re: #220 HappyWarrior

Speaking of Kirk Douglas turning 100, I saw a neat story the other day about a Holocaust survivor who recently got her citizenship and who is going to vote for HRC. I’ve also been reading a lot about the new African-American history museum in Washington and man it just gets me how many of my fellow whites do not even attempt to empathize. Here’s something to put in perspective though. The 99 year old woman who rang the bell to open the museum yesterday’s father was a slave. A lot of white people want to act like slavery was so long ago but for this woman, she could point to her own father as a former slave and there are plenty of people like her who either had fathers or grandparents that were born slaves that are still with us. I remember about ten years ago when Congress signed an apology for lynching, one of the men on hand when President Bush signed the legislation was a survivor of a lynching. Historical perspective is what we all need.

That’s exactly what I said a few days back when I heard about that 99-year old woman. It’s amazing that someone is alive today who can say that her father was a slave. Makes it clear that slavery wasn’t hundreds of years ago as so many people claim. And of course, Jim Crow was within my parents’ lifetime and they talk about it as if it was yesterday (although they are of Jamaican descent and never lived in the U.S.).