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

Tue Sep 26 14:32:40 PDT 2017

This doesn't speak directly to Marshall's situation but I have choosen to attend Non-Violent Communication classes to try to figure out how to be brave enough to have some discussions with people who think differently from me.  Some of the insghts I came up with that help me to begin a conversation:
1.  Don't assume bad intent.  (That wouldn't work for you, Marshall, in the situation you described.)
2.  Ask questions.  Choose curiosity over being right.  Listen
3.  Stay calm.  Rightness does not justify rudeness.
4.  Calmly make your argument.  

That's not a lot but it's helped me.  Joan Knutson

-----Original Message-----
From: John Epps via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
To: Jann McGuire <laurelcg at aol.com>; Order Ecumenical Community <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Tue, Sep 26, 2017 2:11 pm
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] conversation on white trash racism

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.

-----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 here). And even if these folks never say another word, they still think like racist 'poor 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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