Of POTS And KETTLES

Its the BLACK Thing, After All

Rudy and Mitt are in the media lately "feigning indignation" over hapless Joe Biden; accusing him of being a racist.  As they say, "it takes one to know one".  But what about those of us who've had to live under the heel of racism?  We're never a part of the white-on-white conversations on race that the white male media loves to stage from time to time.

Mitt, born into Mormonism in 1947, and Rudy, born into Catholicism in 1944, are eerily similar men on this substrate of  "American Exceptionalism".  Both are money-grubbing, chamelion-like social climbers who have chosen politics as their path to wealth and power.  Mitt, born in Detroit, MI,  and Rudy, born in Brooklyn, NY share similar fates at the hands of the "ovarian lottery" as well.  Both have deeply troubling backgrounds when it comes to race in this country.

Joe Biden, Vice-President to the first (admitted) non-white male President of this country; was born in Scranton, PA, in 1942.  I'm older than all of these guys, and I was born "Negro" in north-central Missouri in 1939. 

A fellow officer in the Air Force, white, Catholic, read my Master's Thesis on the origins of racial attitudes and beliefs in the United States, and the conditions of racial integration within the military in 1972.  He described what it was like to be born white and Catholic is a Parish in Massachussetts.

He was puzzled why non-white citizens did not follow the advancement patterns practiced in his Parish.  He told me that it was common for a parishioner who got a job in the water company to work diligently to get jobs there for other members of his parish.  He noted that blacks, who had been here far longer that most whites, never adopted that practice.  He noted that self-help was also not practiced by Native Americans or Hispanics.  We both cited our experiences and academic sources to guess at answers, but none were satisfactory.

Back to Mitt and Rudy.  Both are driven men, with questionable methods of dealing with, and beliefs about "others"; both by race and religion.  They have long, zig-zag histories in the public eye, very often engaging in questionable practices when they strayed across boundaries of race, class, and religion.  Rudy's racist police force in NY city, for example, and Mitt's "evolution" in the Mormon religion that didn't get around to disavowing its racial beliefs until recently.

For most of my 73 years, white males in the media have delighted in round table discussions of race, without any inputs from non-whites.  They absolve and condemn each other, while discussing "the others".  They gave off impressions that they were in total control of this topic and phenomenon.

They should heed what Moynihan warned; that whatever "edge" whites held over non-whites, or conditions imposed on them by whites, would be lost within ten years.  After that time, whites would suffer similar conditions. 

Stay Vigilant! The kettles are banging away!

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