Here I go again, world on my shoulder day...

Hiya Stevie honey...what's happenin'?

Well, dammit to hell, today is another one of those "world on my shoulder" type of days.  I guess maybe I'm starving for some intelligent conversation and/or debate.  So today, I'm going to write to you about racism.

GASP!!  Did she write RACISM?!  [Insert uncomfortable feeling here.]  Yes, yes, she did.

Pete took me to see the play 1776 last night.  He had performed in the play when he was in high school, and wanted to see it again.  I wasn't sure if I would enjoy it, but I really did.  I've been to Thomas Jefferson's house.  I've spent many afternoons at Mt. Vernon, the home of George Washington.  I've toured the Frederick Douglass house, too, not to mention Abraham Lincoln's birth place, lawyer's office, and the Ford's Theater.  It's easy to do those things when you live in DC.  Most everywhere around you is historical in some way, and/or a day or weekend trip from DC.

Ever since President Obama took office, this country of ours has been insane.  Okay, maybe it has always BEEN insane to some extent, I'll give you that, but it seems to me that it has only increased in the most foul of ways since his time as President.  In fact, if you spend time on the Southern Poverty Law Center web site (splc.org), you'd notice all of the hate groups in the country have nearly DOUBLED IN NUMBER since he took office.

The things we are seeing from Congress-----fiscal cliff fiasco, this sequester mess, etc.----are just blatant racism right in everybody's faces.  But so far, I haven't seen nor heard any news channel talk about it.  I haven't read nor heard anyone mention racism at all.  It's amazing how something so controversial is just swept under the rug in favor of subjects like gun control and abortion and health care rights.  The core of hatred in our country is primarily based upon racism.  That is a statistical fact.  (splc.org).

I just discovered this web site:  www.racialicious.com.  I'm going to explore it much more in detail, but it seems like it has exactly the type of conversation I would love to have about it.  I found it only because of this video that somebody posted today on Facebook.  In the video, the guy mentions it.

http://www.upworthy.com/the-definitive-response-to-jerks-asking-but-what-about-white-history-month

Years ago, after 9/11 fucked up my life completely, I found myself unemployed and stuck in Michigan again, hating my life, nearly suicidal, depressed as hell.  I had hit bottom.  I was 33 and my life was over.  The life I had fought for and worked so hard to achieve, to live and work in Washington DC, was suddenly gone in a POOF of one day.  Just like that.  Gone.

So I happened upon a bulletin board somewhere, while looking for jobs, and saw that there was a class about racism for 8 weeks, being held at the local community college.  I decided, "I've got the time to go to a free class, what the hell.  Got nothing better to do."  So, I attended, and I learned so much in that 8 week time span about the subject of racism than I had ever learned in my entire 33 years of existence.

In a large room, with 4 very long tables assembled into a square, sat people of all ages, ethnicities, and genders.  It was a group of about 20 people, with two leaders to guide the group discussions.  We were encouraged to scour the daily newspaper or internet news sources for any stories we thought MIGHT be somewhat racist, and bring those in to discuss them.  There was a police officer to was made to take this class, and his accounts of police brutality that he had witnessed towards black people in my hometown made my blood run cold.  He mentioned Rodney King too.

Nothing much has changed since then, nor has it changed much at all since before I was born.

I had a roommate for awhile, a guy that I had been chatting with online for a bit, someone I had met briefly and dated for a short time.  His name was Burton.  He was half white, half black.  (I know it's politically correct to say AFRICAN AMERICAN, but I am just going to say black. I mean no disrespect by doing so, it's just easier to type).

He was looking for a roommate, and at the time he told me this, I was being forcibly evicted from my apartment and accused of not paying rent, when I DID actually pay rent, but wasn't given a receipt for it.  I went to court to fight it and everything.  I lost, but I swore to the judge and everyone in the room that I would never pay the court fees or the fine.  I never have.  It has since fallen off my credit report.  Screw them.

So, Burton offered to let me live in his fully furnished basement apartment area, and so I agreed.  He was newly divorced, with a little girl named Bailey, and she and his ex-wife (a white woman) lived next door.  He had built both houses for them to be near each other, to share custody of Bailey.  That kid had two bedrooms, full of toys and t.v. and all the latest gadgets and computer games.  She was a great kid, and I got to spend a lot of time talking to her when she came over to spend the night.

What I didn't know at that time, but learned much later on, is that we all lived in the town where the KKK headquarters were located, for the entire state of Michigan.  And, furthermore, I worked at a JEWISH Museum don'tchaknow, so I was a damned Jew-lover, living with a black man in KKK-ville.

Now, this didn't occur to me until I started giving presentations at local schools, about the Holocaust, but someone actually mentioned it to me, how BRAVE I was, for doing this and how word will spread about it, and it might cause me problems at home.  I didn't realize what they were talking about, so I mentioned the strange conversation to Burton.  He literally turned pale.  He said, "I've had a burning cross in my yard before."

I was jolted.  He then told me the story about how, when he was young, his mother would take him shopping, and she made it into a GAME to mess with department store detectives who followed her around all the time, everywhere she went.

Now, first of all, I was flabbergasted that he had actually had a burning cross in his YARD before.  I thought that was something that never happened anymore.  I thought that was from a long time ago.  But hey, guess what, I was a very naive child, very sheltered from such things growing up.  There were exactly FOUR black kids in my high school graduating class of 236 students.  FOUR.  So I knew virtually NOTHING about what life was like for a black person, until I met Burton and took the racism class.

Secondly, I was completely flummoxed at his matter-of-fact way of describing this "game" that his mother made up.  She would walk around the store, figure out which man was the detective, and then taunt him by picking up an item, trying it on (a hat, a scarf, etc), and then looking both ways, and rolling it up hastily....and then putting it back down again, walking to the next item, to do the same thing.  Burton said it was hilarious and he laughed a lot.

I was heartbroken. That was an actual GAME that he played as a KID???  How SAD is that?!

While in the racism class, I talked about my first few weeks of living in Baltimore, on my way to getting my job in DC.  I had been to an interview there, so I was wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase-type of thing, trying to LOOK the part....probably failing miserably, but at least trying....and I somehow got confused and took the wrong bus on my way home.   I ended up going straight to downtown Baltimore, to the not-so-white areas, and I was thinking, "Ohhh boy, I goofed."

Then this strange white dude gets on the bus, which has mostly black people on it, including two really cute kids in the back of the bus that I was sitting near at the time.  The white guy sat down, but he had this twitch, this nervous tick of some kind, and was mumbling to himself.  Maybe on drugs, I don't know.  All I know is, I felt nervous because of him.  I didn't feel at all nervous being in a bus full of black people BEFORE he got on, but when he did, I felt like something bad was going to happen.

And it did.

He tapped the shoulder of an older black man, who was sitting in the front seat directly behind the bus driver.  "Do you know what time it is?" he asked.  The black man just shook his head "no," and said nothing.  That set the white guy off into an angry tirade.  He began yelling about how these damned niggers are so rude all the time, and all he wanted to know was what time it was, why couldn't he just tell him, why did he have to just sit there and ignore him like that----and another older man sitting across from the bus driver in the front seat, stood up and said in a calm voice---"Sir, do you have a problem?"

All hell broke loose at that moment.  The white guy got up, screaming, "Ya goddamned RIGHT I got a problem and it's all you damned NIGGERS in this town, acting so uppity and righteous, like you're better than me!"  Holy shit.  I was frozen.  My eyes were as big as saucers.  I thought, "if that bastard has a gun, we're all dead."

The bus driver said, "Hey hey hey, you guys, knock it off...sit down...stop it...." and the white guy just kept saying nasty things, to which the black man once again asked him if he had a problem, and would he like HIM to solve it for him?  To which the white guy tried to take a PUNCH at the old guy, and the old guy yelled, "I'll take your ignorant white ass right to hell where it belongs, you little PUNK ASS white trash son-of-a-bitch," and HE pulled a punch!!

The bus driver got up out of her seat, stood between the two men, screaming, "Knock it off, YOU (pointing to the white guy), get OFF MY BUS! NOW! Or I will radio in for police to come TAKE you off my bus!"  Some other guys, younger black men sitting between me in the back and the white guy towards the front, got up, and started walking towards him.  They didn't say a word.  Just kept walking.

The old black guy was still angry and yelling, the white guy was still angry and yelling, and amid all this chaos and terror that I was feeling, I somehow remembered to blink, and in that moment, I  turned around to see those two cute black kids, standing in the aisle, with a DEAD LOOK in their eyes, and they each had a complete poker face.  There was no expression of fear,  there was no expression of upset, they weren't crying, they didn't act afraid, they weren't saying anything.  Just standing there, with a dead look in their eyes.

But, they seemed to be screaming in their silence at me, that they have seen more of this kind of situation EVERY DAY in their short lives, than I ever have, or even realized still existed in this world.

And I began to cry.

I was no longer afraid for myself.  I was crying for those kids.  How horrible that they had to witness such a scene like that, how terrible it was to see the dead look in their eyes, which told a million stories of how they've seen it all too often in their neighborhood, and at their school, on the playground, and in their own back yard.

That's when I felt like the air had been knocked out of me, I just cried and cried.  I wanted to go back to those kids, and hug them, and tell them I am so sorry...so horribly sorry that you had to see that....but white people aren't ALL like him...he had no right to do and say those nasty things...I wanted to take that experience away from them...I wanted to save them from it.  I wanted to rewind and remove those kids from the bus before that white idiot got on.

But I couldn't.  I could never undo the damage to those kids that those 2 men did in that 5 minute span of time.

The old black guy finally sat down, mumbling to himself about ignorant white punks, while the white guy ran alongside the bus, banging on the window, yelling, "Come out here and fight me, you old black bastard! I'll take you on! Get out of the bus you COWARD, and let me beat your stupid black ass!" Other people started mumbling too, and laughing.

And all the while, I cried.  I had never felt so damned helpless in my whole life.

The old black guy saw that I was crying, and he said, "What's the matter, Miss White Bread, you never been to the big city, have ya?"  I must have looked like I had just fallen off a turnip truck in Michigan, trying to be a big professional career-girl in the nation's capital.  He saw right through it.  He said exactly what I was afraid people might notice.  I felt ashamed.

I blurted out, "I....I'm so....I'm just so sorry...." and he almost yelled, "About WHAT? About that asshole? He's fucked up with drugs or maybe he's just drunk, he was just being a fool."  I said, blubbering, "I know...I know...but....but....those kids....back there...." and the black guy looked at the kids and said, "Yeah, well, welcome to the big city little girl."

I'll never forget that experience, or that dead look in those little kids' eyes.

When I told that story in the racism class....you could have heard a pin drop.  Suddenly, the dam had burst open and we were no longer talking about a newspaper clipping, we were remembering OTHER times in our lives where we had witnessed something that we didn't really REALIZE at the time was actually RACIST in nature.  We were ALL completely shocked by how many stories we all shared.

And then we were told that every white person has a "privilege" that black people have never had, that we can just flip a switch in our brains and never think about racism if we choose not to.  But, black people don't have that switch.  They can't turn it off, ever.  They have to see it, live it, feel it, and be beaten down by it every day, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

For many black people, it makes them tougher, angrier, and more bitter.  For many others, it breaks them down.  It depresses them beyond any medication available to cure it.  It causes not only mental breakdowns, but often sublimates into physical illnesses if not dealt with.  For a small number of black people, it raises them UP----it lifts them up BEYOND the pettiness, the name calling, it makes them feel that they can rise above it all, and BEAT IT.  They see it as a challenge, and they rise to it, and become successful, even rich, and they fight their way through every day clinging to that challenge.

I've really led quite a privileged life, and sometimes I feel so guilty about it, I could just cry all day long.  I want to give people everything I've got.  I want to change the world and make it better.

I live in a large house that we own outright.  No mortgage.  We own our 2 cars, no car payments.  We have a savings account that exceeds most people's annual income.  I don't have to work anymore.  Ever.  I came from a very small town, in Michigan, raised by lower-income parents who had only a high school diploma, lived poor most of my life, but at a young age, I decided to rise to the challenge of changing all that.  I put myself through college.  At 27, I took off for DC, to change the world and make a difference, and put my little mark on the whole entire universe.

....Only to be chewed up and spit out of DC like an old wad of stale gum.  In Michigan, I was a "big fish," (one of my favorite movies, by the way), but in DC, I was just a tiny guppy, swimming with sharks.  And they ripped my soul to shreds.

So here I am now, living in Pittsburgh, spending my days shopping or having lunch out with my mom, or working on a home decorating project, or doing the daily dishes and laundry, playing with my dog and the two cats, living peacefully, mostly alone (Pete works late a lot)....and I feel guilty as fuck.  I keep busy, sure, but I'm no longer making a damned difference in the world, ya know?  I'm just trying to keep my OWN little piece of the world happy and peaceful, and calm and content.

Is that wrong of me?  Should I be doing something more?  Or is it impossible for me to do anything at all?  I've been paralyzed for many years since 9/11, part of me wants to change the world still....that gnawing annoying feeling of carrying all the world's problems on my shoulders....the chronic "save the world syndrome" that drives me batty.....but another part of me hates people so much, because of 9/11, and all the craziness I see all around us every day----I just feel like throwing my hands up in the air, and saying, "Fuck you all, I'm gonna enjoy MY days on this planet, the rest of you can all go to hell."

I fluctuate between the two extremes.......because that's how I roll, being an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.  That's what we do.  The grey area is difficult to see in all things for me, it's either this or that, black or white, cut and dry or muddled.  And if it's muddled, I tend to give up.  I want to please everybody, (hence my being submissive), and I drive myself up the friggin' wall trying to do that, while at the same time KNOWING I CAN'T.  I still fucking TRY, and it makes me crazy.

I sit here in this big house, alone with my mom down in the basement apartment of hers, crocheting all day long and watching t.v., taking smoke breaks outside with my dog from time to time, not even bothering to get dressed, just naked underneath her robe, and I wonder....maybe I'll end up like that too. But would that be so terrible?  Really?  Sitting on my fat white ass, living the life of privilege that I never asked for, never expected to get, and certainly never want to take for granted?  While watching the rest of the world fall apart all around me, people fighting, racism rampant, anger and hatred at an all-time high...

.....Wanting to save the world from itself, but knowing at the same time that nobody wants to be saved.

This is my life.  This is my angst.  This is the tug-of-war I have with myself every damned day.

I know I have written similar posts to you in the past, about this very same subject...but I just wanted to have a more detailed discussion about racism than I ever had with anyone else before.  So, there you go.  Yes yes, I know, I know, I think too damned much.  It makes my head hurt.

Maybe I should take up drinking.  With diabetes, it shouldn't take me long to fall into a peaceful coma.

Welcome to my personal hell, and aggravating angst.

Bye for now.

Love, Rebecca