I discovered skating later in life. As odd as it may seem, I find there is something so very relaxing about putting on a clunky pair of beat up hockey skates and doing laps on a big sheet of ice while listening to every form of music ever recorded that doesn't feature an accordion. Last time I was doing this, I was making my way back to the ice when I came across a group of what my generation lovingly calls "Bebe (Bay-bay) kids". Bebe kids are the ghetto equivalent of latch key kids but with considerably less "home training." There were at least four of them and they were all under five. They were with a group of adults and for some reason the kids all had balloons.
As I was walking past this one little girl who couldn't have been more than four, she got directly in my path and as I tried to walk around her she stepped back into my path and for no apparent reason reached back and punched me in the groin. It didn't hurt but my reaction was to look over at the adult she was with for some degree of clarity. He was some brother built like a boiled egg balanced on two tooth-picks and was wearing a shirt that wouldn't have fit the average seven year old. He looked over at me dismissively as if the by product of his contempt for the condom industry had just given me a cookie. I said to him "It wouldn't be so bad if she didn't hit me square in the nads." He looked at me and shrugged. Apparently his kids aren't his problem, they're society's problem.
If we flash back to circa 1970-something when I was a small child prone to doing stupid crap and I had done something similar my mother would have grabbed me by the arm and made me apologize to the stranger I'd just hit and if I DIDN'T she would have pulled my belt off as if she were starting a lawn mower and lit my ass up like a camp fire. However, in this the era of "child services" no one disciplines their kids. Don't get me wrong, I don't advocate people beating their kids, but at the same time no one even seems to bother correcting their kids anymore. My parents generation (the baby-boomers) weren't the BEST parents they could have been, but my generation (generation X) is MUCH worse.
Those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80's are possibly the worst parents ever. My logic? Gen X had to learn lessons the hard way, not as hard as our parents in the 50s and 60s, and certainly not as hard as our grand parents, but your actions had consequences. If you screwed up in school you more than likely would have gotten paddled. If you were a continuous problem you risked expulsion. Now adays there are "grief" counselors at every school to let little Johnny talk about his feelings because apparently his cursing out his teacher and hitting his classmates with rocks and sticks is either a desperate cry for attention, or an indication that he's too restricted by the school's lack luster curriculum and he expresses his angst at academic malaise by swearing and hitting.
The same excuse can be used as a reason for not doing class work. When I was in middle school or high school if a teacher or principal called your home you were in serious trouble. You were going to be grounded and more than likely mom and or dad would wear your butt out and this would be seriously compounded if the teacher or principal wanted your parents to come in for a conference.
Parents NOW are of the opinion that their child is utterly infallible and when teachers and principals call home now they are greeted by defensive accusations of bullying. The Gen-X parent is of the opinion that it's the schools "job" to raise his/her kids...provided they don't attempt to discipline them or teach them any thing vaguely resembling values of any kind. From the cradle my generation told their children how "wonderful" and "special" they are. They played t-ball instead of little league and were given huge trophies simply for participating. When something was too difficult for these kids rather than telling them that it was important to learn things which are difficult as a means of building character we simply gave them easier tasks to accomplish. Public schools where kids don't do homework, rather than flunk those who don't do it simply tell teachers not to assign it.
Children don't have to earn anything they need simply ask and receive. While it's great to know that you can give your children anything they want and that you couldn't have as a child, my generation is hindering this generation FAR more than it's helping them.
My generation thus far has produced a group of people who don't associate work with reward. They don't know the value of either education or money as they've never had to earn either. They were given academic equivalent of slow-pitch soft-ball assignments in school so their grade point averages were artificially high and when they arrive in colleges they usually drop out because professors actually require them to do actual work and research.
Were you to walk into the average high school library and see a book open, it will either be because the librarian is reading something or a teacher is checking out a book. The students will be on the library's computers busy downloading mp3s and assorted viruses, playing Halo and other interactive video games or POSSIBLY doing a research paper.
Don't get excited, this generations idea of a "research" paper is simply going to either Google or Wikipedia finding whatever facts they need and simply either cutting and pasting them unto the paper OR printing it out and presenting it as their own. Don't mention the words "bibliography" or "footnotes" as they don't know them. These people are woefully prepared for actual academia as the bulk of them haven't truly been subjected to it.
There was a point when I lamented the fact that I never married and didn't have any children , but as I encounter more and more of the "me me me...Mommy I want that" generation I want do a celebratory dance whenever I'm in a public place and overhear some spoiled adolescent denizen of a cul-de-sac apathetically telling his/her mother or father how they simply misplaced a $300 phone or video game in the same detached way one would tell a teacher they lost their pen or pencil and wished to borrow one.
Do I blame these young people for being lazy, irresponsible and stupid? Not at all. Disciplined, hard working, responsible have usually been conditioned to be so. People who are taught that rewards are the result of hard work and that consequences have actions usually have some degree of personal responsibility. People who are given all they have never know the value of anything as they assume that whatever IT is either has no real value or is in abundance. My generation can't sit back and criticize their children without realizing that they then have to spend a few minutes gazing into a mirror.
In our misguided hopes of being the "cool" parents we wished we'd had we became a group of irresponsible fools who have unleashed upon the world a group of people who think casual drug use and unprotected, promiscuous sex are cool thus insuring that there will be yet ANOTHER generation ill prepared for the cruel, harsh real world in which they'll learn the hard way that they're NOT special and will have to earn every little thing that they may call their own.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Thursday, October 20, 2011
History..sorta...
I've always found the subject of history FASCINATING. The events and lives of my predecessors keep me enthralled to the point where I could literally spend all day watching the history channel. The funny thing about history unfortunately is that History books are written by men and women who will frequently interject their opinions. As it's been said "The winners write the history books." E.G. Books written about the American Civil war published in Boston in 1870 would be radically different from a book published at the same time in Mississippi or Alabama. Funnier still is the fact that after enough time has passed some "historians" will even go so far as to re-write history entirely.
If you've read Orwell's "Animal Farm" you must be familiar with the events surrounding a pig named Snowball. He was a small, brave, scrappy pig who lead other animals on a fictitious farm AGAINST humans and was given some sort of medal for his heroism. After the revolution ends the most power hungry of the pigs sees Snowball as a political threat and banishes him then spends the next several years using him as a scapegoat for any and all things that go horribly wrong, and then finally gets to the point where history books are re-written to where the battle in which he fought bravely against humanity never happened but the official story had been altered to where he in fact lead the humans in their charge against the animals. Such is revisionist history.
Having grown up in the American south circa the 70s and 80's I had my teachers, parents and grand parents tell me nearly ad-nauseam about the civil rights movement. I heard about the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and Martin Luther King Junior more before 7th grade than I'd imagine my white counterparts had their entire lives in suburbia. I was told how my grandfather was called "boy" so frequently into his adult life that it may as well have been his name. How schools and every other facet of your life in the south as a person of color was to remain utterly separate from everyone else solely because of the color o your skin.
I didn't harbor any grudges against anyone for this as I figured things had changed and change was frequently a good. Besides there are good and bad people of every race, nationality and religion and it will always be that way. It wasn't until was older that I learned that Dr King had been assassinated by those who disagreed with him and his message.
Earlier this year there was some flack about history books published for use in North Carolina schools which told of all black soldiers who fought for the cause of The Confederate States of America. This would have been a GRIPPING story if it were the least bit true. It was revisionist history to the point of flat out lying. In the early stages of the war a group of creole businessmen started their own militia and volunteered to fight for the Confederate cause. Let me give a little background of the definition of "creole". In those days many white men who owned slaves impregnated their female slaves with frightening regularity. It happened so frequently that man began to question rather or not those children were slave or free. It got to the point that laws were subsequently written to state that in such cases the child's freedom or slavery would be "determined by the servitude of the mother." In other words if your mother was a slave and your father literally owned her congrats your father isn't your father he's your master and you weren't considered half white but completely black. Some states would have odd definitions to determine how black someone was. If you were half black you were mulatto. If you were a quarter black you were a "quadroon" an eighth black an "octoroon". Mississippi being the bastion of free thought that it was and remains today kept it simple if you had one drop of black blood you were black no ifs ands or buts.
What became of the Creole Militia? They were told that their services were not wanted and to disband. Not only that but the confederacy went so far as to pass laws banning blacks from service to their cause. Wealthy men could bring slaves unto the battle field and many did. These slaves were valets, cooks, grave diggers and performed menial tasks. They WERE NOT soldiers. Near the end of the war there was a drastic troop shortage and some talk of conscripting slaves but it never truly materialized. What's the point of that story? Well as it stands those who would have you believe that there were black men fighting to the death to defend the rights of other men to keep them as livestock would also now have you believe an altered history in which Martin Luther King Junior was a conservative REPUBLICAN.
Martin Luther King was honored with a national holiday commemorating all he accomplished in the civil rights movement and there was stiff opposition to it. Many REPUBLICANS in Congress argued that another Federal Holiday would cost the country BILLIONS in lost productivity. Others argued that despite being a man of the cloth Dr King was a serial adulterer who cheated on exams in college. Senators Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms (Republicans who had been Democrats) fought the legislation tooth and nail and even AFTER it became law the state of Arizona refused to celebrate it until they were told by the National Football League that the Superbowl would never be played there until they did.
The utter shortage of black Republicans has our friends in the GOP reaching at straws to attempt to recruit black faces but this takes the cake. Before any one's panties get into a bunch I want to say that I served in the military when Colin Powell (former secretary of State) was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I have the utmost respect for the general and would follow him into hell were he conducting a mission to take out the devil himself. I think former Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice is a BRILLIANT woman. While I disagree with her politics I respect her intellect and will say nary a bad word about her as a person. I have no issue with black Republicans (except Clarence Thomas) so this piece isn't an attack on them. The GOP is now spreading the lie that because the old Democratic party controlled the segregated south that MLK was obviously a Republican despite never producing any documentation that he was a registered Republican.
Let's analyze that argument. It wouldn't explain why the Democratic party split in the late 60s because the Northern Democrats were in favor of civil rights laws but southern Dems weren't. Democrats back then (like republicans now) weren't a monolith to be described as having one thought process.
Republican president Dwight Eisenhower said of putting Earl Warren (who encouraged the entire Supreme Court to vote UNANIMOUSLY on Brown v. Topeka which desegregated public schools) on the high court was "the biggest damn fool mistake I ever made" and even went on to defend those who attacked the 13 black children who integrated Little Rock, Arkansas' "Central High" by saying "These aren't BAD people...but try to imagine your sweet little girl sitting in a classroom next to some hulking negro." Conservatives like William F. Buckley went so far in his Magazine the National Review to refer to blacks as "inferior" and a "servant class." Then of course there were many in the GOP in the 50s who called any one who supported civil rights a "communist."
Democratic President Lyndon Johnson MAY have very well have BEEN a racist. I never met the man and can't say one way or the other but he DID pass more civil rights legislation than ANY American President before or since. Martin Luther King met with President Johnson to discuss the civil rights issues of the 1960s. Between 1954 and 1960 Eisenhower NEVER invited him to the White House. Johnson in a presidential address in 1964 said that America needed to overcome it's racial problems and said for the record "And we shall overcome" quoting the popular civil rights anthem.
Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater referred to the civil rights movement as America's "Negro problem" and let it be known that he most certainly did NOT support it. Why would Dr King align himself with causes so juxtaposed to what he believed?
Let us also consider two other things. Right before he died (according to the documentary Eyes on the Prize) Dr King prior to his assassination was organizing a "poor people's march on Washington." It was to take place in the summer of 68. Men and women would be camping out in tents on the national moll to bring attention to the fact that a good portion of America's populace lived in poverty and that there existed a great chasm between America's rich and poor. Sound a bit like the 99% movement? Anyway, King was assassinated right before this occurred and King Lieutenant Andrew Young attempted the event but it was poorly organized and most Americans paid little attention.
The week of his death King was in Memphis, Tennessee to speak out of behalf of black Sanitation workers who were in the midst of a garbage strike. City workers were still very segregated and black sanitation workers were not allowed to use the same city facilities as their white co workers to the point of not being allowed to seek shelter from cold or rain. During a rain storm a black worker sought refuge in the back of a garbage truck and was crushed to death which lead to the black workers going on strike. King came in amid death threats and was ultimately fell by an assassin's bullet.
Martin Luther King is dead today PARTIALLY because he braved death threats in order to stand up for organized labor. The GOP routinely tells us how organized labor is the worst thing to ever happen to this country. It's proudest moments include recent legislation in Wisconsin and New Jersey which strip labor unions of collective bargaining rights and most famously President Ronald Reagan firing thousands of striking Air Traffic Controllers in the 1980s.
The GOP does NOT support organized labor. One would have to go back to Teddy Roosevelt to find a Republican who did. To imply that someone who openly supported labor unions and was willing to sacrifice his life for one was secretly among their ranks is to say the least absurd and transcends being MERELY insulting. The GOP hated King in his lifetime. Former Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater who trashed King in the 60s if asked about him in the 80s or 90s would utter the same opinions that he had in 1964 when he was running for president and for that the late Senator has my respect. Many men and women who were on the losing side in America's civil rights era will speak with respect when they describe Dr. King and the men and women who marched and protested in their cities. They look back at the Baptist minister as a formidable and organized opponent whose methods ultimately won out.
The current GOP will smile whenever Dr. King's name is mentioned and while many may speak of him with some genuine reverence, there are others who will put on their best fake smile and tell us what the great American WOULD have thought about certain pieces of legislation or supreme court decisions. Black people do not OWN Dr. King or his legacy nor should we act as if his message wasn't universal and doesn't apply to all Americans.
The current GOP who is simply hoping to morph the civil rights martyr into a recruiting tool to serve there own ends should be embarrassed by their reprehensible and odious attempts to not only ignore a mans history but to morph it into an obvious lie. What is MOST inherently offensive about this attempt at revisionist history is the fact that they didn't even have the common decency to wait for any and all who KNEW the man OR are old enough to have lived THROUGH the civil rights movement to DIE off before they started this shameful campaign to sully a good man's name, deeds and reputation.
If you've read Orwell's "Animal Farm" you must be familiar with the events surrounding a pig named Snowball. He was a small, brave, scrappy pig who lead other animals on a fictitious farm AGAINST humans and was given some sort of medal for his heroism. After the revolution ends the most power hungry of the pigs sees Snowball as a political threat and banishes him then spends the next several years using him as a scapegoat for any and all things that go horribly wrong, and then finally gets to the point where history books are re-written to where the battle in which he fought bravely against humanity never happened but the official story had been altered to where he in fact lead the humans in their charge against the animals. Such is revisionist history.
Having grown up in the American south circa the 70s and 80's I had my teachers, parents and grand parents tell me nearly ad-nauseam about the civil rights movement. I heard about the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and Martin Luther King Junior more before 7th grade than I'd imagine my white counterparts had their entire lives in suburbia. I was told how my grandfather was called "boy" so frequently into his adult life that it may as well have been his name. How schools and every other facet of your life in the south as a person of color was to remain utterly separate from everyone else solely because of the color o your skin.
I didn't harbor any grudges against anyone for this as I figured things had changed and change was frequently a good. Besides there are good and bad people of every race, nationality and religion and it will always be that way. It wasn't until was older that I learned that Dr King had been assassinated by those who disagreed with him and his message.
Earlier this year there was some flack about history books published for use in North Carolina schools which told of all black soldiers who fought for the cause of The Confederate States of America. This would have been a GRIPPING story if it were the least bit true. It was revisionist history to the point of flat out lying. In the early stages of the war a group of creole businessmen started their own militia and volunteered to fight for the Confederate cause. Let me give a little background of the definition of "creole". In those days many white men who owned slaves impregnated their female slaves with frightening regularity. It happened so frequently that man began to question rather or not those children were slave or free. It got to the point that laws were subsequently written to state that in such cases the child's freedom or slavery would be "determined by the servitude of the mother." In other words if your mother was a slave and your father literally owned her congrats your father isn't your father he's your master and you weren't considered half white but completely black. Some states would have odd definitions to determine how black someone was. If you were half black you were mulatto. If you were a quarter black you were a "quadroon" an eighth black an "octoroon". Mississippi being the bastion of free thought that it was and remains today kept it simple if you had one drop of black blood you were black no ifs ands or buts.
What became of the Creole Militia? They were told that their services were not wanted and to disband. Not only that but the confederacy went so far as to pass laws banning blacks from service to their cause. Wealthy men could bring slaves unto the battle field and many did. These slaves were valets, cooks, grave diggers and performed menial tasks. They WERE NOT soldiers. Near the end of the war there was a drastic troop shortage and some talk of conscripting slaves but it never truly materialized. What's the point of that story? Well as it stands those who would have you believe that there were black men fighting to the death to defend the rights of other men to keep them as livestock would also now have you believe an altered history in which Martin Luther King Junior was a conservative REPUBLICAN.
Martin Luther King was honored with a national holiday commemorating all he accomplished in the civil rights movement and there was stiff opposition to it. Many REPUBLICANS in Congress argued that another Federal Holiday would cost the country BILLIONS in lost productivity. Others argued that despite being a man of the cloth Dr King was a serial adulterer who cheated on exams in college. Senators Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms (Republicans who had been Democrats) fought the legislation tooth and nail and even AFTER it became law the state of Arizona refused to celebrate it until they were told by the National Football League that the Superbowl would never be played there until they did.
The utter shortage of black Republicans has our friends in the GOP reaching at straws to attempt to recruit black faces but this takes the cake. Before any one's panties get into a bunch I want to say that I served in the military when Colin Powell (former secretary of State) was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I have the utmost respect for the general and would follow him into hell were he conducting a mission to take out the devil himself. I think former Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice is a BRILLIANT woman. While I disagree with her politics I respect her intellect and will say nary a bad word about her as a person. I have no issue with black Republicans (except Clarence Thomas) so this piece isn't an attack on them. The GOP is now spreading the lie that because the old Democratic party controlled the segregated south that MLK was obviously a Republican despite never producing any documentation that he was a registered Republican.
Let's analyze that argument. It wouldn't explain why the Democratic party split in the late 60s because the Northern Democrats were in favor of civil rights laws but southern Dems weren't. Democrats back then (like republicans now) weren't a monolith to be described as having one thought process.
Republican president Dwight Eisenhower said of putting Earl Warren (who encouraged the entire Supreme Court to vote UNANIMOUSLY on Brown v. Topeka which desegregated public schools) on the high court was "the biggest damn fool mistake I ever made" and even went on to defend those who attacked the 13 black children who integrated Little Rock, Arkansas' "Central High" by saying "These aren't BAD people...but try to imagine your sweet little girl sitting in a classroom next to some hulking negro." Conservatives like William F. Buckley went so far in his Magazine the National Review to refer to blacks as "inferior" and a "servant class." Then of course there were many in the GOP in the 50s who called any one who supported civil rights a "communist."
Democratic President Lyndon Johnson MAY have very well have BEEN a racist. I never met the man and can't say one way or the other but he DID pass more civil rights legislation than ANY American President before or since. Martin Luther King met with President Johnson to discuss the civil rights issues of the 1960s. Between 1954 and 1960 Eisenhower NEVER invited him to the White House. Johnson in a presidential address in 1964 said that America needed to overcome it's racial problems and said for the record "And we shall overcome" quoting the popular civil rights anthem.
Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater referred to the civil rights movement as America's "Negro problem" and let it be known that he most certainly did NOT support it. Why would Dr King align himself with causes so juxtaposed to what he believed?
Let us also consider two other things. Right before he died (according to the documentary Eyes on the Prize) Dr King prior to his assassination was organizing a "poor people's march on Washington." It was to take place in the summer of 68. Men and women would be camping out in tents on the national moll to bring attention to the fact that a good portion of America's populace lived in poverty and that there existed a great chasm between America's rich and poor. Sound a bit like the 99% movement? Anyway, King was assassinated right before this occurred and King Lieutenant Andrew Young attempted the event but it was poorly organized and most Americans paid little attention.
The week of his death King was in Memphis, Tennessee to speak out of behalf of black Sanitation workers who were in the midst of a garbage strike. City workers were still very segregated and black sanitation workers were not allowed to use the same city facilities as their white co workers to the point of not being allowed to seek shelter from cold or rain. During a rain storm a black worker sought refuge in the back of a garbage truck and was crushed to death which lead to the black workers going on strike. King came in amid death threats and was ultimately fell by an assassin's bullet.
Martin Luther King is dead today PARTIALLY because he braved death threats in order to stand up for organized labor. The GOP routinely tells us how organized labor is the worst thing to ever happen to this country. It's proudest moments include recent legislation in Wisconsin and New Jersey which strip labor unions of collective bargaining rights and most famously President Ronald Reagan firing thousands of striking Air Traffic Controllers in the 1980s.
The GOP does NOT support organized labor. One would have to go back to Teddy Roosevelt to find a Republican who did. To imply that someone who openly supported labor unions and was willing to sacrifice his life for one was secretly among their ranks is to say the least absurd and transcends being MERELY insulting. The GOP hated King in his lifetime. Former Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater who trashed King in the 60s if asked about him in the 80s or 90s would utter the same opinions that he had in 1964 when he was running for president and for that the late Senator has my respect. Many men and women who were on the losing side in America's civil rights era will speak with respect when they describe Dr. King and the men and women who marched and protested in their cities. They look back at the Baptist minister as a formidable and organized opponent whose methods ultimately won out.
The current GOP will smile whenever Dr. King's name is mentioned and while many may speak of him with some genuine reverence, there are others who will put on their best fake smile and tell us what the great American WOULD have thought about certain pieces of legislation or supreme court decisions. Black people do not OWN Dr. King or his legacy nor should we act as if his message wasn't universal and doesn't apply to all Americans.
The current GOP who is simply hoping to morph the civil rights martyr into a recruiting tool to serve there own ends should be embarrassed by their reprehensible and odious attempts to not only ignore a mans history but to morph it into an obvious lie. What is MOST inherently offensive about this attempt at revisionist history is the fact that they didn't even have the common decency to wait for any and all who KNEW the man OR are old enough to have lived THROUGH the civil rights movement to DIE off before they started this shameful campaign to sully a good man's name, deeds and reputation.
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