Racism...Forever?

As someone who comes from a family of Armed Services vets and marrying into a Gold Star family, I have never had even heard of a service member or vet acting in this manner. I am surprised how he reacted IF he was a vet since approximately 1/6 of the Army is Hispanic and 11% for all armed services.

TBH most of my interactions with former military have been positive. I have seen a family member removing my niece's ball cap when the National Anthem started. If someone says 'thanks you for your service' they usually say 'You're Welcome'. Although I have seen vets correcting people that are just trying to show respect to those that serve them. They look like asses.

 

There are obviously exceptions, but most people I knew from my hometown and from college who had overt racist tendencies when they went into the armed forces were less racist after a few years. In fact, among those I've been in contact with since then, it's been universally so.

 

There's usually always someone bigger, meaner and browner in your unit that is curious to hear about your views on race in America.

 

Or with more stripes.

 

A conversation related to me a few years ago:

PVT Sanders: Hey, can you turn down the rap. No one likes that shit.

PVT Hughes: What's your name again? Sanders? That's a black name, you should like rap. You got any black in you Sanders?

PVT Sanders: Hell no I ain't got any black in me.

PVT Hughes: You will tonight...

 

When I was first in the military, I remember talking to one of the guys in my unit who had gone home to South Carolina for Christmas. He took home some photos of himself with guys in his unit, and in one, he had his arm around one of the black guys in our squad. He was apparently chewed out by his grandma for doing so (this was in the early 80's).

I had a hard time actually believing him, but he was pretty broken up about it -- mostly because he finally realized how ********ed up his family actually was. He and that black guy ended up becoming best friends and still are to my knowledge.

 

I just say thanks for paying for my college.

 

A link in that article has more on the white-power terrorist suspect... Some seriously crazy rants down near the bottom.

http://www.wweek.com/news/2017/05/2...cial-slurs-at-a-free-speech-rally-last-month/

I shook the killer's filthy hand 28 days ago. Mine feels tainted now, as though I somehow sanctioned his act, though I was only trying to get some information out of him.

He had just marched through Montavilla Park chanting "************" {n-word} and throwing fascist salutes, wearing an American Revolutionary War flag like a cape.

It was this act that sparked the first moment of chaos at the "free speech" rally on April 29 in Montavilla Park, which then proceeded down 82nd Avenue, a miserable replacement for a neighborhood parade canceled due to the threat of political violence. The man in the flag cape was quickly swarmed by scrawny young antifa kids, then by officers from the Portland Police Bureau.

After the scrum dispersed, I stood by watching while police searched his backpack. They seemed to know that, prior to the march, he had posted a Facebook message threatening to "shoot to kill POLICE if they ATTEMPT DISARM" anyone openly carrying a firearm to the rally.
​

 

Actually, it's probably more contact with people not like them as the reason for the change, not fear. The most racist people I have encountered are the most insulated in their specific community. The military pretty much destroys that insulation and forces you to rely on people of all backgrounds.

 

It's both. You are forced to rely on each other, but there's always one or two that will find their confirmation bias in any person.

 

I started to read the comments before I realized I was getting cancer from reading them.

 

Man, some of those are more incoherently loony than the ravings of the terror suspect.

 

Doing The Right Thing Shouldn’t Be This Remarkable
Leaders with integrity are hard to find in 2017. It’s not just Donald Trump’s fault.

By Emily Peck


New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu stood up last week and delivered a moving, bracingly honest speech to explain why he removed four Confederate monuments from his city.

“You elected me to do the right thing, and this is what it looks like,” Landrieu told the crowd gathered at New Orleans’ former city hall. “These monuments purposefully celebrate a fictional, sanitized Confederacy, ignoring the death, ignoring the enslavement and the terror that it actually stood for.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/politicians-doing-the-right-thing_us_59288529e4b0065b20b698db

 

Didnt Alabama pass a law that the great great great great grandson of Robert E Lee will bayonet anyone who tries to remove a Confederate war memorial?

 

And people wonder why I carry a tomahawk & a knife

 

A fella I've been canvassing with for the election goes out 'tooled up', as it used to be called...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirpan

 

Back in 78, 3 of us half drunk farts hiked the Kalalau Trail on Kauai. At one stage I started singing "Marching through Georgia " I'd learned it in school in Liverpool. Harry my good southern buddy went awfully quiet. Then later he told me that it was the first time he'd ever heard it. I guess that they didn't teach it in his school.

 

And that's my defense, should I ever need it, as an adherent of the Red Road and it is my right of religious expression to carry them.

 

Free haircuts?

 

Oregon heros are an unlikely pair, an Army vet and a Reed alum, both had courage to stand up for what's right. Best of America right here. pic.twitter.com/q3W2Bg2nBQ

— Adam Messinger (@adam_messinger) May 27, 2017

 

The injured good Samaritan is a student who once won an award for a poem against Islamophobia. Seems like all three were good/decent individuals that probably already contributed more and would have contributed more to society than the asshat who killed/injured them would have even if he lived to be 1000 years old.

Reading up about that killer, how was he even still a free man? Why are these guys allowed to continue until they escalate into committing a very violent crime? Reading about the guy's background, it definitely was a matter of when and not if he was going to escalate to serious physical violence.

 

Expect a Trump statement on it...around never

And to further show how Trumpism has enboldended the Economically Insecure, check out this N-word spewing woman who's also running for Southampton, NY village board:

Ms. Smith said she purchased the home in the largely African-American Hillcrest neighborhood nearly six years ago. She said she converted a “rodent-infested dump” into an oasis. “I came into this neighborhood colorblind,” she said. “… When you are a pioneer, like I am, it’s not easy. I’m the only white person who owns and lives on this street.”

Southampton Village Police Department Lieutenant Chris Wetter said that over the past six years, Ms. Smith has called the police department between 100 and 200 times. Most of the complaints were about litter, noise, illegal parking and public drinking.

Ms. Smith admitted to making that many calls, saying her neighborhood is neglected.

One night, she said, she couldn’t sleep in her bedroom because of the noise coming from in front of her house. So she put on some shoes and walked outside.

“I said, ‘You f------ ************s!’ and they just dispersed,” Ms. Smith recalled.

The next night, when she came home, she saw them in front of her house again, and heard one of the men call her name. Ms. Smith asked who he was, and he replied that he was the man she had used the racial slur toward the night before.

In relating the story, she referred to the man, who she said was in his 30s, as “boy,” and said she told him, “I know you’re a good guy, but you don’t behave like that … If you want to behave like that, you’re going to be a ************.”

Ms. Smith said she has been harassed by the people in the neighborhood, but not everyone, because she recognizes that there are good people there. Instead, she said a large portion of the problems are from the traffic that comes in from Flanders and Riverside.

“I am entitled to peace and quiet and enjoyment in my residence,” said Ms. Smith, who said she now sleeps in her basement because she can’t sleep in her bedroom when the noise outside is loud.

Ms. Smith announced her candidacy in the upcoming Southampton Village Board election, her first run for public office, saying she was prompted in part by wanting to get some attention to her neighborhood. She said she has no plans to drop out of the race.

“That’s why I’m running for trustee,” Ms. Smith said. “This neighborhood needs help.”

http://www.27east.com/mobile/articl...Racial-Slur-In-Call-To-Police-Recording-Shows

 

"Pioneer."

Always love that one.