I Can Only Try To Imagine

[bloodyrosemccoy]

This is fascinating. Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did. Or, at least, I don't--I hear it, but have trouble getting my dumb-white-kid head around it. Gotta keep reading about it to drill it in there.

Comments

[mooncat75.livejournal.com]

That post really explains a story my grandma once told me. During WWII my grandma went down to AL or MS (I don't recall which), to see my grandpa before he shipped off to Europe. (Both from Indiana, which had racial issues of its own) My grandparents were walking the town and were about to enter a store. My grandpa opens the door for his wife just as an "old black man was leaving" (My grandma was 20-21 at the time so the 'old' man could've been as young as 40) My grandma stepped back so the man could exit, as that was proper 'right of way', in her mind. The man deeply bowed his head and kept appologizing profusely as he backed away with his head still bowed. My grandma said she had never seen anything like it. My grandpa then pulled my grandma to the side and told her, "You are going to get us killed. You can't be nice to them here or the white people will go after us, too. They're crazy like that." I hold no illusions that my grandpa wasn't racist, he was, so after hearing that story I always wondered how bad it really was.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I am, y'know, a dumb white kid from Utah who was born a couple decades after the big Civil Rights Movement and assumed in history class that after MLK, Jr. did his thing racism was over (god dammit, reality, you are a cruel master sometimes), so I really have no IDEA how to parse anecdotes like that. My reaction is something like "Wait, if you were black you could get your ass kicked to death for having an awkward door-holding moment? REALLY? THAT IS A SUPER DUMB REASON TO MURDER SOMEONE." But I hear enough stories that I certainly can't dismiss them. And then I think about how rotten that must be to have to watch your every move like that, and I hope that things are getting better and I try to make them better.

The other amazing link I forgot to share was to this. Just ... damn. If sitting on a bus could be that fraught I would collapse from stress. A society that institutionalizes that stress needs serious changing.

[westrider.livejournal.com]

Damn. I've never seen it laid out like that. I had actually seen enough of the bits that I should have been able to put it together, but I never actually did.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I know, right? It's hard to keep in your head all at once when you don't have to.

[kittikattie.livejournal.com]

Late but: Yeah. Several of my relatives had to be sent up north to the Chicago area to lay low because they would have been killed otherwise.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Wow.

I am glad things have gotten somewhat better, and I wish they would get even more better. Nobody should have to fear for their life on a daily basis, dammit.