re: #160 HappyWarrior

When I was working out yesterday, I was thinking about my personal code and how some of my views were helped shaped by learning about Apartheid and how Catholics were treated in Northern Ireland. I just remember watching the film Cry Freedom and two things striking me, the amount of black South Africans killed by the regime and into my lifetime that happened and how we in the Reagan years supported that regime. That’s being a SJW to me. I’m a white kid from the suburbs. I just want to try to understand people different than I.

Yeah, I managed to have an uncharacteristically diverse neighborhood for Southern WV, being raised Filipino and Catholic, with Mexican neighbors, an Indian best friend, and a Catholic School class that was just as uncharacteristically diverse. Not to mention a theology teacher who was a serious social activist (he had a picture of Martin Sheen from one of the protests he attended, as well as one from a School of the Americas protests), and I’m pretty sure was the son of legitimate hippies.

Catholic School was, ironically, where I lost my faith, but only because I was disillusioned with institutions, but it informed my philosophy enough where I gelled with all the messages of empathy in the Gospels. So even if I’m way lapsed, I still feel my hackles raised up when people use Christianity as an excuse to tell people that they are somehow undeserving of even basic respect.