[Oe List ...] conversation on white trash racism

[John Epps via OE]

Thanks Marshall. I heard an expression the other day that seems to fit this
situation: "These folks give white trash a bad name."

On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 2:49 PM, via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

> I go to a progressive women's huddle meeting every two weeks. Many of
> these groups spun off the Women's March on January 20.  I'm in Devin Nunes'
> congressional district, the other women are in Kevin McCarthy's, so we in
> this Huddle are a small minority in our community.
>
> One woman left her Hillary sign in her yard after the election and was
> harassed and even threatened by neighbors not unlike yours. She purchased a
> sophisticated alarm system that included 12 cameras. The harassment
> stopped.
>
> Look for a Huddle group. We welcome men. Our first strategy is to canvass
> and to set up registration booths in farmers' markets to register people
> who didn't vote last time.
>
> I personally haven't been confronted with hatefulness of this sort.  I'd
> aspire in that case to take a step back, pray for the misguided soul,
> surround myself with as much positive energy as I can muster and imagine an
> energy vortex over his/her head, a tornado drawing  up and out the
> distorted thinking and replacing it with energy drawn up from the Earth
> beneath their feet. I'd want my own tiny tornado above my crown as well.
>
> I'm on 5 calls.org. They give me suggestions for calling my reps every
> week. I often call Nunes' office, but don't bother with our senators,
> Feinstein and Harris.
>
> This is probably not your style at all, Marshall, but if I were you, I'd
> smudge myself and the periphery of my property with burning sage or other
> fragrant herb and put an energetic barrier between my house and theirs.
>
> Thanks for sharing this. I hope we do get a lively conversation from this.
>
> Jann McGuire, who was born to a poor white family in West Texas. Were we
> ever called "trash"? I can't know. Just glad we had our church community. I
> remember how shocked my mother was when she met her first Republican, my
> girl scout leader who had moved to Odessa from Oklahoma.[image: Blush]
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: W. J. via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
> To: W. J. <synergi at yahoo.com>
> Sent: Mon, Sep 25, 2017 8:19 pm
> Subject: [Oe List ...] conversation on white trash racism
>
> Last night I was stunned to overhear my next-door neighbors sitting on
> their front porch and loudly spewing forth their toxic honky racist shit.
> This was in the wake of Trump's Alabama comments that stirred up a lot of
> racist indignation that *denied there was anything 'racial' involved in
> protesting against racism*.
> It was not just the nasty content, but more the tone of their comments and
> their South Carolina accents that were just so offensive to have to
> overhear. I closed my window, but that didn't stop their conversation from
> seeping into my living room like sewage in a Texas flood.
> Among their themes:
> 1. They're still fighting their version of the Civil War, which was not
> about slavery, since "poor white folks had to pick cotton too".
> 2. They still hate Martin Luther King, Jr. and resent the fact that
> everywhere they go, there has to be a 'Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard'
> in town.
> 3. Their sense of white entitlement allows them to consider themselves
> 'better than' black people or more 'civilized'.
> 4. Their cultural values--including their racism--are considered
> normative. Thus their racist biases are invisible to them.
> 5. Other racial groups are considered intruders (unless they are 'silent'
> and subservient and don't 'rock the boat' of white superiority).
> 6. Genocide is implicitly OK--especially if it can be justified under
> 'war' conditions. There was a story about Marines wiping out one quarter
> million Muslims on an island. That was a good way to 'fix *that*
> problem'. Other racial/ethnic/religious groups are considered subhuman and
> can be treated accordingly.
> I could go on, but my point is that I just don't *like* these neighbors.
> Fortunately, they're not around that often. And since they're old, they
> will soon die off, taking their racist prejudices with them. They are
> shrinking minority desperately holding out against cultural change.
> But they--and millions like them--elected Donald Trump. So we have to deal
> with a white racist cultural backlash with global implications.
> So here I am, surrounded by Trump voters like Davey Crockett at the Alamo
> (yes, I'm aware of the racist imagery
> <https://www.texasobserver.org/remember-alamo-differently/> here). And
> even if these folks never say another word, they still *think* like
> racist 'poor white trash <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_trash>' who
> had to compete with other economically disadvantaged groups.
> I realize that I benefit enormously from 'white male privilege'--including
> the advantages of a perspective informed by global experience, advanced
> education, a multicultural context, and a determination to examine and
> confront my own implicit/unconscious assumptions of white racist
> privileging.
> I'd like to begin a conversation that will explore how to survive and
> thrive and even support cultural change/transformation in this
> context--without getting pot shots aimed at my living room.
> Marshall Jones
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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