[Peace-discuss] Thoughts of an angry black man

[Neil]

All --
  I have not been able to come to AWARE meetings [especially since being home 
over the summer, over an hour and a half away] but I have had some interaction 
with members during the year as a member of Student Peace Action.
  I concur that there is an interconnection with war and racism.  The power 
elite [aka whites] use minorities to fight their battles for them in a 
military standpoint [while also, as US foreign policy shows, fighting 
minorities that are trying to make a better life for their nation...see Chile, 
Vietnam, et al.]  I agree with a lot of the points made by the writer of the 
e-mail [I apologize for not knowing names because I was not able to attend 
meetings so I don't know everybody] about the oneness of plight in the 3rd 
World and the plight of lower class unemployed workers because they have 
similar causes, which in many cases are US multinational corporations 
controlling wealth.
  I speak for myself here, but there has been a lot on my plate and I want to 
do a lot.  Bush has caused a lot of us to deal with and caused a primary focus 
to be put on him and his entire diabolical crew Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, and 
Cheney.  Part of that is the theft that took place in Florida in 2000.  
British journalist Greg Palast broke has gotten the list of 90,000+ voters 
purged from the Florida list.  Approximately 1/2 taken off the list were 
minorities and the rest poorer whites for crimes such as "felony committed in 
2007" etc.  So, Bush fixed the rolls to remove voters, who according to 
Florida averages vote 93% for Gore.  These voters are still off the rolls for 
2004.  There is a legitimacy in groups calling Bush out on his junta because 
of Bush's lack of giving a damn about minorities.
  Bush and Co. have shit all over everybody and did they best to destroy all 
of us.  I think these claims being made are legitimate, not only about AWARE 
but just as many people in general.  I went to a very rural Illinois school 
that was 99.9% white and the high school I went to was also primarily white 
because everybody who lived in the area was demographically white.  So, being 
at college is my first experience with different cultures and races.
  Since I have not known many minorities it has been very difficult for me to 
learn about their struggles outside of reading about them from 3rd party 
sources because all I ever learned in high school was that Martin Luther King 
Jr. was the only spokesperson for blacks, they boycotted then everything was 
ok until Jim Crow but then we overcame that and we're all fine.  This is the 
swill a lot of students are being fed in schools.  It took speaking with a 
teacher who I am good friends with that worked with urban poor in a variety of 
cities telling me what people went through, what he saw, etc. to get the ball 
rolling.  I learned that the struggle wasn't over with the repeal of the 
formal Jim Crow laws and the more people I met, the more I read...I learned 
the struggle is still raging.  With the racial profiling by police, police 
brutality, the inequality in sentencing in drug cases between whites and 
blacks, the prison industrial complex to name a few.  My later experiences of 
meeting people who had experienced these brands of racism firsthand helped to 
give a better picture on the subject.
  Sure it doesn't have the bells and whistles of "Shock and Awe", its more of 
a war that many whites have grown accustomed to dealing with, unfortunately.  
It's an unpublicized war with many of us not even knowing that we swallowed 
the swill.  Sitting in a sociology class this past semester, we watched 
Michael Moore's film "Roger and Me".  In the film there is a scene where a 
woman skins a bunny for meat and the fur to make money.  The entire class 
which filled Lincoln Theater [600+ college students, TA's and the professor] 
squirmed and yelled "Ewww!" about it.  Less than 5 minutes later in the film, 
a black man was shot by a police officer and nobody in the classroom [except 
for the professor] said anything about it like it was a normal happening.  
That shocked and horrified me analyzing that because nobody, including me at 
the time, said anything about a HUMAN getting injured but almost all screamed 
bloody murder about the demise of a bunny rabbit.
  Confronting their own stereotypes that they hold, personal feelings about 
people, etc. are very difficult things for any person to deal with.  It can be 
a very displeasant experience [I speak from my own realization here] that I 
have racial stereotypes and at times say/do things that aren't right.  It's a 
constant struggle for me to deal with but I know breaking down the wrongful 
and incorrect stereotypes is worth it. I hate the idea that differences in 
ethnicity make one person better than any other.  In my summer job, I work at 
a farmstand with a few really cool guys who happen to be from Mexico and a few 
don't speak english well.  I've seen way too many customers come in and ask me 
why I work with "spicks" because I'm a white kid.  It baffles me that people 
think I should be deserving of a better position because of my skin color and 
ethnicity.  And on every occasion, I have told the customer that the guys are 
my friends and I enjoy working with them [which I do] and the weird, shocked 
looks on their faces as they leave the store shows me that many people have 
racist tendencies.  Racism is something that effects all people.  I am not an 
expert on the topic, just saying what I have seen in my own experiences, not 
meant to be an all encompassing defining list.
  I hope this e-mail makes sense to people.  I hope this doesn't stand to tear 
AWARE apart, but bring it together.  By learning flaws, it can only make it 
stronger if moves are made to fix the problem.  I think it's just the climate 
of war of the recent time that has gotten many people thinking solely about 
the war because I get that way many times.  While the war is a very important 
topic, all people should deal with issues such as racism that seeps into 
nearly all issues that.  I know I have started to and am going to continue 
doing so.  That's just my .02

`neil

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo...
Rock music doesn't make people violent.  Bad music makes people violent.  Like Nickelback makes me want to kill...Nickelback.
-Brian Posehn

Stop being frightened. You only see a monster because they want you to see monsters everywhere. They’ve conditioned you to look for monsters in every shadow, every coat hung on every door. As long as we keep seeing monsters, we’ll continue to need protection and that’s how other people get to control our lives.
--Grant Morrison

Big Brother isn't watching.  He's singing and dancing.  He's pulling rabbits out of a hat.  Big Brother's busy holding your attention every moment you're awake.  He's making sure you're always distracted.
--Chuck Palahniuk

Neil Parthun || parthun at uiuc.edu
*Junior, History
*President, Spirit of Seattle
*Co-President, Student Peace Action
*Treasurer, Campaign to Impeach George Walker Bush at UIUC
*Treasurer, Champaign Urbana Presidental Prayer Team