Racism

The Beginning

/ Gina Marie / Leave a comment

Bobby sure appeared to mistrust me; I didn’t exactly blame him. I mean, I was a stranger, drove onto his driveway, and started talking to him about his history. When he realized the core of my questions related to his Confederate Flag, his response was what I had pretty much expected; distrust, defense, even a little scruffy anger. I quickly tried to explain myself, admitting I had been judging him for months but that I truly and sincerely wanted to understand from his point of view why he flew that flag. That I no longer wanted to be ignorant, or rely on my own perception, to paint my world view of his yard.

He didn’t immediately put his guard down.

Our first conversation was more of a harsh dance, colored heavily by today’s rhetoric of distrust and anger. References to free speech, the right to bear arms, and even trespassing were repeated more times than I could count. At one point, I seriously thought Bobby would spray me using the water hose he held in his hand menacingly. For my part, I tried to seem safe, almost casual, but the truth is – I am my mother’s daughter. I am pretty confident my words said the right thing, but my face was clearly displaying a message that was closer to “eat sh*t and die!”

But we made it through those moments.

That day, the lesson I learned was that education can be hard work. It can be scary. It can even be difficult to ignore your own “truth” that pulls you back so hard, it is almost easier to give into it than push through to seeking clarity. I learned that we, as humans, are too often controlled by opinions and rage, which comes much more naturally than by logic and calm. But despite all of that, I learned that succeeding in pushing through brings a goldmine of opportunity.

Introduction to Robert

/ Gina Marie / Leave a comment

Note: Throughout this post I refer to the “Confederate Flag”, it is in fact the Confederate BATTLE flag. I assumed everyone would picture that one, but stating it just to be safe.

I have lived in my current house just over two year. About 4 months after moving in, the location of my work office changed, thus changing my route to work. It is common to see Confederate Flag fly in the area I live in, but one house I started to pass was different; it was a beautiful house, with a super-well kept lawn, a nice large RV parked in a sizable driveway, and curb appeal that didn’t fit the stereotypical characteristics of “southern pride”. You know what I mean, I am sure….

The tall flag pole, since the first day I drove by, has always had its Confederate flag hung up, and as I usually do, I shook my head in dismay. “Why would ANYONE display that flag?” I mean, to me it was waving a cloth of betrayal – of treason – not to mention the racial overtones that come to mind to many people in this country. Each morning and evening I’d pass the beautiful yard and grimace as I’d see that damn flag hoisted as high as it could go, and I imagined the people that lived in the house. “Racist” was often at the list, followed often by “buddy, you lost the war!”

Week after week, the process repeated, until one day I wondered about the family a bit differently; I will admit I kept going back to the pristine appearance of the house and yard, and wondered how a person could make such beauty could also be so proud of what I perceived as a racist, hateful object. That train of thought lead me to wondering if their view of the flag was something all together different than mine. Could it be?

Then, about 4 months ago, I saw Robert for the first time as I drove by. I wasn’t surprised to see a white man appear in the yard, nor did his age – which I guessed was over 60 – make me immediately think nice thoughts about him. I assumed he disliked blacks, was an avid Trump supporter, and probably had more guns in his house than I had toilet paper. But still I wondered if I was viewing him through just as narrowly as I accused him of viewing the world through the white man’s world.

About 6 weeks ago, he was outside again, and something came over me. I admitted to myself that I was being somewhat racist in my opinions of him, based solely on his Confederate Flag. And, before I could talk myself out of it, I pulled into his driveway, exited my car, and introduced myself. I complimented him on his beautiful yard, and admitted that I was “a Yankee from Southern California” and would sincerely love to find out about his history, that of his family, and how it related to his beautiful home and the flag he flew.

Yeah, that went as awkward as it read!

But, it started a conversation that I will be sharing with you in this series, about all I learned from Robert, call him Bobby. Bobby is a retired engineer, he’s in his late 60’s, has been married a long time, has always lived in this area, and has dashing blue eyes below his bright white hair. He is fit, enjoys the outdoors, is very articulate, and didn’t think I was completely crazy, just maybe a little. Over the last few weeks, we had some interesting discussions, and I can’t wait to share them with you!

It Takes A Word

/ Gina Marie / Leave a comment

Deana works for a large insurance company that makes billions each year.  They are “huge” and all that.  I have worked for a huge company before, and when I was employed there, we referred to customers as numbers and even referred to our coworkers as “FTEs”.  Day after day, financial report after report, I looked at these numbers and FTE references and lost a sense that they were PEOPLE.  I would expect Deana’s firm to act the same way, as they are even larger than the firm I worked for.  However, when they refer to the customers they serve, they say something like this (I totally made up the number for reference only):

“This month we added 12,254 souls to the account.”

SOULS.

“Soul” is defined as “the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.”  In religion, the soul is often the immaterial piece that we consider to live beyond our physical death.  This idea varies widely and has a vast history as described here, but for the purposes of this blog I will stick to the soul being the essence within us that exists after our physical body dies.  It is the piece of us that defines who we are, it fellowships with others on this earth as well as our Creator.  It is deep within us.

I have always been touched by Deana and her firm for referring to people such as myself as a “soul”.  To them, we are not just a number.  Not just a paycheck.  And that got me thinking – how different would MY day be if I decided to think about every person I interacted with as a soul?  What if I forced myself to say “hello Soul Bob” in my head before anything else?  What if I forced myself to acknowledge, yep……that dude that just flipped me off as he cut me off has a soul and, as such, should not be chased down for his egregious behavior.

It was a simple question that changed over two dozen interactions this week that would have otherwise not have ended as well.  And, perhaps that is sort of what Jesus meant when He told us to love our neighbors (and enemies) as ourselves.  Just as Jesus didn’t clarify this command by including “Christians only” or “those who are in our denomination”, or “those who live in our country”, perhaps we need to expand our nets beyond our own little spheres.  Then, maybe we will allow room for our souls to interact in purity with other souls we normally would not want to interact with……

That’s NOT to say that I don’t think consequences should occur or that we should be friends with everyone, but those are different topics for different days.

So, here are some outputs of this walk of mine with the concept of “soul”…..

Trump, no matter if anyone feels you make bad decisions, you purposely refuse to pay small businesses under the guise of non-conformity to contracts, you do not respect women, or do not deserve to be president, your soul is worthy of kindness and respect

Hillary, no matter if you are a liar, deserve to be convicted in numerous ways, actually caused the murder of 4 in Benghazi, or just want to kill babies, your soul is worthy of kindness and respect

Evangelical Christians, no matter that some feel you have directly or indirectly caused LGBT to kill themselves, that you have allowed your religion to turn your backs on your own children in “righteous love”, that you insist that Jesus is political, use the Bible as a sword of condemnation and exclusion, or rejoice that your opponents will “burn in hell”, you all have souls worthy of kindness and respect

Muslims, no matter that some believe your religion’s only focus is to terrorize and kill Americans, that you hate the One True God, your rape children, and you want to subjugate every woman in the world, you all have souls worthy of kindness and respect

Atheists, no matter that many believe you have an agenda to turn our children against us, that you are getting your slimy hands on every educational platform in this country, and you want to throw Christians in jail, you all have souls worthy of kindness and respect

LGBT people, no matter that most would say your propaganda is focused on stealing traditional marriage from us, that you’re promiscuous and abominations,  that you are steep in the filth of HIV and AIDS, seek out our children in bathrooms, try to convert our children in schools, and insist on buying wedding cakes, you all have souls worthy of kindness and respect

Black Lives, no matter that America says you need to calm down and show respect for authority, need to stop being in gangs in the inner cities, need to stop destroying your own cities in riots, probably should take less drugs, and probably should stop insisting that your lives are more important than ours, you all have souls worthy of kindness and respect

Blue Lives, no matter that many say many of you use your authority in ways that would be called a crime otherwise, that corruption is the norm in your agencies, and racism is a core value, you all have souls worthy of kindness and respect

Women, no matter that EVERYONE says you keep insisting that you need to be able to murder babies, that you are promiscuous and sluts and that’s the only reason why you insist on having access to birth control, and you expect to be treated like a man in pay and authority, you all have souls worthy of kindness and respect

Trump Supporters, no matter that you’re racists, ignorant, hateful, misinformed, rich worshipers and poor neglecters, you all have souls worthy of kindness and respect

Hillary Supporters, no matter that you all want to kill babies, you’re all satanists, you want to make Christianity illegal, you just want something for nothing, and you want to take away everyone’s guns, you all have souls worthy of kindness and respect

Gina, no matter that you used every negative stereotype you could think of to expose our own personal justifications for treating other people poorly, you have a soul worthy of kindness and respect