CONFEDERATE FLAG THE NEW COLLECTABLE

The  public argument around the Confederate battle flag tells me more about the public than the flag. We have people defining what it means, both literally and symbolically. I've learned more about the Confederate flag this week than I ever wanted to know. Jon Stewart continues to make me want to tell him to shut his Yankee mouth. He fails to notice the North invaded the South, not the other way around. Of course, it can be said the South fired the first shot at Ft Sumter. Another Tonkin Gulf story. "He had a gun." My argument with Stewart has to do with him characterizing the South the invader. He doesn't say it, but talks as-if. I tire of his sweep of the hand dismissal of the South and Southerners like his dismissal of the white woman who wanted to be black. He lost credibility for me over his cheap shots at her from his perspective of self-righteous conformity to the social code of the moment calling himself liberal. He's most self-righteous on the subject of racism, quick to point and judge, just like the rest of us. The South is the same to him as a cartoon figure. 

I've lived in the South throughout my adult life. The South I know from the inside is very different from the South Stewart thinks he knows from outside---New York, of all places to point the finger from. I'd like to see him go on about police brutality on black and poor people by NYPD to the same extent he's made fake issues of the South. Of course, he's put himself forward as the model non-racist. He's not the model non-misogynist, but he keeps that under the desk. My argument is not so much with Stewart as with taking such an absolute stance on a matter that goes deeper than good and bad. And I'm not going to be a racism apologist. I grew up in a racist family, near and extended, went to racist church and racist school, outside the South. I started shedding my racism young, knowing some black people, seeing they were not as characterized by white people. I was attracted to black people because they did not do denial. Every black person I knew talked straight, recognized a thing for what it was. I felt black people were refreshing, like clear mountain spring water. I remember the cartoon Indians in cowboy and Indian television of the Fifties saying, "White man speak with forked tongue." As a kid, all white people lied to me. I liked the black people I knew for not lying like white people. 

Evidently, Yankees see the South a two-dimensional caricature, Bugs Bunny in a gray Civil War uniform. The decade I lived in Charleston, SC, deep South, I knew only liberals. The right wing was everywhere, even the majority of the population, but a large percentage of the people are not right wing. In the Blue Ridge, the majority of the population is right wing, though I only mix with people who are liberal or don't care about politics. That's just a social dynamic. People of the right don't like me for not being of the right. It's ok by me. I've come to stay away from white men my age, my peers. One look at the scowl on a white man's face with white hair and I know what tv channel he watches. Yet, exceptions abound. Myself, I hope. People in the South, like people everywhere, are not just one thing, not caricatures. Yankees display a conviction they're better than white Southerners, and certainly better than black Southerners, the way white middle class looks down on white working class, the part in the denial drawer. Racism is more taken for granted in the South than the rest of the country where the white people are racist too, but practice denial. Black people are racist. It's what we humans do. The only solution I can see is to acknowledge racism in self and be conscious of it, aware of it. Awareness is the beginning of addressing change in self. 

I gave up on racism by the time I was out of high school. Black kids went to school and some were my neighbors. They were good people. The people living here from Mexico are good people. As far as I can tell, the only difference between us is culture. Black people have their culture, white people have theirs, and Mexicans have theirs. It is the cultures that make us different. Intolerance of other cultures is a problem. Racism boils down to ego. It amounts to saying, Not me. It is saying, I don't like a given point of view because it's not mine. I used to have a friend I had to stop knowing because he believed his the only true and valid point of view, all others nonsense, especially mine. This is how white people are toward black people, making it clear their whiteness is the only pigmentation and civilization valid. It can be said a general belief among white people that black people have no value. Otherwise, there would be something besides justification coming from white people about cops killing so many unarmed, young black men and women, even children and old people. The greatest justification of all, they kill white people and dogs, too. Racism is too complicated to be dealt with superficially. It can only be dealt with superficially in America. In the land of television, we only deal with social issues superficially, by distraction. This Confederate flag issue is a distraction from something else that matters we're not to know about. As soon as whatever the flag is covering up passes, concerns about the flag will go away with it. 

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INTEGRATION IN AMERICA

george grosz

It just now popped into my mind, I love a good race. I mean a race to the finish line, not a biological race. As for the latter, I have come to a place I see only the human race. Skin color is simply a skin color. Some people have long toes, some have short toes, some have blue eyes, some have brown eyes, some have green eyes. I don't think any people from earth have vertical slits for pupils like cats and goats. Even if there were, where's the big deal? Some dogs have spots and some do not. Among dogs, spots are not even a concern, nor are spots on dogs a concern among humans unless attempting to breed a dog without spots and one turns up worthless with spots. It's cultural differences we identify often as racial differences. Like somebody black in Kinshasa, the Congo, who plays keyboard in a band at dance clubs functions in a very different culture from somebody white who plays keyboard in a hard-core punk band in StPetersburg, Russia. Each is shaped by the personality of his/her own culture more than the shade of skin. A black musician can play punk like a white musician. A white musician can play Kinshasa dance music. Cultures are collective personalities. I doubt we'll be able to get along racially in America until it is understood another race is another culture. It is the culture that makes us different. The American passion for sameness creates the problem with skin color.

george grosz

Ever since "Integration," the forced mixing of the races by government decree, recognizes white culture the authentic culture, all others lesser versions of the same culture, the different cultures in our multi-ethnic society have been at odds with each other. White people moving to the mountains consider mountain culture a lesser version of the culture they came from in the suburbs of some city. They look down on the locals, because the new people coming in are white middle class suburban culture, the management class, and the mountain people are working class, to be looked down upon the same as another race, the gum chewers. I see that a generalization can be made that white people all over the earth regard the other races as lesser versions of their own race. I don't know how black people see white people in relation to their culture. I know oatmeal and cracker, but that's not really saying anything. After spending a week in Philadelphia visiting black friends in the black culture there, even went to a service in a mosque, returning to the white world was quite a shock. We white people look like pigs to the other races. That is what I saw, our likeness to pigs, after living with another race for just a week. I suddenly understood Orwell's, Some pigs are more equal than others, in a new way. I got a mental image of Dadaist George Grosz painting between the wars the German big-business men as pigs in suits sometimes. A pig in a suit is pretty much the cartoon image of the rich capitalist. White man.

george grosz

We have black rich capitalists too, but they don't get the attention of white capitalists, because they are from a different culture the white men interpret a lesser version of their own, looked down upon. I believe it's in the corporate offices at the top where racism needs to be dealt with in this slow progression of eliminating racism from the human psyche. It can be done. Racism is also anti-democratic by not allowing another culture to be itself. In school we're trained to have as close to the same personality as we can screw ourselves up to achieve. Cultures not white American culture are regarded the same as nothing in power circles. I believe this is a part of the social dynamic that makes somebody who grew up in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in Brooklyn an outsider anyplace else. The poor and unfortunate in AynRandland are looked down on as poverty, below low class, low class out of sight, the American untouchables. When somebody who grew up in semi-poverty struck it rich overnight, like a Detroit rock star or two or three, they carry their working class culture with them into the new culture they've entered and need to learn the new rules fast, white wealth; in the case of black people, into black wealth. Aint no cross-over in the ruling class. American ruling class is white, period. Ask Thurgood Marshall, Barak Obama, Vernon Jordan. Martin Luther King pointed out that 11 on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week.

george grosz

 

 

We people tend to imitate the class "above" our own, but not the class two steps above, except after it has been processed by the class above ours. The upper middle class aspires to and imitates the ruling class. The middle class aspires to and imitates the upper middle class. The working class aspires to the middle class and imitates. The self-help fashion in the middle class of the 80s and 90s became fashion in the working class in the 00s. Oprah funneled middle class values to the working class, brought the working class a long ways toward adopting middle class culture. And then there are the people like the people I call my friends who are ok with who they are, where they are, how much they have, where they came from and don't aspire to that which they are not. I remember in teenage years boys talking, "If I had a million dollars, it wouldn't change me. I'd be just like I am now." I had to hold my laughter inside. The evidence, even to a teenager, was to the contrary. Guys aspiring to be rock stars say, I'll never be too good for any of you guys if I make it. I'll party with you guys always. Then the members of the band are raising families in gated communities and country clubs. Zup dude, 'member me? Wha'd you say your name was, Bro? I have a problem with the white middle class condescension toward any culture other than their own. I believe it is that way everywhere, other races, other nationalities. It's the nature of money as a measure.

george grosz

 

 

The white middle class culture is right because it imitates upper middle class culture, which imitates ruling class culture, which imitates English ruling class culture, which imitates royalty, which imitates the history of royalty. White middle class culture is decreed by authority as correctness, like grammar. You gotta be white or you aint all right in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Looks like land of the free means for white people, and home of the brave applies to black people, or people of any shade, people of color, or different cultures. The white middle class culture, by my assessment, is hardly a culture at all. Real cultures are found in the working class and in outsiders by nationality or whatever reason. Latin Americans, when they get together, they dance. Old and young can dance together. Ethnic groups tend to live in the same neighborhoods and they carry their culture somewhat, much less after half a century of television and our homogenizing educational system that has us believing only white European history, arts and literature matter. In my American education, African, Asian, Middle-Eastern and Spanish literature were regarded of no interest, the same as non-existent, certainly unimportant. Of course, by now literature means data. Money has become the only value. Even hurricanes are graded by dollar value in destruction. Shopping is the most aesthetic experience of all. Ever took your time walking slowly through the toy aisles at walmart? It's an aesthetic experience as good as any installation gets.

george grosz