The other comments are very enlightening. Thank you QR for giving people the time and space to air their beliefs and opinions. Also for illuminating a history almost buried under layers of white amnesia. Even I, born in 1939 at the height of the Nazi fifth column activities in the US seeking to support white supremacy and deflect the US from joining WWII, unknowingly lived through all the desperate hysteria in the US - No more war! rallies. Most of it fueled with Nazi money confiscated from the Jews who were already being "displaced". The layers of malfeasance surrounding white supremacy are deep and wide and tragically, still alive and kicking. It was not until toward the end of the War, that I saw a painted spread in Life magazine showing hoards of Japanese soldiers tumbling, dead or dying down a steep hillside that I grasped what was going on. It was not a photograph, but an artists work. Today I suspect the Life editors felt they had to distance the scene from the reality of photography. I remember being mesmerized by it and at the same time feeling sick to my stomach. I am quite sure I never told any adults I had seen it. My immediate family was fiercely divided with most of them subscribing to the racist messaging promoted by the Nazis (unknown to them) and sticking buckle and thong to their conviction that British imperial rule had been useful and benign. Oddly, my grandfather, naturalized US citizen as an adult, despised royalty and aristocracy while still claiming that the Brits were superior to the rest of the world. His offspring were to varying degrees white supremacists and casually used denigrating slurs for many non British Europeans as well as people of other colors. My mother, sole representative of her side of the family, smouldered at the bigotry and subversively instructed her daughters in tolerance and courtesy. In retrospect, she was sui generis and almost never voiced her opinions to others. Somehow this influenced us - creating this tiny secret society in the midst of universal intolerance.
As a result, both of us, in later years, could talk to each other about uncomfortable subjects knowing we had our mother to thank for the honesty. I feel quite confident that all my relatives went to their graves firm in their assumption of superiority. The last of them, my tiny gentle Aunt could never rid herself of fear of Afro-Americans. She never yielded to any of my arguments to the contrary. Which is typical for her generation. As a kindergarten and first grade teacher she encountered and loved the toddlers and very young children of all sorts who passed through her hands. The adults were a different kettle of fish.
The lesson? in the midst of foul intent there are still voices of sanity we need to cultivate.
I remember traveling in the 1950's South to visit my grandparents, stopping in restaurants that displayed signs saying, "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" and we all knew who "anyone" was.
Everyone should visit the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis TN that is built around the motel where MLKJ was killed in 1968. There is a part of America that is ugly and it raises its head from time to time. We should be ready to call it out when it does so and now is such a time.
Thank you for writing about this today. Regarding the mention of "killing more than 100 fishermen," we don't know if they were fishing any more than we know if they were trafficking drugs. We don't need to think of them as innocent fisherman to know that killing them is wrong. What if some of them were drug runners? They were still entitled to due process. Instead of interdiction our country's leaders chose barbarianism. That's where white supremacy plus a brutal warrior ethos has led.
"Fred Hampton Was Murdered" you say? Well, yes, he was murdered.
And what did Fred Hampton say, the man who was willing to ally with the Young Patriots Party, poor white southern transplants who unironically sported Confederate flags?
"It’s a class struggle whether we want to face it or not. The Black Panther Party hears a lot of people saying “Let’s go ahead and fight fire with fire.” But we say, “No, no, no!” We don’t care how many people say that, because nobody knows really what’s happening. Huey was by himself, but being in this minority doesn’t always make you wrong. We may be in the minority, but this minority is gonna keep on shouting loud and clear, “We’re not gonna fight fire with fire, we’re gonna fight fire with water. We’re not gonna fight racism with racism, we’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We’re not gonna fight capitalism with black capitalism like some of these punks in the city of Chicago want to do, we’re gonna fight capitalism with socialism."
Thank you for this article. Thank you for teaching me, a 50yo white female that considers herself an ally but wants to do SO much more. Thank you for teaching and/or reminding us about this history when there is so much going on in the world...we need to fight this all the way🌟
This is the best explanation I have read or heard of what is truly going on in our country! I hope more people read it or send it to any and everyone they know. Thank you for your "deep dive" and explanation which should hopefully awaken others.
One more memory: I was in my late teens, or early 20’s, when I happened on a demonstration on Congress Avenue in Austin. There were about a thousand people demonstrating against a KKK march. There were only a dozen or so KKK marchers, dressed in their hideous white robes, along with a few others, marching along side, dressed with helmets making them look like Darth Vader. They also carried black batons.
There was a construction project along the street, with a convenient pile of bricks. The KKK march made me angry. I picked up a brick and threw it, striking one of the KKK marches on the helmet. He, and the other helmeted KKK marchers, started swinging their batons, hitting demonstrators. A riot ensued, and I started it. Numerous people were taken to the hospital. This possibly would have happened without my stupid act of violence, throwing that brick, but I felt responsible.
I learned a very big lesson: violence really does beget more violence!
Thank you, beautifully stated. I really appreciate you and your wisdom. I wish you and your family good time together as we end a crazy 2025 and start into 2026. Peace to you ☮️❤️
Thank you. Well said. I am white and grew up in a white neighborhood, but I also learned at an early age to embrace diversity. In fact, I celebrate diversity. I don't understand those among us that remain in denial. It is not in any way a part of common sense, but then, what is? I have friends in denial. They refuse to acknowledge common sense. I have no response to them.
Just a note that the vast majority of the destruction of pre-European peoples in the Americas was from diseases brought by Europeans and unintentionally transmitted to people who had been isolated from the rest of Eurasia for at least 20,000 years. For example, the first Europeans found the shores of the Amazon River heavily populated, but when Europeans returned some decades later almost no one was there. This is not to excuse reprehensible behavior, but to acknowledge the horrific impact of things that people didn't even know they did. A significant fraction of humanity was lost, and due to the lack of written language in many cases, their knowledge and thoughts will never be recovered. See the book "1491" for more details.
I will always remember my mother taking me and my sister to Woolworths department store in Austin, Texas in the 50’s. It had a water fountain on the outside of the building where I began taking a sip. My mother stopped me, telling me it was for blacks only. About 6 years old I was bewildered, and I asked her by drinking out of the fountain did that mean I would turn black! Looking back to that moment it is both funny and horrific. At that young age I had no understanding of why a fountain was restricted only to be used by black people.
Inside Woolworths was a cafe. My sister and I walked through and even at that age took notice that black people were sitting together on one side of the cafe, with non-black people sitting on the other side, the two sides divided with a short partition wall. It was just a year or so later, when I had learned to read, that I saw the sign above the water fountain reading “blacks only”, and inside, a sign directing black people to one side of the cafe.
Within a very short time I began to learn more of the history of racial discrimination. It was a horrible awakening for this little white kid, learning that even the people in the church my mother brought me to every Sunday were full of people who were complicit with such racism. That is when I became aware that church was not teaching true Christianity, that Jesus was actually speaking to ALL people, not just to whites.
It is with profound dismay that the leaders of Texas, and the US, have sought to erase the teaching of the history of racial discrimination from our schools. They want to teach young people that slave owners were actually good to their slaves, that after slavery was supposedly abolished there was no discrimination. What is so further confounding is that the majority of Texans voted politicians into office knowing they would erase true history from textbooks, and continue to go to churches that don’t follow Jesus at all!
My only conclusion is there are many in Texas, and our country, who have lost their souls, and any true sense of Christianity.
For about a decade I wrote and edited social studies textbooks for a New York publisher, and Texas was our most challenging market. A right wing donor paid a couple (He had been a baggage handler, she, I think, a housewife.) and they went over every textbook with a fine tooth comb for any reference that might challenge right wing ideas. Sometimes just mentioning race or feminism was enough. I remember we pulled a very powerful photo of a just-liberated WWII concentration camp, because they felt it might "upset" students. Another time, a feature at the end of a chapter would ask, "What do you think?" about students' reaction to some event or decision, and the critics' reaction was that students in middle school were too young to have an opinion. After the state board aired all their complaints, there would be a hearing at which publishers would be excoriated and were told how many changes would need to be made in order for the book to be eligible for sale to Texas schools. Eventually, we pulled out of the Texas market, which was very well funded by Big Oil, because it just wasn't worth all the expense of making the changes.
But in all seriousness--I was one of those people born before the Civil Rights Act--5 years before. I'm proud to say that my parents were NEVER affiliated with that hateful organization; in fact, they worked tirelessly to advance equality, civil rights, and education for most of their adult lives. I'm relieved that they're not around to see what's happening now. It would break their hearts.
The other comments are very enlightening. Thank you QR for giving people the time and space to air their beliefs and opinions. Also for illuminating a history almost buried under layers of white amnesia. Even I, born in 1939 at the height of the Nazi fifth column activities in the US seeking to support white supremacy and deflect the US from joining WWII, unknowingly lived through all the desperate hysteria in the US - No more war! rallies. Most of it fueled with Nazi money confiscated from the Jews who were already being "displaced". The layers of malfeasance surrounding white supremacy are deep and wide and tragically, still alive and kicking. It was not until toward the end of the War, that I saw a painted spread in Life magazine showing hoards of Japanese soldiers tumbling, dead or dying down a steep hillside that I grasped what was going on. It was not a photograph, but an artists work. Today I suspect the Life editors felt they had to distance the scene from the reality of photography. I remember being mesmerized by it and at the same time feeling sick to my stomach. I am quite sure I never told any adults I had seen it. My immediate family was fiercely divided with most of them subscribing to the racist messaging promoted by the Nazis (unknown to them) and sticking buckle and thong to their conviction that British imperial rule had been useful and benign. Oddly, my grandfather, naturalized US citizen as an adult, despised royalty and aristocracy while still claiming that the Brits were superior to the rest of the world. His offspring were to varying degrees white supremacists and casually used denigrating slurs for many non British Europeans as well as people of other colors. My mother, sole representative of her side of the family, smouldered at the bigotry and subversively instructed her daughters in tolerance and courtesy. In retrospect, she was sui generis and almost never voiced her opinions to others. Somehow this influenced us - creating this tiny secret society in the midst of universal intolerance.
As a result, both of us, in later years, could talk to each other about uncomfortable subjects knowing we had our mother to thank for the honesty. I feel quite confident that all my relatives went to their graves firm in their assumption of superiority. The last of them, my tiny gentle Aunt could never rid herself of fear of Afro-Americans. She never yielded to any of my arguments to the contrary. Which is typical for her generation. As a kindergarten and first grade teacher she encountered and loved the toddlers and very young children of all sorts who passed through her hands. The adults were a different kettle of fish.
The lesson? in the midst of foul intent there are still voices of sanity we need to cultivate.
Betcha they went to church right after…
I remember traveling in the 1950's South to visit my grandparents, stopping in restaurants that displayed signs saying, "we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone" and we all knew who "anyone" was.
Everyone should visit the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis TN that is built around the motel where MLKJ was killed in 1968. There is a part of America that is ugly and it raises its head from time to time. We should be ready to call it out when it does so and now is such a time.
Thank you for writing about this today. Regarding the mention of "killing more than 100 fishermen," we don't know if they were fishing any more than we know if they were trafficking drugs. We don't need to think of them as innocent fisherman to know that killing them is wrong. What if some of them were drug runners? They were still entitled to due process. Instead of interdiction our country's leaders chose barbarianism. That's where white supremacy plus a brutal warrior ethos has led.
"Fred Hampton Was Murdered" you say? Well, yes, he was murdered.
And what did Fred Hampton say, the man who was willing to ally with the Young Patriots Party, poor white southern transplants who unironically sported Confederate flags?
"It’s a class struggle whether we want to face it or not. The Black Panther Party hears a lot of people saying “Let’s go ahead and fight fire with fire.” But we say, “No, no, no!” We don’t care how many people say that, because nobody knows really what’s happening. Huey was by himself, but being in this minority doesn’t always make you wrong. We may be in the minority, but this minority is gonna keep on shouting loud and clear, “We’re not gonna fight fire with fire, we’re gonna fight fire with water. We’re not gonna fight racism with racism, we’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We’re not gonna fight capitalism with black capitalism like some of these punks in the city of Chicago want to do, we’re gonna fight capitalism with socialism."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/hampton/1969/05/19.htm
Thank you for this article. Thank you for teaching me, a 50yo white female that considers herself an ally but wants to do SO much more. Thank you for teaching and/or reminding us about this history when there is so much going on in the world...we need to fight this all the way🌟
Profoundly grateful for this posting. The choice of this day to found the KKK is a perfect example of cognitive dissonance.
This is the best explanation I have read or heard of what is truly going on in our country! I hope more people read it or send it to any and everyone they know. Thank you for your "deep dive" and explanation which should hopefully awaken others.
Excellent essay. Passing along. I’d also like to recommend the book The Color of Law. Should be required reading by everyone. https://www.epi.org/publication/the-color-of-law-a-forgotten-history-of-how-our-government-segregated-america/
One more memory: I was in my late teens, or early 20’s, when I happened on a demonstration on Congress Avenue in Austin. There were about a thousand people demonstrating against a KKK march. There were only a dozen or so KKK marchers, dressed in their hideous white robes, along with a few others, marching along side, dressed with helmets making them look like Darth Vader. They also carried black batons.
There was a construction project along the street, with a convenient pile of bricks. The KKK march made me angry. I picked up a brick and threw it, striking one of the KKK marches on the helmet. He, and the other helmeted KKK marchers, started swinging their batons, hitting demonstrators. A riot ensued, and I started it. Numerous people were taken to the hospital. This possibly would have happened without my stupid act of violence, throwing that brick, but I felt responsible.
I learned a very big lesson: violence really does beget more violence!
Thank you, beautifully stated. I really appreciate you and your wisdom. I wish you and your family good time together as we end a crazy 2025 and start into 2026. Peace to you ☮️❤️
Thank you. Well said. I am white and grew up in a white neighborhood, but I also learned at an early age to embrace diversity. In fact, I celebrate diversity. I don't understand those among us that remain in denial. It is not in any way a part of common sense, but then, what is? I have friends in denial. They refuse to acknowledge common sense. I have no response to them.
Just a note that the vast majority of the destruction of pre-European peoples in the Americas was from diseases brought by Europeans and unintentionally transmitted to people who had been isolated from the rest of Eurasia for at least 20,000 years. For example, the first Europeans found the shores of the Amazon River heavily populated, but when Europeans returned some decades later almost no one was there. This is not to excuse reprehensible behavior, but to acknowledge the horrific impact of things that people didn't even know they did. A significant fraction of humanity was lost, and due to the lack of written language in many cases, their knowledge and thoughts will never be recovered. See the book "1491" for more details.
Well done and beautifully expressed in your last line. Thank you for endeavors Qasim!
I will always remember my mother taking me and my sister to Woolworths department store in Austin, Texas in the 50’s. It had a water fountain on the outside of the building where I began taking a sip. My mother stopped me, telling me it was for blacks only. About 6 years old I was bewildered, and I asked her by drinking out of the fountain did that mean I would turn black! Looking back to that moment it is both funny and horrific. At that young age I had no understanding of why a fountain was restricted only to be used by black people.
Inside Woolworths was a cafe. My sister and I walked through and even at that age took notice that black people were sitting together on one side of the cafe, with non-black people sitting on the other side, the two sides divided with a short partition wall. It was just a year or so later, when I had learned to read, that I saw the sign above the water fountain reading “blacks only”, and inside, a sign directing black people to one side of the cafe.
Within a very short time I began to learn more of the history of racial discrimination. It was a horrible awakening for this little white kid, learning that even the people in the church my mother brought me to every Sunday were full of people who were complicit with such racism. That is when I became aware that church was not teaching true Christianity, that Jesus was actually speaking to ALL people, not just to whites.
It is with profound dismay that the leaders of Texas, and the US, have sought to erase the teaching of the history of racial discrimination from our schools. They want to teach young people that slave owners were actually good to their slaves, that after slavery was supposedly abolished there was no discrimination. What is so further confounding is that the majority of Texans voted politicians into office knowing they would erase true history from textbooks, and continue to go to churches that don’t follow Jesus at all!
My only conclusion is there are many in Texas, and our country, who have lost their souls, and any true sense of Christianity.
For about a decade I wrote and edited social studies textbooks for a New York publisher, and Texas was our most challenging market. A right wing donor paid a couple (He had been a baggage handler, she, I think, a housewife.) and they went over every textbook with a fine tooth comb for any reference that might challenge right wing ideas. Sometimes just mentioning race or feminism was enough. I remember we pulled a very powerful photo of a just-liberated WWII concentration camp, because they felt it might "upset" students. Another time, a feature at the end of a chapter would ask, "What do you think?" about students' reaction to some event or decision, and the critics' reaction was that students in middle school were too young to have an opinion. After the state board aired all their complaints, there would be a hearing at which publishers would be excoriated and were told how many changes would need to be made in order for the book to be eligible for sale to Texas schools. Eventually, we pulled out of the Texas market, which was very well funded by Big Oil, because it just wasn't worth all the expense of making the changes.
No wonder I felt so warm and fuzzy today!
But in all seriousness--I was one of those people born before the Civil Rights Act--5 years before. I'm proud to say that my parents were NEVER affiliated with that hateful organization; in fact, they worked tirelessly to advance equality, civil rights, and education for most of their adult lives. I'm relieved that they're not around to see what's happening now. It would break their hearts.