From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Mon Jun 03 2002 - 20:00:05 MDT
Olga Bourlin wrote:
>
> And yet, the hardships my relatives faced didn't come anywhere close to the
> nightmarish conditions under which many people in the USA lived ... in their
> very own country. I'll say it again ... in their very own country. A white
> immigrant Jewish-albeit-agnostic woman (i.e., Ayn) could live a far, far
> better life than black people anywhere (especially in the South). Ayn
> married an American actor. Doors opened. Speaking of "earning" - it's a
> luxury even to speculate about whether Ayn "earned anything." My concern at
> that time (early 1960s) was with why many black children couldn't swim in
> the same pool as "white" children. Whatever did white children "earn" to be
> given this privileged status?
I can't say I'm surprised by this sort of garbage from Olga. Let me tell
you about this "white" child and his family background. My ancestors
were of clan Gordon, in Scotland, and forcibly transported to Nova
Scotia, those of us who were not killed by British troops, raped by
British aristocrats, or dead of intentionally sown plagues, after we
were stripped of our land so that the British could use it for
sheepherding to supply their mills.
Did I ever experience those atrocities? No. Neither did my parents, or
grandparents. Every priviledge we have here in the US is from our own
hard work because we came here with the same amount of absolute nothing
that the blacks did, and our ancestors suffered the same 300 years of
repression the black slaves did here. Our only saving grace is that we
could 'pass' as WASP far easier as scots than those with darker
pigmentation, but that doesn't mean that all we have acheived was by
exploiting blacks, or given to us because we had white skin. None of my
ancestors ever owned a slave, ever shipped a slave, or ever helped
enforce slavery or segregation. I have no reason to feel guilty, and you
are absolutely out of place trying to claim I am guilty, because of a
system set up by the same British that repressed my ancestors. You are
absolutely wrong to claim that I, or any other modern white person,
didn't "earn" our status in life. Today is not like yesterday, or the
19th century either.
The only repression going on with US blacks today is blacks repressing
blacks, in putting down education and books as 'white things', in
putting down blacks who try to achieve in the mainstream society as
'uncle toms' or 'house n____s', and in perpetuating the myth that the
only way for blacks to get ahead is through professional sports or UPN
sitcoms.
Please take your late 20th century liberal bigotry and chuck it out the
door.
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