A serious posting

I have always had the advantage of being in the majority group where I live. I’m white, I can trace English ancestors back to the 16th century and insofar as I have a religion I am Church of England. I am middle class. I live in England in the United Kingdom.

Yet nothing upsets me more than bigotry and racism. Having married someone of mixed racial origins and therefore having a son of mixed race has nothing to do with it. I felt this way long before knowing Jo. Nevertheless, hearing that either of them has been picked on or ostracised for their racial origins is the hardest thing to bear.

I am proud that I can trace an ancestor who was farming the soil in the Cotswolds in the 16th century but I hope I would be equally proud if I could show that they had been farming a particular piece of soil in Uzbekistan or Nigeria. It is the fact that I can trace someone that far back that pleases me.

I can understand (if not always condone) someone being ostracised for their actions, for things that they purposely do, especially when those things hurt others. But I get totally bewildered that someone can be ostracised for being born, And that is what racism boils down to – a hatred of the fact that someone is born different.

I remember a story I once heard about a little white girl who asked her mother in a loud voice on a bus “Why is that man’s skin all brown?” The mother replied without hesitation “Because God made everybody different and some people have different coloured skin. It’s a bit like flowers in a garden – it would be very boring if they were all one colour wouldn’t it.”

And what has caused me to do this posting – just reading Pondside’s posting about her mother. Even knowing that it was in the 1930s and that far worse things are still happening today to read that a teacher put her head first into a garbage barrel to demonstrate where ‘her sort’ belonged caused me such sorrow and, I have to admit, such anger.

Because the Western World is so much more politically correct such a thing would not happen nowadays without the teacher suffering repercussions but what worries and saddens me is the knowledge from my own family’s experience that the underlying racism has not gone away.

If I had one wish......

Christian site's ban on the G word..

A “Christian” site's ban on the G word has sent Homosexual to the Olympics. Bigotry breeds hilarity. That's a turn-up for the books. I can usually find nothing funny at all about rabid, judgmental, right-wing, born-again, regressionist fundamentalist Christians - but when their tiny-minded view of the world spits back at them, well, I get a giggle. Here, their censorship software automatically changes "gay" to "homosexual" - and, out of an AP report, gives us a brand new Olympic athlete. We're all laughing. I am not sure about Tyson Gay.

Here's an extract of their mangled report:



Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has.

His time of 9.68 seconds at the U.S. Olympic trials Sunday doesn't count as a world record, because it was run with the help of a too-strong tailwind. Here's what does matter: Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he's certainly someone to watch in Beijing.

"It means a lot to me," the 25-year-old Homosexual said. "I'm glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me."

(Thanks to Selina’s Stumble Upon for this - the words are all hers but I endorse the sentiments completely. Saline is a 90 year old married woman from Nashua, New Hamsphire, USA & Adelaide, SA, Australia. She describes herself as having " Two lives in two worlds. A lover of people, dogs, pelicans, spiders and truth." She's obviously a bit like GB with his two lives in two places. )