2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: This has been an awesome week of Clinton endorsements. I am proud to stand with all of them. [View all]delrem
(9,688 posts)Last edited Mon Jan 11, 2016, 01:02 AM - Edit history (1)
But what does it mean?
Here's what's bothering me. As a young teen I heard MLK's speech, "I had a dream" and in hindsight I can't even say how far I was from actually understanding what he was saying. After all, I was WHITE, and CANADIAN, and ROMAN CATHOLIC, and MOSTLY UNAWARE OF CANADIAN INJUSTICE TOWARD NON-WHITES.
That was the small pond I grew up in and I still cry inside when I remember how the only black kid in the junior high school up there was treated. "Hey bleck man!" It's just horrendous and maybe I didn't say the phrases, but the coolest kids did and I just stood there. Desperately wanting to be "in". That kid got it worse than even the first-nations kids, because he didn't have a larger community at all. I just stood there, without a hope of ever being "in", but I just stood there just the same. I didn't do anything.
That's for some context. But the MLK speech that I heard on the radio (at night - radio signals had better range at night back then) did move me and I wrote a trite little essay that mentioned it in a free-topic essay assignment for English that got an "A". And I knew that I got the "A" for showing that I was at least semi-aware of MLK's speech and his movement. The incentive worked. As I matured I became more socially aware. At a slow pace, to be sure, but no, I don't like Trump. I don't think Bernie is like Trump... I'm at least that aware.
So I'd say that back then and in my small way I "stood with MLK", and as my life progressed I've realized how any such kind of "standing with" is difficult, at best only partially understood, more of a learning experience where my "standing with" is to keep myself open to learning, overcoming my conditioning as best I can. But then, your colleague at DU, who you "stand with", has for several months now run a totally dismissive - disdainful even - sig line (copy/pasted):
"Please Note: I AM NOT SAYING BERNIE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE ... AFTER ALL, HE MARCHED WITH MARTIN!"
So what does "stand with" mean? Really.
Does it mean that my "standing with MLK" in my small and almost observable way is repugnant, wrong, a putting on of false airs by a "white progressive" aka "white supremacist", because I prefer Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton, whereas if I preferred Hillary to Bernie my idea that I "stand with MLK" would be righteous?
What the fuck kind of "standing with" is that?
This really bothers me about this Democratic Party primary.
eta: even abysmally unaware as I was back then, I knew that Barry Goldwater was bad news. I'd say that everyone who had a hope of "standing with" MLK in any kind of rational reading of the phrase could sense that much. Yet Hillary was older than me, back then, and she didn't see it. Why is that?