Confusion

Our topic this week is Confusion. How did we get here - wherever here is? How did we get to a T in the road and ignore the direction to civility and take the direction toward  tribalism? How did we get to another T and turn away from science and fact while heading down the road to the politization of everything? How did we get to a place where our knowledge of  our own history is as full of holes as a wheel of Swiss cheese? How did we get so damned confused about seemingly everything except which  tribe we belong to? How did we get things so wrong about the Pandemic?

That's a whole lot of confusion going on. It all started  when we turned away from civility and started setting speed records on the way to tribalism, and that was a direct result of the election of 2016 and a serious dislike of both candidates. Civility took common sense along with it on a long holiday that has lasted almost four years. I am not sure our culture or our country can survive another four years but the culture war looks to be a rocky road.

That rocky road is a direct result of the tribalism that pervades the country and has since we elected a president who has no interest in uniting this country and has in fact done more to divide it than anyone in memory, although the MAGA tribe has chosen to blame everything on Barack Obama. Now I do not recall any particularly divisive speeches or commentary from 44, and exactly the opposite from 45. That tan suit he wore sure did irritate the MAGA people (admittedly before they knew they were MAGA people). And, they took his polite "bowing" to certain world leaders as offensive and derogatory actions as they relate to us here in the U.S.A..

The other reason we are here, IMO is that in spite of all the work we did and things we accomplished in the sixties we left the job unfinished. We incorrectly assumed everything was done when it wasn't, and electing a black man president followed immediately by electing the great divider to follow him, the minority that was always lurking around rose to the surface as supporters of MAGA and the great divider stoked their hatred and fear of white men losing power.  Now he praises Confederate officers and questions the removal of the rebel battle flag as a symbol of hatred - while that same flag is a symbol of pride for many of 45's white supremacist MAGA supporters.

A great deal of the current confusion stems from one simple fact - history is written by the  winners. In the case of our US history those winners were white. The history they wrote and we have been taught could more rightly be called mythology - not because they fabricated our history but for what our white ancestors omitted. 

Yes, we learned Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but it was useless with the paper filament he used. It was Lewis Latimer, a black man, who invented the carbon filament that makes the light bulb worthwhile. Every two seconds someone  in the US needs blood. Thanks to Charles Drew, that blood is available. Drew was a physician, surgeon, and medical researcher who worked with a team at Red Cross on groundbreaking discoveries around blood transfusions. In World War II, he played a major role in developing the first large-scale blood banks and blood plasma programs. Drew is a black man who also fought with the Red Cross over segregating blood by race and type. Dr. Shirley Jackson is an American physicist who received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1973. She was the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate in nuclear physics at MIT. Her experiments with theoretical physics paved the way for numerous developments in the telecommunication space including the touch-tone telephone, the portable fax, caller ID, call waiting, and the fiber-optic cable. There are many more black men and women equally as accomplished that need to be included in our textbooks.

How many of you were taught the Black Hills of South Dakota were given to the Sioux in a treaty and promptly taken back illegally when a fellow named Custer found gold in those hills? I wasn't - nor was I ever taught about the Tulsa race massacre/riot in 1921. Were you?   And thanks to the Academy Award nominated film, Hidden Figures, we’re now all familiar with the amazing contributions of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, black women all made to NASA.

It is a wonder things are not even more confusing then they are, but thanks to the black community that knows and celebrates (or reviles) these things in their history and the native Americans, AKA the indigenous people from whom we took nearly everything and proceeded to try and eliminate their culture by "educating"it out of them,the truth is still widely known and the white privilege that has permeated our culture since the beginning has been laid bare.

Needless to say, opinions on white privilege vary widely. As my friend and fellow blogger Conrad has written, "White privilege doesn't mean you haven't suffered or fought or worked hard. It doesn't mean white people are responsible for the sins of our ancestors. It doesn’t mean you can’t be proud of who you are. But it DOES mean that we need to acknowledge that the system our ancestors created is built FOR white people. It DOES mean that we aren't disadvantaged because of the color of our skin and it DOES mean that we owe it to our neighbors-- of all colors-- to acknowledge that and work to make our world more equitable."

That's a large order but it must be done - even if it feels just like starting over.

That is my take on this weeks topic - Confusion. Be sure to check my blogging companions comments on the same topic  Sanjana, Padmum, Raju,  Conrad, & Ramana.

See ya next week, same shack time, same shack channel.