THE SOUTH AND RACISM

mary hourihan lynch

Went and watched the race today, not in a good mood. Not in a bad mood either, just dissatisfied. I need a break from television every Sunday afternoon and evening. Arrived as the race started and left soon after it was over. March Madness, saw Wichita State beat Kansas State, so glad those places are no longer in my life. The only way I can figure my soul found its way to Kansas this time was maybe I saw the movie The Wizard of Oz in last lifetime while having a miserable time of it, dreaming of Judy Garland in Kansas with red shoes, there's no place like home. All my life I've wondered what kind of karmic activity in my past landed me in Kansas and a fundamentalist church to complicate it further. Could I have been drawn to the landscape from lifetimes riding a horse and wearing feathers on the plains following the buffalo? I recall a powerful moment in childhood, some time not long after learning about the Indians from my grandmother, who had an older brother who was said to have traded horses with Sitting Bull. I felt like the Indians were my real people. I got mixed up and born into white skin this time. I remember thinking in childhood, maybe seven or eight, my people will never recognize me. I am the enemy and they can never see me any other way. It was a lonesome feeling, something like lost in space. In childhood play, I only identified with the Indians. In movies and tv westerns, I only pulled for the Indians, knowing they'd lose, but they were my people. I have never felt comfortable white, especially seeing how arrogant white people act toward people of any other pigmentation. I have never felt comfortable with people of other colors, because I can't help it I'm white. I know a lot of other white people who feel the same way. We don't make headlines. We just get called nigger lovers. 

mary hourihan lynch

And that's ok. If it wasn't that, it would be something else. This is human existence. I can't change it anyplace but in myself. Racists I know don't go about hurting black people, as far as I know. Their racism is their concern, not mine. The same as I don't want racists to have a problem with me for not being a racist, I don't have a problem with racists. It's their business. I regret that the corporate takeover of our government is so vehemently racist. It's in the nature of fascism, however, you gotta have a focus for hate. Hate is the wave fascism rides. I find it interesting, not ironic, the people who call them selves Christian cling to fascism and wallow in hate. Ask any Jew who survived the Thirties and Forties in Europe. It was Christians all over Europe killing Jews, not just the German Christians. Again, my only concern is that I do no harm to Jews, black people, Latin American people, even white people. Here, too, applies being in the world not of it. I live in a multi-cultural world. I'm ok with it being multi-cultural. I like that it is multi-cultural. I am in a given race, but I do not have to partake of the arrogance of whiteness. Racism has a place, for sure, in Southern culture, but Southern culture is not entirely racist. Look at the great Southern writers. Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers. They were not racist. Though the politicians and evangelists largely are. It's about the same mix all over the country since the rise of fascist propaganda. Here again, it's the world I live in, but I don't have to be of it, don't have to do what somebody else does. And they don't have to do what I do. My racist friends know where I stand and I know where they stand. No big deal. 

mary hourihan lynch

This is an aspect of the South the people outside the South don't get. Southerners I know tend to be tolerant of people they don't approve of or don't like. Southerners want peace among one another. I don't mean there is no fighting or hate going on, but I have found on the whole Southerners to be peaceable people in their everyday lives. I appreciate Southern culture so much, one aspect that might be objectionable does not diminish the whole. Yankees don't do well in the South, only because of their arrogance toward Southerners. Condescension is obvious from the receiving end. I recall a woman several years ago, here from Connecticut, dissatisfied after a couple years. She was wanting to kick up a fuss over how some man kept his dog. She called herself an animal rescuer. She wanted to force him to take better care of his dog by some kind of idea of justice. She'd got herself into a fix that frightened her. I told her let it rest. You're in the South. You don't tell a man in the South what to do with his property, and to some a dog is property. She couldn't let it rest, it wasn't right. I attempted to explain right has nothing to do with it. I reminded her that in the South she is a foreigner, she has no backup. I recommended she let the dog issue rest. She couldn't do it. It wasn't right. She pursued it, got herself into a heap of trouble by way of threats, freaked out and left the county. She loved it here, but it wasn't enough like where she came from. She could not accept the people around her as themselves. She wanted them to be different. She was so caught up in being right, my talk about letting it go was, itself, not right. She wanted to be right. Ok. Be right. Have a good time.

mary hourihan lynch

I don't have to be every aspect of Southern culture to live happily in the South. For example, I'm not interested in college football games or barbecue. But I do like the Allman Brothers, George Thorogood and the Dirty South Revolutionaries. The South has many sub-cultures, all of them Southern. All have that something special that is Southern. It's an identity with the South, not an ideology or political belief system, nor a religion. The South has Catholic churches and synagogues aplenty, as well as temples of all the religions. There is a Tibetan monastery in Georgia.  We live in peace as Southerners. The greatest characteristic I know of the South is the readiness to allow others to be who they are. Though certain aspects of the belief systems don't necessarily accord with what they claim to believe, it's tradition and that's the end of it. Some years ago a Yankee friend told me it is my responsibility to teach one of my racist friends not to be a racist. I said it is not my responsibility. He believed it was. I maintained it was not. I still believe it is not my responsibility to set out to change anybody's pattern of thinking, not even my right. I woke this morning with the incident in my mind, talking with self about allowing others the autonomy of their own minds. I don't know of another way to live in peace with the people in my world, wherever I live, all the way to rural Thailand. I allow them their own understandings, they allow me mine. I don't like Jehovah's Witnesses coming to my door telling me they're right and I'm wrong. It seems to me basic human decency to allow others their own autonomy. If I expect to be allowed my own, then I allow others their own. For me to tell somebody else their way of thinking is unacceptable and must change, I'm giving somebody down the line permission to do the same to me.  
  

janice lynch schuster and her mother mary hourihan lynch

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HANK BRODT HONORABLE MAN

 

 

display inside the library doorway

I struggled inside self all day yesterday in a minor way. It takes a lot to make me turn the key in the car's ignition. Necessity only. Seven o'clock Monday evening at the library in Sparta a man talking of his experiences as a Polish Jew in his teens subject to the hatred of European Christians in the early 1940s. It was the ones identifying themselves Nazi actively, consciously terrorizing the Jews of Europe. The other Christians were complicit, not necessarily by aggressive action, but in the hatred. Europe still has some Jews, like North Carolina still has descendants of the Cherokee in the southwestern corner. Over a lifetime I've read quite a lot about the holocaust, have seen documentaries galore, read histories, memoirs, fiction, plays and poetry concerning the time. I've known a woman with the numbers tattooed on her arm and two men who were successful in their attempts to stay out of sight of Nazis and collaborators. One dyed his hair blonde. In the late 1960s I saw Peter Weiss's play in New York, The Investigation. It was script from trials in a German court 1964-1965, of 21 people active in the Auschwitz camp, 1941-1945. It was surely the most powerful stage or film performance of my life. I don't think there was ever a laugh, the theater was full, and it was Broadway. It was long. It amounted to witness after witness telling their experience at the will of the accused. Mournful is what it was. I was so empathetic with the Jewish people in that time of my life, still am, I identified with them in a very, very, very minor way that was a hundred percent major in my own feelings. In my college years I knew a great many Jews from working in the bookstore. Jews read books. Intelligent conversations I valued. People I valued, always will. I am of the belief that it is important the stories of that time be told, generation after generation, as long as hate continues to wither the human heart.

 

hank brodt

 

I questioned going to hear the man talk unto the last moment. Picked up the keys twenty-five minutes to seven and went out the door, leaving it open for Caterpillar, who was enjoying the outdoor air, to go in as she wills. I like allowing my pets their own will, as long as it's not dangerous, like chasing cars, biting. I like my dog or cat not to be a replica of my mind, but itself as much as possible. I find allowing my pets to be themselves much more interesting for me and for them than requiring obedience. In like manner, I want to be allowed to live my life by my own decisions within the realm of my control by decision making. Personal autonomy is what I call it. I believe it is important as a birthright, human, animal, bird, fish, reptile, bug, tree. I value it for myself and value it for others. I cannot with conscience deny for someone else what I value for myself. I cannot believe other people for whom an empathetic feeling is not even a consideration. I have a hard time believing somebody can run a knife down the belly of a deer corpse hanging by its back legs and watch the guts fall out. In my heart the animals have exactly the same value as we super-egoic humans. This aspect of my nature is where my empathetic attitude toward Jews comes from. It's the same with the Indians. They call themselves Indians. Why would I want to call them Native Americans? They're insulted by that. Indian means the enemy. It's not insulting; it's the truth. I feel the same  toward the rabbit grazing by the side of the road. It starts, in my heart, with a belief I live by that all living beings are holy. I cannot believe people who claim alliance with a religion and a "belief" in God can be zealous about denying others a right to existence, by one's own individual will. When I say I can't believe them, I mean I never believe anything they say. They are liars living a lie. I see no truth in them. Herein is the core of why I have no use for religion. It's only good for its original purpose, power of the few over the many. Christendom gave itself to the dark side over Jews with zeal. Christians around the world didn't care what happened to the Jews same as they didn't care what happened in Rwanda. The photographs in LIFE magazine when I was in the 6th grade burnt tattoos into the child's brain. I still see them. I couldn't stop looking at them. I saw that each one of them had a life like I did, going along unconcerned, then a corpse on a pile because the Christians went nuts again.

 

hank brodt

 

I chose to drive to town to honor the man by listening to him. I wanted to hear his story. I've never heard anyone talk of his experiences in concentration camps. I've read, saw films, documentaries, but had never heard someone in person talk. Jews tend not to talk about Jewish matters with outsiders for an abundance of historical reasons, literally in the millions. He said that he spoke so those people whose lives had been destroyed by the worst among us would be remembered as valid and honorable persons in their autonomous selves. It took me back to being in the audience at Peter Weiss's play, seeing, hearing Hank Brodt tell in an hour his story it would take a lifetime to tell. He took me by association to a poem I looked up this morning by American poet, Anthony Hecht, from his book, The Hard Hours, the poem, "More Light! More Light!" The quotation marks are in the title. I'm sure it's easy to find online. It is the down and dirtiest, hardest to read of any poem in my limited experience. I can't even write out a brief few sentences to suggest what it's about. It's too horrid for me to repeat and I don't want to bring you down any more than I already have. It was the story of an atrocity, the kind that curls the toes, callouses the mind and bruises the heart. I'll put here the last verse. 

 

     No prayers or incense rose up in those hours

     Which grew to be years, and every day came mute

     Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,

     And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.

 

 

hank brodt

 

This poem is as close as I have found in writing to the profound hopelessness and hatred as the Jewish people of Europe truly suffered. Hank Brodt is the name of the man talking at the library. I felt profound respect looking at him while he spoke of that time. The part that struck me deepest, I feel like, was speaking of the hatred received at every turn, only hatred, revulsion in other people's eyes. He didn't say it, but I was thinking, Christians. Even people who were friends before the furor. Only hate everywhere you turn. Not just you-piss-me-off hate, but murderous, I-want-to-see-you-dead and I could get away with killing you hate. I watched him as he talked, thinking, this is truly an honorable man. He survived the unspeakable, for no crime, and is able to speak it rationally. A woman I knew in Charleston with the numbers on her arm stayed home out of sight, never went anywhere. When her husband, a writer, Robert Marks, had visitors, she stayed in the kitchen and smoked cigarettes. I was thinking if Hank Brodt could let himself, he could drift into such a condition. It must be a constant mental effort to stay out of such a condition. I thought about asking at the end how it felt when you're taken up without recourse knowing there is no turning back. I didn't want to put him through it in his mind. I could have sat and had conversation with him for hours, but couldn't break through the crowd that piled in around him. My energy was gone and I was ready for bed. Parked here at the house, I opened the car door, sat sideways in the seat with feet on the ground, sat there and looked at the landscape across the road, the bright yellow asters in flower. Sat there and gazed without thought at the green bank without seeing it, like it was a stage background and nothing was happening on stage. I sat on the side of the seat feeling I could happily fall asleep sitting in the car's open doorway, take a little nap. It felt like my energy went away, all but that needed to make it to the house far enough inside to fall down on the bed. Slept straight through for ten hours. Woke ready to start a new day. Something way down deep within was stirred. I want now to reread Saul Bellow's Mr. Sammler's Planet, the story of a Polish Jew who survived the camps. A powerful, intelligent book. I took it off the shelf when I picked up Anthony Hecht's book this morning. A good time to reread Bellow and Hecht. Most often I get Hank Brodt's name mixed up in my mind with Max Brod, Kafka's biographer. I find it odd that Hank Brodt lived Kafka's The Trial and The Castle in everyday life. I can't help but wonder, wouldn't it have been better to die than to survive? I believe I'd rather be a ghost drifting out of a smokestack across the sky than the one standing on the ground seeing it. Or so I like to think, not having the decision to face.

 

asters

 

 

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