he did because
 Obama is black. The reality is, he would have voted for Obama
 even if Obama had been white. Maybe half the 10% of blacks who
 normally vote republican voted for Obama because he is black,
 but that's about the only 5% of blacks who voted for Obama
 because he is black.

 OTOH, that doesn't mean he didn't say, late on Nov 4, 2008, "I
 never thought I would live long enough to see this day".

 For once in his life he saw someone black elected president. You
 spent your whole life seeing whites elected president. Then you
 say it should have been a different black person, even though he
 was the only one who ever had a real chance.

 It is true a lot of white republicans voted for Obama, some
 because he is black, far more because they were so sick of Bush
 and everything to do with Bush they wanted nothing to do with
 McCain and all the others who had supported Bush.

 Your black counterpart overcame a lot more than you ever faced,
 and all you see is affirmative action. Affirmative action opened
 a lot of doors for black people. You would not have had Colin
 Powell either as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs or as Sec. of
 Education, without affirmative action.

 You would not have had Clarence Thomas on the supreme court
 without affirmative action, but no system is perfect.

 It's time to end your pity party.

 It's time to get over your feelings of entitlement.

 Oh, and every single incident cited above is taken from real
 life, gleaned from nearly a decade of listening to black stories.

 Makes you wonder how they don't all grow up hating whites,
 doesn't it?


BOB KLAHN bob.klahn{at}sev.org   http://home.toltbbs.com/bobklahn

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