Having a bad night

@Suzianne said
Lack of compassion is exactly what it is, and I'd be in favor of some kind of karmic exercise where we could all step into the shoes of a person of a race, gender or orientation we don't like. See how the 'other half' lives, so to speak. Or maybe a worldwide Empathy Day. Compassion is so important to the human experience that every religion addresses it and tries to make it a focal point of social interaction.

Ralph Ellison, Black Like Me, should be mandatory reading in schools all across the land. I’m old enough to remember segregated toilets in Texas.

@moonbus said
Ralph Ellison, Black Like Me, should be mandatory reading in schools all across the land. I’m old enough to remember segregated toilets in Texas.

Ralph Ellison is excellent.

You're right, that particular book should be required reading.

Empathy requires feeling what people are going through/have gone through, on a visceral level.

I'm not old enough to remember segregation. But it was still popular, though not mandated policy. The HS I went to had, like, a handful, less than ten, black students in a class of 3,000.

@Suzianne said
Ralph Ellison is excellent.

You're right, that particular book should be required reading.

Empathy requires feeling what people are going through/have gone through, on a visceral level.

I'm not old enough to remember segregation. But it was still popular, though not mandated policy. The HS I went to had, like, a handful, less than ten, black students in a class of 3,000.

I grew up playing with children of mixed race, Black father, White mother. Seemed to me like the most natural thing in the world. But I also remember when we planned a two-family vacation driving in two cars across country, that we had to avoid certain states where there were still laws in force criminalzing miscegenation. Had we crossed those state borders, the man would have been dragged out of his car and put in jail. I remember thinking, even as a child, 'what the fook is this?' It has been a long, stoney road getting to where millennials don't even know what the word 'miscegenation' means, would have to look it up in a dictionary, and would be flabbergasted that it was once a crime in America. We have a long ways to go yet. Maybe having a Ms. POTUS of mixed Jamaican and Indian heritage will help move things in the right direction--if we can re-assure AverageJoes that they won't be forced to sacrifice their Austin Healeys to pay for their neighbours' college kids' sex change operations (that seems to be his visceral fear).

@moonbus said
I grew up playing with children of mixed race, Black father, White mother. Seemed to me like the most natural thing in the world. But I also remember when we planned a two-family vacation driving in two cars across country, that we had to avoid certain states where there were still laws in force criminalzing miscegenation. Had we crossed those state borders, the man would hav ...[text shortened]... pay for their neighbours' college kids' sex change operations (that seems to be his visceral fear).

This defines white privilege.

We just don't know what they have lived through. I mean we can read about it, but there's a certain unreal factor to it. We can't feel the fear inherent in that system. You even got to see it, but it seemed abstract, even then.

@Suzianne said
This defines white privilege.

We just don't know what they have lived through. I mean we can read about it, but there's a certain unreal factor to it. We can't feel the fear inherent in that system. You even got to see it, but it seemed abstract, even then.

Actually there is a deep but mostly unacknowledged fear among Whites too, especially in the deep South. Historically, the right to keep and bear arms was very much tied to Southerners' fear of a slave uprising and their need to feel they could put down any uprising themselves in the absence of a police force to protect them.

Below is a link to a National Geographic article on slave revolts in America and the Caribbean:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/two-centuries-slave-rebellions-shaped-american-history