Reply #14: Born and Raised in the South to Decendants of Slave Holders

[radio4progressives]

Whether or not it was my family relations in and around Atlanta Georgia, or high school peers and neighbors in North Carolina, by and large, the majority were psychologically and emotionally (if not literally) still fighting the Civil War in the 1960's, one hundred years after the actual war. Too many to count, thumping their bibles to rationalize and justify the so called righteousness of white supremacy(and all that it implied)after that war a century later.

My father broke that chain of white supremacy in our own family, by marrying someone of a different ethnicity, and self-identifying as an Athiest, in a rather "in your face" style by today's standards.

He frequently spoke out against the outrageous hypocrisy and ignorance of the "The Southern Man" .

But my father was also a career lifer in the Marines and served two tours in Viet Nam, and unfortunately for him, bought in completely hook-line- and-sinker to the BIG LIE used in the day to justify that evil war, (keeping the "Communists from invading our own back yard")

When I was young, naive and angry, I actually contemplated suing the United States Marine Corps for murdering my father, in essence by brainwashing the reasons to fight that war.

I digress.

I left the South 35 years ago and made northern california my home precisely so that I nor my future children would ever have to be subjected to the ignorance and hypocrisy cultivated there. I did not ever want to be legally bound to any law,'cultural rules' especially the "religious" tyrants who i see as extremely repressive, oppressive, bigoted, sexist, racists, homophobic, and often misogynistic.

When i came to California i discovered many communities located mainly within the interior valleys, develped by big Agricultural and Oil companies, using migrant workers from Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma primarily during the dust bowl/depression era and with these communities, were born second and third generation "Southern Man" thinking communities here. Everyone has read The Grapes of Wrath or at least seen the film.

There are progressive thinking people everywhere, as well as the tyrannical, backward thinking people. It's imperative for all of our childrens sake, the sake of reviving our democracy and preserving our great Constitution, that the latter is promptly annihilated and given a final burial once and for all. There are plenty of reasons for bashing the South, and we're looking at the consequences of the actions of our own fore fathers.

So I would say to my Southern compatriots, this cross is ours to bear mostly alone, and we should carry that burden with utmost courage and conviction, with dignity and resolve.