When I was growing up in Louisiana anything Dr. King said was immediately dismissed by the whites. Any politician who was even seen in the same room was him was viewed with a very jaundiced eye. When Lyndon Johnson signed the civil rights bills all the grown ups around me called him everything but a white man. For all you Nortés out there that's a Texas insult. He's from Texas, he's white . . . well, anyway. That didn't keep them from voting for this oil rich, war mongering numbskull, but I digress. Now, where was I? Oh yes, Dr. King. Anyway, this man won a Nobel prize, was a doctor, and changed history and even my grandmother spit on the ground every time his name was mentioned.
The difference between Texas and the deep south was as different as, well, black and white. When I left Shreveport in 1962 the schools were segregated, and boys and girls, they weren't fooling around. On my first day of school in Texas my dad asked if there were any blacks in my class and I told him yes. Texas had integrated with no fanfare. And don't go Googling or Wikipediaing, I was THERE! The kids never paid it any mind.But black people were different back then. They were kinda, well, just like us with a different complexion. They had names like Thomas, or Kate, and they stayed pretty much low key. In fact it was usually us white kids that approached them. We didn't buy into all the politics. This kids were THERE, might as well trade lunches.
It wasn't until the mid sixties or so that problems began to develop. The radical elements began to capitalize on the differences between people and their ire spilled into the streets. Over a period of about thirty years the blending of cultures began to take hold and the kids we shared lunch with came of age. While there were still fires burning in Watts people like the Apostle Claver T Kamau Imani, and others began to exert an effect on the national consciousness, and an entire new class of American came about.
There are two kinds of metal in the world. There is steel, forged by fire, tempered, strengthened, and strong, and then there's pig iron. I'm not going to sit here on a Sunday morning and try to explain to you how pig iron is made but I can tell you that it's not worth a crap. I don't know who invented that stuff, but it's about as useless as a cat in a dog fight. Well, people like the Apostle are forged steel, and people like Al Sharpton are pig iron.
People bring to the table who they are. When a person goes through the fire of life he either becomes steel, or he is pig iron. I am very aware of this, and my forté is that I tend to vocalize it. Now, naturally, when I do this the more liberal contention out there will jump up and call me a racist, and I love it. When someone does that it simply means that they have just run out of a logical argument and have retreated to mantras taught to them by people like Sharpton and Jackson.
While the country has moved past all the nonsense folks like Jack in the Sharp are still trying to convince people to dance around a fire and throw rocks. They are doing that right NOW in Ferguson, Missouri. I think it's pertinent to note that these two are Nortés in New York City! I think New York City is all very fine, on an island and all. Only problem is that it needs to be a little farther out in the ocean. Maybe near the Canary Islands or someplace like that. Anyway, they sit up there in the ghettos of Long Island and spew their half baked philosophy out to the nation. If you differ with them then you be a racist. The problem is there are more idiots than thinking people in the country. It's easier to riot than to work. They call black folk who work, send their kids to school, and like the opera "Uncle Toms." If that's true then what are white folk like me who eat ribs, like James Brown and drink wine? "Uncle Rhemuses?"
What did come out of the sixties was a whole bunch of educated black voices. The Apostle, my friend Byron Antoine Wesley, Dr. John David Manning, and a host of others standing up and saying EXACTLY what I'm saying here! So why do people like Jack in the Sharp do what they do? They do it for money folks. They make a lot of money sewing a world view that died with George Wallace, but it works. And the mainstream media microwaves this TV dinner and serves it up every day. The Apostle can give a speech to a group on how to change the demographics of the Republican party to better Texas and not one WORD will hit CNN. You know what people will see? They'll see some product of the Great Society telling a reporter, as two charred babies are removed dead from a burning building, that she is deeply concerned because her purse is still in the building and her food stamp card is in it! You can't make this stuff up, people. You canNOT group good black people with that kind of pig iron! That IS racist, and it's crazy.
I can't tell you how this is going to turn out. I can tell you that it's going to be violent, and a lot of good people are going to get hurt. I can tell you that Jack in the Sharp are going to laugh all the way to the bank, the New YORK bank, as the country disintegrates into chaos. And I can tell you that Texas will not be a part of that because along with the black people struggling for a better life there are a whole BUNCH of us white folk who shared that lunch in school so long ago.
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