The Others

           I have been thinking this morning about a challenge a friend of mine made to me to think of  the 10 things that are most important to me. with all the things going in politics here in WI and around our country I am thinking of Arizona and North Carolina as I write this One jumps to mind I wanted to share here. I have been noticing it all day in looking at the propaganda posts of all sides the cartoons and "news" posts is that the old ways are still effective. Making some one other than us makes them distant and then we can cast all our fear and negativity on them. It is dangerous in my mind to do so all propaganda has started this way all hate lives here. When someone is unlike us we distrust them because after all if they had the same information as us they would believe as we do, and if they do have the same information they must be stupid or evil wanting destruction of us all.

                 Look at the stereo types placed in cultures The Indians wanted to kill us, the Micks were rats taking over. IN our own day look what is said about people that are Arab, Black, or of Hispanic decent in the name of saving our people / protecting our borders or gay marriage. They are going to bring the destruction of us all. We will live in jejad, and the Mexicans are going to over run us, and the gays will bring about the down fall of marriage. The call for this is is that they are other than us they are not like us, their values are different so they are flawed. This has all been said before Russians in the cold war, the Irish in the turn of the century were going to over run our nation The end of slavery and Jim crow laws were going to bring down our economy and letting couples from other faiths or races marry was going to bring down the institution it self.

                               If the border thing is so true why is it always the southern border we worry about I am closer to the Canadian border both our our allies there are as many Canadian people here illegally as any other.  No one disparages the  pick up hockey team from there, or the very polite people at the coffee shop, But the very polite people buy salsa are so different? The equality of all people in our nation has done so much to enrich our lives as a people so many people from other cultures have added to us as a people not taken away.

         Couples inter marry with other religions and races (my self being one) and very live happy lives. This was not so in just the generation before us. Hundreds of thousands of Arab people live in our country and want it to do well for their children and them selves because it is their land too. That actions of a few horrible people should not taint our view of all people. Most serial killers have been white do other people need to worry that we will go all Dexter on them?
              The moment we make someone different from our selves an "other" it makes it ok to do things say things we could not do when we see them as our selves as valuable. It allows fear to rule us, fear makes a poor ruler. If someone is valuable even if they are different from us, if not only that but they can offer us a wider view of the world then we hold in our singular look at it. Giving perspective and wisdom to us that other wise would be lost showing things we would not want to see or would gloss over, makes us stronger. It takes hate out of it. How can you hate someone like you how can you hate one of us. Hate never rings perspective never brings growth it keeps one trapped. I listened to a TEd talk the other day about being wrong and the one thing that stood out to me in it is that being wrong has no feeling it feels very much like being right, till we are proven wrong. If all we do is hang out with those like us there is so much we could be wrong about and never know. I am a firm believer Love wins every time Love is stronger than hate. In Love for others there is not room for making someone other than your self they are like you human. Love can cast out fear, there is no reasoning with fear and hate. It does not make us free it enslaves us limits who are as a people: makes who we will be smaller then who we could be. Both as a nation a people and human-beings.

Paradox

I am still so distracted about the trip next year I put pictures every where on the computer it is my cover picture my screen saver my wall paper. I have gone southern mad. I am not sure what it is about the south I loved visiting there as a child the glossed over history and the dark underbelly, beautiful flowers plants air plants that add mystique, old plantations beautiful and sad with history of oppression, The beaches and wildlife, the iron work and just how different it feels from here. I love it! I am so excited to get to go there and see a house that belonged to an 3 or 4 time great grandfather of mine. Tom has been wanting to take me there since we found out the place existed. I was not sure I wanted to be do really want to see it see where they walked see where they lived what they were like.

                    It is weird to think of them being slave owners and doing horrible things that went with that. Finding my family history has been both very fun and not so much all at the same time because of finding people like that in my past where their lives were fascinating yet they were not people of great moral values. May be more a product of their times but it still feels wrong to a person who believes in freedom and honoring and respecting others so much. This will be the first time I have been back down south since I have known about this I wonder if it will change my view. AS a child the drama of gone with the wind filled my head with the dreams of a different time. I did a hell of Scarlet impression, my mom loved it got me out of a lot of tuff spots. But as I grew older and learned the history I was so embarrassed of how much I loved it. There is so much good about the south not just the food but that is high on the list. the music and richness lives there Alligators and dolphins. so much history and so much new that is good too. I don't know if I will ever get over my love of the south but I am in good company so many artists and musicians never have either. There was a part of the book I was reading with my book club that talked about paradox and how that is where interest lives spark of life, I think the south is that for me. So much beauty so much darkness so much life so many ghost tours. (Hee hee hee ) I am excited to see how I see this word as an adult and see it for the first time in my husbands eyes.

Unearthing the barried even if it is only barried an inch deep.

OK so aperantly I have been having a raceist weekend not all day but certainly quite a few. IT started with watching the help and cryin like a baby through it. Then going to dinner on Friday and having a waitress just out and out tell us her daughter started to learn the N word from her son but she thinks she is smart enough to know when to use it. Are you kidding me? You never use it you teach her the history of the word and tell her it degrades people  and the have the same talk with your son. And why are telling a table of people you hope to get a tip from that? I spent a good portion of the day yesterday reading an artical from Dr. Martian Luther King Jr. It was long but I wanted to really take my time and think through what he said, Being a man I respect and think I know too little about.
                           I grew up in a home that really did celbrate all people my parents espcialyy my Mom never used to say diragitory slirs about other people. We even had nights when we would spin the globe and land on a country and then go to the library find books on the food from there and a game they played there. We would make the dish and play the game learning about the culture of that place. A love for culture I still have today. My Mom was from a bigger city and wanted to make sure my sister and I were exposed to it because our small town had little to offer in that way. Although my parents were suprized when I started to date and then married someone from another counrty. Not sure why they were suprized but they were. I remember when I was 5 and we were out to dinner with my grandparents we were on vaction visisting them in the south. A very afluent african american couple walked in with their children and my grandfather said loudly the N word. I being all of 5 and the only one to say anything stood up and yelled at him. that is all I remeber about it. I know I wanted to apologize to the couple but not sure what happened after that I know crying was involved but I am not sure if it was because I was upset or I was back handed for making a scean. But I do know from an early age I had been taught that was not ok.

I woke up this morning with a thinking about how our society has been built on the backs of others and we all suport it knowingly or unknowingly. When our country started we stood on the back of the first nation people to this day we are grinding them into the dirt.

Then we moved on to africans we brought here as slaves. the breakign of this subjigation at least in some manner has cost us blood in the civil war and the cicle rights movment and although our treatment is better than it was it is not equal in most places.

Moving to modern day we stand on the back of not just imagrant workers as we have int he past we still do but we stand on the backs of illegal imagrant workers.

You may say to me I do not benifit from illegal workers and say all the things the right says about them. I would ask you then do you buy organic everything? If you do not the low cost of your food comes on the backs of the people you are so angery about being in this contrey. Not just the vegatable that Chaves held up and raised to the american concesness but the milk you drink the beef and chicken you eat all come at the price of modern day slavery of using illegal imegrats. People say the organic is so expencive, it is because it gives a living wage to those producing it and the people they hire.
People do not wnat tothink about what there words say let alone their actions. I see racism as self hatred turned out word. The soul knows how wrong it is but instead of rejecting the evilness of race hatred and all that goes with it people take the feeling of how ick that is in their soul and turn it outword to the people. I am not sure if this is right or not just is the only way I can wrap my mind around it. I think as a nation and responcible people we need our country and our actions to speak what we really feel. Do we really feel the little kid with so little opertunity in the getto is worth less than any other child? Do we really want to blame the people coming here for better opertunity and keep them out of the system so we can profit on their hardship? How does one live in a socity in a heart ethical way when our culture and the rules are set up in many cases to enslave and trap others? I do not know that I have all the questions even to find what needs to be done but I would like to start asking the ones I do have so maybe some one will have some of them and we can start to realize Dr. Martina Luther Kings dream. in our lives as a reality