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Tuesday, July 7, 2015

My Ancestors Fought For This Flag. It Represents My Legacy And Heritage

 
 
 Buchenwald oven


Alan: Most Americans have living relatives who were alive when these good Christians cooked this man.

Several years ago, I attended a talk by UNC-Chapel Hill Public Health Professor John Hatch who mentioned that all four grandparents were born into slavery. In one of his ancestral families the children were auctioned off in a single day. Knowing that the new owners would remove them to distant plantations - with no hope of family reunion - a bereaved daughter committed suicide within hours of her sale.

To think that this heritage - still burningly alive in human memory - can be transcended in a few generations is more Pharisaic than the good church-goers whom Yeshua railed against.

"Yeshua Excoriates Fellow Pharisees"

"Bad Black People." Why Bill O'Reilly Is Wrong Even When He's Right"

"The Historical Background and Meaning of the Confederate Flag" 

A Christian Perspective


More Americans object to rainbow flag than Confederate flag.

Followup Correspondence with Frog Hospital's Fred Owens:
On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
Gay America won a substantial victory at the Supreme court -- marriage rights.
Black America is fighting for a symbolic feel-good victory over the flag. Does it get anybody a better a job, a better school, better police protection or better housing?
--


Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

 My gardening blog is  Fred Owens
My writing blog is Frog Hospital

Dear Fred.

Thanks for your email.

The struggle between "the practical" and "the ideal" (often under aegis of symbols) is eternally problematic.

Make no mistake: "the symbolic" is a crystallization point for practical activity.

Note that The Thinking Housewife devotes considerable time and energy to ermine stoles and other trappings of monarchical papacy, not because these things have immediate practical value but because their presence (or absence) indicates the health (or sickness) of the symbolic gestalt wherein people take their "value queues."

Early in adulthood, Paul Schute pointed out that symbols have crucial value which is not at all limited to the symbolic.

The inspirational/practical implications of the following photo go thunderously beyond mere symbol. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a1/WW2_Iwo_Jima_flag_raising.jpg

Similarly, not having the confederate flag fly over the statehouse in quintessentially racist/separatist South Carolina will manifest a palpable absence as visible as the elimination of the Twin Towers from the New York City skyline.

Pax tecum

Alan

***



On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 11:16 AM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:



If I was a black American leader, I would say let's go after some real estate and deal with the flag later.
Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

 My gardening blog is  Fred Owens

 My writing blog is Frog Hospital

***

Dear Fred,

They went after real estate and they got it.

The South Carolina State House.

Pax

Alan

***

On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 12:17 PM, Fred Owens <froghospital911@gmail.com> wrote:
the Twin Towers were more than a symbol, they were real buildings, 3,000 people died that day  -- bad comparison.

When MLK died, black America got a national holiday, and what else?

to me, the important statement is what the woody harrelson white guy said to the wellesly snopes black guy in White Men can't jump.

The white guy said to the black guy, "you'd rather look good than win."

Yes symbols are important, but -- the body of Christ is also a piece of bread,  a real piece of bread, that grew from wheat, that came from the earth.

But a flag, try to eat that!

***
 
Dear Fred,

Thanks for your email.

I suspect that half (or nearly half) of incarcerated black men in this country are behind bars for crimes that are committed just as often by whites but the latter are protected by white privilege, the street level spawn of white supremacy.

"Bad Black People." Why Bill O'Reilly Is Wrong Even When He's Right"


I do not know how many blacks have died from white supremacy but I am confident the number is in the hundreds of thousands and probably exceeds a million. 

By comparison, the Twin Towers was trivial except as provocation for The National Lunacy which resulted in the absurd (white supremacist) carnage of the Iraq War, coupled with the radical destabilization of the Middle East and, in some significant way, the birth of ISIS.

"Bush's Toxic Legacy In Iraq"

Currently, an American is much more likely to die from a cop's bullet than from an act of terror. (Not to mention the ravages of bee stings and flu.)
Your point about looking good is valid

But looking good is a kind of real world victory - especially in white-normalized social space which does its best to make blacks look bad. 

If you are not persuaded by the white supremacy argument, consider the bottomless well of hatred directed toward Obama, an extraordinary person by any measure, hated by white bigots as much for his success as they hate underclass blacks for their failure.
Take a look at Laura's blog and compare her palpable malice with the forgiveness of those black families bereaved by a murderous supremacist, a fellow who rides the same psycho-spiritual wave that ultimately informs The Thinking Housewife.

Obama's Eulogy For Charleston Pastor Clementa Pinckney And His Fellow Martyrs

Can Laura -- in her unending bitterness -- even imagine this kind of mercy? 

Or does her punitive God demand damnation of "the other" as prerequisite for her own grasping salvation?
Pax tecum

 
Alan

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