The Way We Are

Coming back today from my late-afternoon read in the local park - where there was a big African-American contingent celebrating one of their''s birthday, and an equally big Mexican-American (I presume the hyphenation) crowd, celebrating something-or-other that involved taking baseball-bat swings at a breakable (preferably made of straw; this one looked like being made of porcelain; not a good idea) effigy of a young woman (not a good idea either; how about a burro??  Or is that politically incorrect???), hanging variably from a tree (I know about pinatas, from my high school Spanish class days, but this isn't Cinco de Mayo - ???) - I passed a young black woman walking her dog.  (This is a 'cosmopolitan' neighborhood.)  She smiled a hello at me, and I smiled one back to her.  Pleasant young woman, I thought.  And found myself thinking also, as we went on our separate ways, a What if:

What if she had stopped walking by me and said, "May I ask you something?'"

And I would have replied, "Sure.'"

And she had said: "What do you think of me?"

And I would have smiled, and replied, "You mean as a black young woman."  

And she would have said, pleasantly (for that was the vibe that she was giving off), "Yes."

And I would have 'stopped and thought' (as I have done), and replied, 'It's not really a big deal to me.  Too many blacks and whites, I feel, make an issue of it.  To me, we're both members of the human family.  Moving on our paths in life.  Which just happened for us to cross here, now."

And it is here that I wonder: Would I have gone on, and said - dared to go on and say: 'Actually, to me we're brothers and sisters of the same Creator.  Who wishes us well, as we figure all these sorts of things out down here. And then move on.  To our common destination.  Which is the return to our Source.  Which is going on, in a big way, as we speak.'  

To say:

How do we bridge the racial gaps that separate us? 

The age gaps. I think we can handle.   And the nationality gaps.  As long as there is goodwill on both sides of the equation.1   But I am a blond-haired (or at least used to be.  It still shows somewhat; I think), blue-eyed male, of a certain age; how can I possibly come to know and feel - presume, to know and feel - her pain??

Maybe she doesn't feel it so much, now, with the passing of time that there has been since the bad old days of segregation.2  But what has she been taught, by her parents, and/or her schooling, that has left a mark on her, that is not visible to the naked eye??

I looked up the Wikipedia take on Malcolm X yesterday, to check on a fact or two.  Leaving that reason aside, I was stunned by his life story.  Born Malcolm Little, the fourth of seven children, he had to experience constantly 'white supremacy' violence against his father and his father's brothers (including one who was lynched), because of his father's being a local (this was in Nebraska to start with, and then Lansing, Michigan) leader of a 'Negro Improvement Association' that "inculcated self-reliance and black pride" - the qualities that would later draw Malcolm to the Nation of Islam.3  But it took a bit of doing to get there.  In Lansing, as indicated, his family "was frequently harassed by the Black Legion, a while supremacist group; when the family home burned in 1929, (his father) accused the Black Legion".  When Malcolm was six, his father was killed by a streetcar (under somewhat suspicious circumstances).  His mother got a little bit of insurance money out of it, but  it wasn't enough to cover living expenses for the family; "Louise Little rented out part of her garden, and her sons hunted game" (this was in the beginning of the '30s).  Life was hard on his mom, and "she had a nervous breakdown and was committed" to a State hospital, the children then being separated and sent to various foster homes.  Malcolm went off the rails from there, engaging in petty crime and an all-around sordid life, that wound him up in state prison (in Massachusetts by then), where he came across The Nation of Islam teachings of Elijah Muhammad, and his life took a turn from that influence.  

I could go on; but I repeat, to summarize, about walking in others' shoes: How can I possibly come to know and feel that young black woman's pain???  

Except through the One of which we are all a part.

And therein lies the key to our future - all of us, on this sorely-treated planet; now undergoing Its own ascension, out of dark times, and entering the light of a New Day.

In which we can all bathe.  And by which we can all move further on our mutual path to the Ultimate Light; and there experience total and complete Unity once again.

When all of our tears will be a long forgotten memory.  Along with our illusory sense of separation; from one another.  And from our mutual Source. 

Maybe the next time, I'll ask the question.

If I dare to.

Dare, that is, to bridge the gap myself.  And not expect The Other to do it for me.

(However, being a blue-eyed devil to some blacks, I have some excuse to hold back, and let them make the first move.........)

Anyway: Thus endeth the sermon for this Sunday.  From this human-templated soul, struggling evermore towards the Light, that encompasses us all, for being in us all.

And that means in you too, there, currently encased in Darkness.  To say: Cut off - personally cut off - from the Light, that permeates even your staunch stand for your individuality.  Your stand may have some merit.  But it needs to give way, now, to The Return that is going on.

Else you will be left behind.

And I wouldn't wish that for any member of my family.

Even those who have spent time in the Dark.

You have something to offer, as well.

So: Come out.

The Way is open.  Even to, and for, you.

And that's a promise.

That we have been given.

By as high as you could ever hope to go.

On your own.

Or with the rest of Us.   

---

footnotes:

1 I find myself bristling involuntarily whenever I sense that some particular Mexicans are trying to take over MY country.  Having been brainwashed by psychological experts with a political agenda to think that El Gringo stole the land from their ancestors, and now that they have some political clout, they're going to take it back. Conveniently forgetting, or simply ignoring, the fact that most of them are half-ancestors of the Spaniards who came into their other half-ancestors' part of the world many centuries ago, and left their mark, in many ways, including on their own makeup.  But I digress.  A bit.  

2 I wish - I so wish - that the 'Civil Rights' thing had come about organically; people sorting these sorts of things out themselves.  Like the Irish, 'fighting' their way further out of prospects in life than of just being cops on the beat in the New England states, ultimately to the office of the presidency of the United States.  

     Granted, blacks have a harder time at assimilation than white Irish in the prevailing culture in the country.  (And too bad Obama couldn't have gotten there legitimately, for the blacks' sense of pride.  As it is, he has hurt them and their pride tremendously.  When the truth outs.  As it  will.)  But note: Jackie Robinson.  And NFL and NBL teams staying at the same hotels all over the country, as a natural way to break down long-standing social barriers.  Too slow for some blacks?  But policies of reverse discrimination - excuse me; of 'affirmative action,' cough cough -  have not done them a whole lot of good.  All it has done - we'll; mostly.  A key outcome - has been to generate deep resentments.  Among whites; and among themselves, highlighting as it does their presumed 'inferiority' and thus needing 'the gummint' to come to their aid, as 'victims'.

     Not as proud Americans, standing in their own strength.  As other 'classes' have done in the nation. 

     (And dammit to hell, why haven't our teachers done a better job of helping black kids learn to read better???  If their brains don't handle the anointed technique of teaching reading, then find out what sort of technique DOES work better for them.

     All that would do is make it look like they're not as smart as the white kids??

     - And your way is BETTER than the outcome you're GETTING your way???!!! 

     Give me a break. 

     In the meantime, the college-level curriculum has been dumbed down to try to reach kids where they are at.  And where they are at is not a place that NEEDS to be the dumbed-down way it is.  

     Except for the New World Order crowd, who want a simple serfdom, of peasants who are capable of reading instruction manuals, and that's it.  For whom it's better to teach them what to think.  Not how to think, for themselves.  

     A la the new Common Core nationalized curriculum.

     But that's getting into another story.

     In the meantime: Pardon my grrr.)    

3 The 'X' came about when, after coming across the ministry of Elijah Muhammad and his Nation of Islam movement, and basically being converted, he decided to sign his name that way, which, for him, "replaced the white slavemaster name of 'Little' which some blue-eyed devil named Little had imposed upon my paternal forebears".