Getting right into it and picking up from last time. I have brought you up to my awareness of the issue, now I can just progress further into my experience with the epidemic known as hate. We are getting dirty but, for good reason. Thanks again for following along, lets get to the bottom of this bad boy!
Punk Rock: On the frontlines of anti Racism since the 80's!
So we are at the point in the story where everything is closing in on me, I was old enough to understand, and built to believe I was supposed to be proud of a heritage of hate. I am not, it disgusts me, and honestly, I hope when they buried that dude, they buried his legacy with him. The all and powerful hooded member of my family, was, and is still a worthless nobody to me, however, I wasn't supposed to feel that way. Having family in the Klan is supposed to be like, a bragging right around these parts, still to this day, its one thing I cannot grasp the concept of. Anger is anger, but direct hate is.. also the same as its described. I quickly realized, we weren't any better off than anyone, there was nothing special about me, there were no parades for white kids who didn't succeed, so I felt like everyone I was supposed to hate. As I grew more, I related more. I was growing into my teen years, and had decided to join the masses of rural white kids, and take a Vo Tech class.
HEY! DUMMIES! THIS AIN'T THE WAY EITHER!
If I may backtrack to just a few months prior, I had really found my way into punk rock at this point, I was actively going to shows, and actively, getting beat up by, and openly involved in jumping... NAZIS, but were they? Most I encountered just had a watered down American version of the idea where it just coincided with hate, and the Klan was too dumb and disorganized for these guys (I beg to differ). It was also a point where I was a lot more vocal against what I knew, I never stepped out of turn, but I really learned to debate my stance and use reasoning. I had personal ideas of what was right and wrong from this point on. In my love for history, my personal vindications made it stronger. I was once cornered by a group of black kids at tech, over a "Nazi Punks Fuck Off" sticker on a notebook, and in the same day knocked in the nuts by a white power chick, life was pretty wild, but I kept my stance, even when they told me to tone it down. I was angry about a lot, especially about what people tried to teach me. I vowed to try and change, and did it in very annoying ways instead of weaponizing my knowledge for real change.
When I joined the Navy, I got my first real taste of diversity, and saw the true side of it. There was name calling from everyone in playful ways. I wasn't sure how to respond, but, one day I shot back from one insult with another and everyone laughed. I questioned what I had taught myself from reading, and gotten the experience that everyone is kind of ugly on the inside. Every last one of us. When we admit that, we can start to make the change. White, Black, Brown, Yellow, Italian, Irish, German, Polish, African, Asian, Spanish.... all the way down to the core, there is disdain. Its always been here, over religion, land, science, we have always been competitive and war like. But never have we been so openly proud of something that really doesn't matter. That is the stance I took, and the stance I hold, I don't tolerate hate, from anyone, plain and simple. And instead of combatting hate with hate, I got educated on our relations.
When I left the Navy, I travelled this country for over 10 years, lived in lots of places, and only gained more ground in my conclusion on race. I had heard so many things, from so many people, I had decided to ignore opinion and focus on the person, unless it was directly ugly. The idea of frustration leading to race is touchy, someone angry as something as simple as a denial for a job, can be soul crushing, it creates the idea to blame someone else so we feel better. The issue is when that fire is fueled with gasoline, its obviously going to blow beyond saving. What fire? Well, this one, the one that really proves who has the real voice and power in the country. In the simplest of terms, when a black man took office, we went fucking wild.
Some may say "There's only two". The correct answer is "That's two too many stop ruining progress!"
All the banter I had heard my entire life, had become front page news, folks were going nuts dressing like Ben Franklin, and screaming about taxes. The education we lacked that I talked about earlier, this is where it bit us in the ass. We all made assumptions, and Facebook posts, long before the idea of 'fake news' it was truly fake. Battle lines were drawn where they weren't needed, talk radio hosts became reliable sources and we all just accepted the lies we told to cover the fact that we were just mad. Just like they called people Communists in the 20's, and 40's, and 60's we came right back to it. Only this time, it was met with just as much uneducated assumption from the other end. We just started a series of fantasies we believed to be true, and never left them. In retaliation for the way we acted, our children ruined the idea of interracial relationships out of spite, and they became the norm for a new culture, I DONT DISAPPROVE, just adding clarity to what got us here. We pissed off the generation raised on Google and a mistrust from the government, where did they come from? Well, it all started the year I graduated.
9/11 brought the generation of the Toby Keith fan, it was proud music targeted at the usual uneducated lump. That uneducated lump raised another, and another. If we ever question the true birth of the commercialization of the flag? It came around this time, with a full on demand that this was our home, and if you didn't agree, you were an enemy. We were hurt, and in usual fashion, vented in all the wrong ways. Our pride, is, was, and always will be our downfall as a species. Others on the food chain just strike their enemies for meals, we have the ability to manipulate and spin a web of misconception. We spun the web really well this time, and everyone's suffering. When we moved for a better Nation with Civil Rights, we did very great brave things. We wanted change, and if you didn't you were the enemy. However, that change was "Don't bomb our church!" or "Please don't drag me from a car". We have come a LONG way, however, we just jumped into another fire. Here, we just wanted to rage and became pompous, we cried for war, and payback, because someone returned the hatred we always dished out on our own. All of the sudden, America was 'comply or die', I fought for this country, and you are free to call home.. wherever you like. This is the melting pot of the world for a reason. We really went astray there.
Which, brings me to current day, this has been exhausting and theres so much more I could say but its best just to finish this and finally move on. Lets pack it up. We aren't idiots, I don't need to explain how things have been here since 2015. I would be a fool to go into detail. So instead.. I give my personal reflection on all of this... to maybe finally help someone. Drop the battle lines, we can do this!
Only a rich White person would generalize all White people as rich, it's what they know, so it's what they speak of. Stop encouraging this level of stupid
To close, the idea of hate, exists everywhere. From the kitchens, to the factories, there is always some type of overtone. We judge each other by generation now, not that we haven't always, but we call each other names of the enemy. This isn't playful banter, untrained people are fully ready to take the the streets with guns to solve any and all issues. We are not very far from the very things we don't want to claim any relation to. Our Grandparents fought this very fight, our parents watched, and we were taught from both sides of the fence. We can however, beat it. We are a strong species who have survived and conquered forever. Now we seem to be stuck and want to end all progression, or progress too far. We are tearing down statues of men who fought for so much, HOWEVER, they were placed in town squares 100 years after that heroes death to deter other people from thinking they were welcome. Through the victories, and tragedies in 68' we seem to have hit the pause button on any type of mutual understanding. We turned to secrecy in our snide remarks, until we found out we thought everyone else felt the same. That speaks volumes, we don't have a formed opinion, we follow and get behind 'movements'. We haven't changed much in our treatment, its just had to become illegal to deny someone else the right to use a water fountain, and it really set off a firecracker worldwide when acceptance was the key word. We built our own communities, and acted accordingly in them to what they told us.
In the city, we glorified crime, heroes were struggling men and women who faced admittedly self created danger. It was the way to survive when you had nothing, it was a way of sticking together, now gangs have shown true face as to their intentions. We say the government creates drugs to keep us addicted, but always have a 'connect' who has a 'source' who knows a 'distributor'. To say we don't do the same with the poor in rural areas is silly. I have buried lots of friends who were so bored they just started poking their arms. Lets face it, we all know we are just doing what's expected of us. Our backgrounds are rooted in tradition, there's as many '4th generation' Crips as their is Klan members its all domestic terrorism in my eyes. To solve our issues, we throw bricks for any reason, instead of showing up at Town Hall Meetings. We let situations erupt before attempting to step in, we record, for the sake of saying "If I don't walk away from this, someone please get the proof". What does the video proof do for the media? Light more fires? There's two enemies here, the media, and the rich, the true governing force of social interactions. We come here to do our best bidding, with the way we know best, unintelligent words to get us nowhere, that wont bring change.
Change has to come from within! Change has to come from the kitchens of the city who banter skin tones and complexion. Change has to come from Black and Brown, as much as Italian and German. Until we cry out from the streets of Philadelphia, to the fields of Nebraska that we have had enough. Colors do not matter, the lives do. Black, White, Asian, Spanish, Romani, I can go on of course. We have so much to learn from tradition and culture instead of color. We say cultures are stolen, but we don't even go look for them to take them back. We say we were denied a life from our ancestors, but they are long gone, no one is stopping us from moving on except us. In typical fashion, we weaponized while they find more structured to find ways to keep us poor. The best way to keep us poor, is to make the working man angry, so he works more to afford better and the varying hours become less exclusive. Why pay Dan and John 8 hours each when John can work 12 and extinguish one more man in the middle. These are the real issues we need to accept to ever move forward. I said it before, every color is ugly. As a whole, we generalize White women we don't like as Karen, and Black women as Shaniqua. We can't call for change, by doing the same thing to each other. Its kind of that simple.
In the cities, the work force is cultured, in small towns, the work force is based on the demographic and who knows who. We don't know a single thing about each other out of choice. We choose the history we want to speak of, and portray it how we like because ghosts can't talk. In this issue, I tackled a lot, and I tried to stay as on track as possible. This is a job for all of us. Kill the parody, we had to before, and we are doing so now, but kill it all. To vaccinate from this disease, everyone is gonna have to comply and take the shot, on all sides, from all walks of life. We have gone too far, it's time to admit we are lost and backtrack a little to fix the minor things that escalated to where we are now. Its not hard to time travel, we just have to find the time we chose to walk the road we don't like, and take the one we felt we deserved, every last one of us. We can do this, we can beat the stigma, by letting it die in disgrace. Its time to work together, fight to stay alive, and defy anyone telling us we can't. Face ourselves, and our pride, and realize it's truly not that important, just a gripe made in vain.
THANK YOU FOR READING THIS ONE! I really really appreciate the glance over of this mess. I hope it reaches just one of you. I tried sharing from both experience, and personal view on what's going on out there. Nothing is unfixable, but you have to want to fix it, and clearly we all admit, no one wants to bridge the gap. Its always been easier to place blame somewhere else, some do it because they don't want to work, some do it because they were trained to, and some do it.. just because they want to. No one can fix us except us, you cant force compliance on this type of issue, we can only keep pushing forward, and leaving everyone who refuses to, behind in the time where they are happy and comfy. I am happy to have this one out in the open so I can move on myself.
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