'This Isn't The U.S. I Used To Know'

It all started with the words 'kike' and 'nigger'.

I remember a somewhat amusing, or at least, telling, take on this 'political correctness'/'hate speech' business by J.D. Salinger in one of his 'Nine Stories' classic short stories out of (mostly but not exclusively) the 'New Yorker' magazine in the late '40s/early '50s.1 A little boy, living on the East coast somewhere, is outside brooding about life when his mother asks him what's wrong, and he replies that a boy who he had thought was his friend had called him a name.  The mother, particularly knowledgeable about such things and fearing the worst, asks him what the little boy, whom he had thought was his friend, had called him; and her son replies that he had called him a kite.

Words can be terrible things. But they are, after all, just words.  It's how we take them that matters.          

And then time moves on; and we get to a point where, as an example, a few years ago an Australian Rugby League player was chastised by a) members of the public, b) the media (I'm not sure which came first; or does in these sorts of instances, now), and c) his team officials, for calling, in the heat of action (that's a tough game, for tough guys; they don't wear padding, like U.S. football players do), a player on the other team a, quote, "big black bastard". 

Horrors!  Beyond the pale!  So to speak…

Notice that he wasn't chastised for calling the fellow a big bastard.2  But if spring comes, can winter be far behind???  I am saying that once certain words are banned - the 'free speech' wall breached - there will be no end of it.  The 'Me too! ~ Me too! - Me too!'s will line up, demanding their pound of flesh.  

Very much like the making illegal of acts of discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, sex, gender, color of socks worn, age, - did I miss any category of persons??  Fatties?  Baldies??  Nerds???…

Where does this stuff end, once the wall separating people from the long nose of the state is breached??  That is to say, in further reality, separating people from being people???  

Okay, okay - I understand that there are some categories that are more equal - to say, deserving, to some extent, the protection of the state from their tormenters - than others.  But just also to say: When I was a kid, we had an adage: 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.'  And our tormenters, whether we were fatties, or whatever, would give up, when they couldn't get a rise out of us over it.  Now, you can say to me, 'That's all well and good and easy for you to say - you're blond and blue-eyed'.  And to a certain extent, that's true.3  But later on in my school days, when I went to a high school where there were a considerable number of blacks (the school was located in that part of town), yes I heard the word 'nigger'.  But I also heard the word 'honky'.  And also 'whitey'  - or its equivalent, at least according to my understanding, of: 'White boy.'  Now, 'whitey' - or its less offensive equivalent, 'White boy' - doesn't sound so bad; hey - it's what we were.  But 'honky' - now that had a real ring to it (so to speak).  I didn't know what it meant; but judging from the energy associated with it, it couldn't be very good.  (A kite, anyone??)  But did I get offended by it?  No.  I played basketball and ran track with black kids.  We got along.  End of story. 

I fully understand that there's a factor here of treating some citizens like second class citizens.  But I'm saying that, in a free country at least, it's a matter of getting to know each other.  The Irish were treated like second class citizens for many years; and 'they' made it to the White House.4  And take Jackie Robinson.  (I'll take him on my team any day. Even invite him to the barbecue.)  Was he put on the Brooklyn Dodgers roster by order of the Supreme Court?  No.  Branch Rickey saw a way to make good money, yes.  But more accurately, he wanted a winning team.  And he got it.  With a black player.  Who had to endure a lot of personal shit in the process.  But that's life.

In a free country.  As opposed to one with a heavy state.

Which might get called 'Fatty' behind its back.  And written as graffiti, to be seen in the light of day.

Because people will be people.    

And they will get better at it.

In the process of being people.

Not automatons, of the almighty state, telling them how to be, and what to say to each other, within an inch of their lives.

People, free to grow from the experience; and to discover one day - one fine day - not only that 

We Are One Another.5  But that - 

Eureka! -  

We Are All One.

And not just figuratively speaking.

---

footnotes:

1 The collection itself was published in 1953.  And boy, do I have a story to tell sometime about my life when coming across that collection, living down and out in Manhattan (after leaving university all the way across the continent in California, to initiate my search for answers to Life) and haunting the streets around Times Square in general and the New York Public Library Reading Room in particular, and standing in the ocean-sprayed prow of the Staten Island Ferry for breaks from being huddled in my broom-closet of a room in a cheap hotel off the edge of the aforesaid Square, reading books on the likes of Theosophy and Krishnamurti and Edgar Cayce and the (English translations of various German scholars's takes on the) origins of Christianity, and being occasionally solicited there by hookers, who didn't fully appreciate that, living in such a dump, I would hardly have a pot to pee in, let alone enough ready cash to buy them a - well, to buy them, period.  But - like a lot of things about my life, and where it has taken me in my pilgrim's search for the Big Ones - another time, perhaps.  

2 And I mean, what else are you going to call a big black bruiser of an opponent who has just done something, in the heat of the action of a very heavy-duty contact sport, to anger you?  To 'offend' you??  'You…you…nasty fellow, you'???  Come on.    

     No wonder blacks are getting so much resentment built up against them, from the perverted outcomes of such good intentions.

     Which we well know has a high expectation of being the very outcome of such - presumed - intentions; know, to the point of having a widely culturized expression regarding it, to the point of my not even having to repeat it here.

     Which may well get on the list of banned words and expressions, the way, and the rate, we're going.    

     P.S. And not to go into more detail as to how this sort of thing - this adverse reaction to an action*  - may well be the intentioned outcome, after all.  Of those who are trying to stir up racial warfare, for their intended, and nefarious, ends.  Of social - national - takeover.  To put everybody under their control.  And make of us all their slaves.  Thinking of themselves as like unto gods.  To whom we should, and verily must, all bow, in reverent deference.     

     But, to continue, for now, here…
     (But just to note, in passing, while in the neighborhood of the mentioned subject of 'reparations,' and that mentality: How much better, for everybody, a Ghandian approach to the matter would have been, would be.  To say: Many blacks today have chosen, in their 'day in the sun,' so to speak (and definitely only that), to retaliate, for past treatment of their forebears (and, in some cases, themselves), instead of braking the karmic wheel and its momentum.  If 'you' (if the shoe fits; and considering other, similar situations as well; like the carrying culture's treatment of/attitudes towards the 'proper' role of women) had returned 'hate'/ill treatment with love, you could have sped up your release from that Wheel - and helped your persecutors (perceived as such or actual) do the same in the process, by their being impressed unto enlightenment by your actions.
     Short-sighted stuff, this 'retaliation' business.)
     (N.B. I would have gone all the way back to the origins of the concept of returning love for hate instead of merely more of the same, and on and on around the Wheel we go, that way - which principle inspired Gandhi in his vision of nonviolence to bring about desired, and desirable, socio-political change - but there is something wrong with the Christian story, as it has been handed down to us, and I don't want to go there.  Right now.  Its being a subject to itself.  But this 'returning love for hate' business is certainly worth taking on, as a principle for living one's life.  And even for nations living 'theirs'.
     Think of what might have been if, after WWI, the 'winning' nations had not saddled Germany with such a monstrous load of reparations that that retaliatory act had not brought about the even more monstrous load of WWII, on even more peoples.  May I rest my case there???
     There is no end to error, once it takes hold in the hearts and minds of people, and they won't let go of it.  It just keeps coming around and around.
     As a 'round' will.
     And until we 'get' - really get - that we are just doing 'it' to, visiting' it' on, ourselves.)
        

   * think also - besides the language inhibition - preferential treatment in schools and hiring, e.g. (so-called 'affirmative action'; aka 'proportional representation'); to be accepted as apparently some sort of reparations for past indignities done to blacks, beyond the justifiable legal measures of the court's trying to correct the results of years of de jure segregated schooling in the South.  What this politically-correct treatment is breeding is not only resentment among the whites.  But arrogance amongst the blacks; that they're entitled.  

     A tinderbox if there ever was one.

3 Actually, 'blond' not so much, any longer.  But to continue, from this ersatz confessional interlude.

     Just trying to lighten things up a little.  So to speak.  

4 And even as Catholics!  Which was, undoubtedly, more to the point, in a heavily and long-memoried Protestant culture, where their forebears had had to escape to the New World from the heavy hand of the Church in their own, old countries; and created a new one, intended to be free from such control over The People.  Even to the point of inserting it explicitly in their Constitution - their social compact.  To be a free and self-governing people.   

     Which asks a lot of such citizens.  If you're going to be a sovereign unto yourself, you have certain political duties.  Among which is the requirement - the responsibility - to keep it.

5 Just playing, and exchanging, parts, over and over, in a drama of our making.  A Play, in which to catch the conscience of us all.  

     Sooner.  Or later.