RACE QUESTIONS

"It is obvious to the most simpleminded that Lokai is of an inferior breed."
"The obvious visual evidence, Commissioner, is that he is of the same breed as yourself."
"Are you blind, Commander Spock? Well, look at me. Look at me!"
"You're black on one side and white on the other."
"I am black on the right side."
"I fail to see the significant difference."
"Lokai is white on the right side. All of his people are white on the right side."

- Bele, Spock, and Kirk, Star Trek

OK, either I'm, a terrible racist or just plain stupid. I have been trying to wade through materials from The-Powers-That-Be in my denomination that are supposed to teach us how to be less racist. That seems like a very good idea to me. The less racist (and a lot of other -ists also), the better we would all be. It seems from what I read that because I am European American (I never realized that.) I'm supposed to acknowledge that European Americans "have inherited a history that is full of honor and faithfulness as well as being full of access to power and privilege." I wish my grandmother had known that when she was taken out of school in the fifth-grade and sent to work taking care of someone's house. I don't think she felt all that powerful or privileged just because she was born in Germany, but we'll let that slide.

Now there are numerous charts and lists and things showing just how different European Americans are from "People of Color." (That's the "in" word now.) This is where I begin having problems with the whole concept because I don't think I have met any "People of Color." I have met African Americans and people from Africa who live in America and Haitians and Jamaicans and Virgin Islanders and Mexicans and Cubans and Nicaraguans and Puerto Ricans and Colombians and Filipinos and Thais and Chinese and Koreans and Vietnamese and Japanese and Arabs and Iranians and a good many people from the Ho-Chunk nation. I am very uncomfortable lumping a lot of people together in a category and saying they are "people of color" simply on the grounds that they are not Europeans in ancestry.

For that matter, I'm not so sure what a European American is. What are you if you're ancestry is Portugese but your family had been living for generations in the Cape Verde Islands which is Africa? Or what happens when those same Portugese move to Brazil? How come someone from Spain isn't a person of color but a person from Argentina is unless they speak German instead of Spanish. I don't know how they classify Italian speaking Argentines. (Wait. I just found out. Only Spanish-speaking people from South America count. Italian speaking Argentines are right out and so are most Brazilians, I guess.) What about people from Malta? How about people from Cyprus? Does it matter if you are a Greek Cypriot or a Turkish Cypriot, and for that matter if you are a Turk who lives on the European side of the Bosporus, are you a European? I was at a university once where the faculty got into a real dither about whether an Arab qualified as a "person of color" and if they did, why wasn't an Israeli also a "person of color."

My first gripe is that this is a really bad way to do sociology. But beyond that, this sticking people in categories just reinforces stereotypes. You have to know real people and learn about them not stereotype or theory. It was stupid, vile, stereotypical "theory" about people that made some people justify the horrific treatment of indigenous Americans and Africans on the grounds that they weren't really human. And after what I thought was progress, we're headed right back down the path of stereotyping again.

Let me make it clear. Racism is evil. It is rooted in two related issues–power and prejudice. The power issue is the very destructive belief that the only way a person can achieve anything is to have power over someone else. Utter nonsense, but a lot of people think it's true. Often people decide that they can have power by teaming up with a group of people so that the whole group can subjugate another group. You see the root of so much human strife. It's us against them. Now all you need is some way to determine who is us and who is them. Race is one of the ways of doing the dividing. It uses the prejudicial belief that people who are different from us are not as valuable as us to turn people against each other.

The wicked irony of racism as a power play is that it doesn't necessarily benefit the people who think they gain power. Look at Nazi Germany. Hitler came to power launching a genocidal war against "them" (Jews, Gypsies, etc.) supposedly to benefit the "Aryan Race." But the only people who benefitted were high-ranking Nazis. Were the German people living in fear of the Gestapo better off? Did the thousands of Germans who died in the war gain anything? They had been tricked!

The same terrible trick was played in the United Sates when Poor Whites were stirred up against Blacks as a way of maintaining the power of White people. But Poor Whites benefitted not one bit in the process. They gained no power. They were just as poor as before. They had been used.

Overcoming racism requires us to destroy both roots that feed it, power and prejudice. A sad thing is that some of the attempts to undo this evil actually help to cement it in place. When you say to one group that they have benefited from racism by having access to power and privilege, you confirm exactly what the racist manipulators want the group to believe. An example: the racist manipulators tell a group, "you didn't get a job because affirmative action made the company give the job to one of 'them' who is much less deserving." The message is that you don't have a job because you don't have power. But when someone else says, "you got a job that someone else didn't get because you belong to the 'privileged' group and they don't," the message is that you have a job because you do have power. Either way, power is everything, so the logical thing is to continue playing the same racist game so as to maintain power. Result: nothing changes.

How much better it would be to show people that the "power game" actually gains them nothing. It is an illusion. Only small number of manipulators gains anything. Rationally, "us" and "them" should realize that they share the same interests. When "us" and "them" work together "we" all gain. When "us" and "them" are set against each other, only a tiny few benefit. Here is where it is so necessary to overcome the divisiveness of prejudice.

We should recognize that a person's race, ethnicity, language, national origin–in short culture–play a very large role in who a person is, but knowing those things doesn't tell us everything about a person. I am pretty sure that even if I had an excellent understanding of African Americans in general, I still wouldn't know that The Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace) was nothing like the elegant Miss Grace Phoenix I knew years ago even though they were both African Americans. (For that matter, knowing what a European American is wouldn't prepare someone to know the difference between me, Baby-faced Nelson, and Nelson Rockefeller.) You've got to know a person as a person. That's the way to undo prejudice. Simply pigeon-holing someone doesn't help. It makes things worse by reaffirming differences.

I pray that racism will end. We all have to work at it to make it happen. But we have to be careful that we're not reinforcing it by thinking we know all that is important about a person when we can classify them as a "European America" or a "Person of Color." We need to know and respect people as people.

May the Lord bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

ON THE STREET [PARKING LOT] WHERE YOU LIVE

In Chicago most of the houses face the street. This is all right because, (a) everyone works to have a nice front yard, (b) the front of the houses are very attractive, (c) many of the front yards have wonderful, leafy trees, and (d) people spend most of the time in the kitchen which faces the back of the house, so they never look out the front window except when checking for the mailman. At least that's the way it was in my day.



The best placed house owned by my relatives belonged to Aunt Olga and Uncle Charlie. The back of the house faced the road and the front of the house faced the Rock River. The living room ran the entire front of the house and had numerous windows looking out at the water. There was also a very large pass through window between the kitchen and the living room so that even while you were hard at work preparing meals, you could have a fine view of the River.

Since moving to Florida, I have lived in apartments. I don't know what demon posses some architects, but many of the apartment complexes are designed so that your front window has a fine view of a parking lot–yards and yards of asphalt with vehicles all over the place. About half the apartments in my current location are like this. Ugly, ugly, ugly. Now some of the apartments face the pond which is the nicest view. All things considered, my view isn't too bad. My apartment faces the street, but there is about a eight-foot berm between me and the street. So this is what I see when I sit on my screened porch.


This is from the top of the berm toward where I live.



I sit at my table.



And look out on the world oblivious to the existence of any other person, until that %*&$#@! terrier upstairs starts yapping, on and on and on and on. You'd think it would get tired or loose its bark or something. Yap! Yap! Yap! It's noisy, but at least it isn't quite as bad as the dingbat neighbor I had once time who filled a kiddie-pool on her porch and then just dumped the water of the floor to get rid of it. Some ran out the drain and some ran down the inside of the wall and through my ceiling into my living room. Of course, I am used to floods. Every couple of years, the air conditioner drain plugs up and the water from the second-floor pours into my closet. Usually I don't notice it until I walk into the closet and the floor squishes. What a mess. I've told the management it would help if they regularly cleaned out the drains rather than wait for a disaster, but that is not going to happen. Well, into every life a little rain must fall, only in my case it comes in buckets from the second floor.

However, there's a lot to be said about the grounds here. Plenty of flowers.



And a picturesque bridge.




And secluded paths.



And ducks.



Now, if I could only discipline myself to take enough time to enjoy my surroundings.

As you journey, take time to smell the flowers, listen to the birds, and watch the scenery. May you have pleasant paths and not too many parking lots. May the Lord bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne



2198

OIL WRONG

Several times a week some wing-nut ideologue or other writes a letter to the editor blaming the current high price of gas on conservationists who have prevented drilling for oil in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). The fact that the prohibition against drilling there has been in place for 27 years under both Republican and Democratic Congresses and Presidents seems to aggravate them all the more. One local looney is advocating "civil disobedience" to force the government to change the law. This guy has the hutzpa to use Martin Luther King's demonstrations as an example of what could be accomplished. I'll lay any amount of money this ding-dong was calling Dr. King a communist agitator 40 years ago.

None of these conservatives says anything about conservation. Not one considers that every gallon of gas saved is another gallon we don't have to pay for. The lower the demand, the lower the price. That's basic economics. No, it is anathema to mention that. Our oilman VP thinks conservation is a "personal virtue," but not an issue for public policy.

About 40% of the vehicles at my apartment complex are gas-guzzling trucks, vans, or SUVs. I'm not against people owning these kinds of vehicles. Some people have large families, some need them for business, some need to carry a lot of equipment, some live in an area where the terrain requires bigger vehicles. But . . . just today I saw a woman drive her F-150 truck from the swimming pool to her apartment a few hundred yards away. During my walk to the grocery store (I walk, rather than drive), I carefully observed all the big vehicles that passed me. Eighty percent of them had only one person in them.

And of course, our current oilman president blustered and threatened to veto the law that requires average fleet standards of 31.5 mpg on vehicles by 2015. I read that he claimed that wasn't possible with our technology. Let's see. Back in 1933 Buckminster Fuller designed the Dymaxion car which could seat 11 people and got 30 mpg. You mean we haven't improved on that in the last 75 years?

One of the local talk-radio blabbermouths said it would be a wonderful for an expert from the petroleum industry to come on the air and explain why prices of gas are so high. There was a catch, however. There couldn't be anyone present to challenge what the expert said. Only one side would be presented because, of course, only one side is correct.

What don't the oilmen want people to know? Plenty. First, the ANWR can't be brought into production for at least 10 years, and even then, wouldn't reach peak production until 2027. What would that do to gas prices? Since production from ANWR would represent 1% - 2% of world production, the best estimate is that at peak production it would lower gas prices by $1.44 a barrel. That's a BARREL, not a gallon. That works out to less than 4¢ a gallon. The price of gas goes up more than that when some oil-trader sneezes.

How about the issue that we need oil self-sufficiency? Well, consider this. ANWR would produce on average about 1.2 million barrels of crude oil a day. Here's the dirty secret. The U.S. EXPORTS (that's exports as in sends to another country) just over 1 million barrels of crude a day. (I got that number from the CIA). We could gain almost as much self-sufficiency by not exporting oil as we could by drilling in ANWR. And the other dirty secret is that most of the leases the oil companies already hold on public land aren't in production. Congressman David Wu recently stated in congress: "Of the 42 million acres of Federal land currently leased by oil and gas companies, only about 12 million acres are actually being drilled to produce oil and natural gas."

The whole "Drill Here Now" campaign is smoke and mirrors. It's meant to distract people from the need for conservation and the development of alternative fuels. Every gallon of gas that isn't used is a gallon that the oil companies can't make a profit on. Any surprise we don't hear about conservation?

Oh well, enough ranting and raving for now. As you go on your life's journey, may a good part of it be on foot and on public transportation and in fuel-efficient vehicles. May the Lord bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne



2174

ARTLESS

One of my great regrets in life is that I have absolutely no artistic ability. None whatsoever. Zilch. That mess of color above represents my one attempt at oils about 35 years ago. One of my friends looked at the painting and very kindly remarked, "It's hard to paint water." Tell me about it. Needless to say, I gave away my brushes, tubes of paint, etc. The young man I gave them too, Scott, became an artist. Here's a sample of one of his murals.



I was disappointed that some hidden talent didn't emerge from my exploration in oil because I thought it might make a nice hobby in retirement. I recall President Eisenhower did some painting after he left the White House and Winston Churchill did quite a bit when he finished being Prime Minister for the last time. Ha! Who am I to compare myself to Eisenhower and Churchill?

I've never had artistic ability. I think it's a combination of not being able to see things the way an artist does and not having the hand-eye coordination to turn an imagine in my mind into a physical representation. It's doesn't matter what medium I used. I can't draw right with pencils, ink or charcoal. My clay work always came out looking like lumps of dinosaur droppings. Even my pop-sickle stick art in Vacation Bible School was a fright.

I did have one success in fourth grade with tempera on wet paper. I did a pretty nifty vase of flowers. When the teacher looked at it she gave me some advice about adding some yellow on one side, which I did a couple of times. She was quite busy helping other students, so when I brought the painting to her for the third time, she said, "Very nice. Hang it on the wall." This was the first time that ever happened to me. After art class was over, she looked at the paintings on the wall and came to my flowers. "Who did this one?" she asked. I raised my hand. "You!" she exclaimed utterly astonished.

That was my first and last successful bit of art. By eighth grade the art teacher declared I was "a waste of paint" and assigned me to clean up the art supplies after class in return for a passing grade. I wish I could have worked out a deal like that with the mechanical drawing teacher in high school. I passed by the skin of my teeth.

It's a shame that I lack any artistic talent because I enjoy looking at art so much. I have dozens of books, especially on the impressionists, that I pour over. I go to museums and galleries for exhibitions. I even own several original oil paintings and one water color. But creating something myself? No, that is never to be. I don't think about it very much, except a few weeks ago when the newspaper had drawings of school children on the back page. That's when I saw this one by a first-grader, Tianna.



Great, isn't it? I wonder if she would give me lessons? Probably not. Anyway, I'd be afraid to ask. She might tell me I'm a waste of crayons.

May the Lord bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne

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