I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: politics

  • Dimples, Butch, Buttercup, Sissy… Sissy?


    Pretty, the great Treasure Hunter, occasionally brings home items that fascinate. One such find this week was two versions of a board game I played as a child growing up in rural Grimes County, Texas. Before the television set took over as our main form of entertainment, my family played all kinds of games from dominoes to gin rummy to board games Santa Claus left for me under the tree at Christmas. One of our family favorite board games was Go to the Head of the Class which was supposedly “educational” as well as fun. With school teacher parents, I played tons of “educational” games.

    fifth series copyrighted in 1949 by Milton Bradley, publisher

    The game was originally played with tokens that were cardboard images of children attached to wooden bases. Each game had 8 tokens, and their pictures were on the book that contained the questions.

    (top row, l. to r.) Sissy, Dimples, Liz and Butch

    (bottom row, l. to r.) Sonny, Buttercup, Susie and Red

    Sissy

    I can’t find the edition when publisher Milton Bradley eliminated the unsmiling player named Sissy, but I can assure you it would have been the last token picked in my family. Buttercup would have run a close second to the last.

    Take a good look at Sissy, the little boy whose two obvious distinguishing features were that he wore glasses and parted his hair down the middle like the little girl tokens.

    I remembered Jim Blanton’s essay in Committed to Home where he talked about growing up in Gaffney, South Carolina and being called “sissy” as a child and teenager by bullies in school. Words, labels that cause pain.

    I’m sure my parents were oblivious to the subtle cultural messages being sent to me in our educational games, but for me this game was one more nail in the coffin of internalized homophobia and intentional segregation in my childhood. Never any people of color as the tokens. No one wanted to be known as a “sissy,” and how could I explain to anyone why I always picked “Butch” first?

    Be aware of bias and labels that hurt. Be kind to each other. Be safe this weekend.

    Stay tuned.

     

     

     

  • notes of two native daughters, a native granddaughter, and a native daughter-in-law (2)


    This quotation from Maya Angelou is written on the walls of what is now The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration located on the site of a former warehouse where slaves were kept in prison while awaiting their fate in Montgomery, Alabama before the Civil War and the emancipation proclamation. Pretty, our tour guide, had made reservations for us to visit this museum at 9:30 last Saturday morning so our group of four was up and about very early on a gorgeous warm day. Our motel was right around the corner from the museum so we all walked over – still laughing and teasing each other about the winning and losing from the card games the night before.

    The museum itself is open to the public by reservation, but it is not staffed by tour guides. Everyone is allowed to wander at their own pace to read the explanations of the artifacts, documents and jars of dirt collected at verified lynching sites across the country from 1882 to the present. The number of sites is still undetermined but from 1882 – 1968, nearly 5,000 African Americans were reportedly lynched in states across this country. Congressman John Lewis who wrote the foreword for the book Without Sanctuary calls these lynchings the  “hangings, burnings, castrations and torture of an American holocaust…what is it in the human psyche that would drive a person to commit such acts of violence against their fellow citizens?”

    Our group split up as we meandered around through the various amazing exhibits. Pretty and I wandered in one direction, Leora and Carmen went off on their own journey through time as we all saw the intimate lives of American slaves come alive through the magic of hologram technology that portrayed the heartache of families savagely separated from each other, the pleas of the children looking for their mother. Interesting fact:  approximately 12 million people were kidnapped over the three centuries of slave trade to America, according to The Legacy Museum. 12 million living, breathing individuals. I felt overwhelmed by the atrocities with each turn Pretty and I made on our visit.

    Overwhelmed, ashamed, guilty, angry – those are the emotions that swirled around in my mind with each personal account of my legacy as a white person in America. The pictures that showed cheering crowds of us – sometimes in the thousands – while an African American man was hanged, shot, burned…pieces of his body sold as souvenirs…post card pictures made…popcorn sold. I dreaded looking at the people watching the horrific acts in a party mood with as much fear that I would recognize someone in the crowds as the fear I felt for forcing myself to look at the actual horrific acts perpetrated by the mob violence. I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Leora and Carmen felt.

    “The museum connects the legacy of slavery with subsequent decades of racial terrorism and lynching. Visitors see the link between codified racial hierarchy enforced by elected official and law enforcement with both the past and the present. Contemporary issues surrounding mass incarceration are explored with interactive exhibits and examination of important issues surrounding conditions of confinement, police violence, and the administration of criminal justice.”  (Legacy Museum – Equal Justice Initiative)

    Interesting fact: One in three black male babies born today is expected to go to jail or prison in his lifetime.  One in three. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. In 1979 when Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs, roughly 320,000 people were in prison in our country. Now, the current total incarcerated is 2.1 million people with a higher percentage of people of color.

    As Pretty and I were getting ready to leave the museum, Pretty wheeled me to a very large interactive map of the USA. By merely clicking on an individual state, the number of lynched persons discovered to date in that state was highlighted. I foolishly couldn’t resist my native state of Texas. The total number was 338. The interactive map also showed the details by county: the name of the person and the date of the lynching. I made the mistake of going to my home county, Grimes, and saw the names and dates of 10 black men lynched there. Right in my home county. Where were my grandparents on those days, or did I really want to know?

    Shortly thereafter, Pretty and I left the museum. Leora and Carmen were not far behind us. We were all truly lost in our own thoughts and the walk back to the hotel was very quiet.

    As usual, Pretty saved the day by encouraging us to finish packing for checkout, finish the leftover food in our room, and call for our car. We were headed for what turned out to be redemption for us all at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church and a woman named Wanda who helped us shift our focus from evil to good. Hallelujah!

     

     

     

     

  • peace be unto you, namaste, shalom, toodle do


    Truthfully, I have lost confidence in political surveys since the presidential election of 2016 here in the United States when almost no survey gave DT a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected. Hopelessly wrong, right?

    So let’s just say I now take any survey with a grain of salt. However…this week I saw a survey that reported 61% of Americans now support marriage equality which I thought was really, really fabulous –  it put me on an activist high until I just moments ago told Pretty about these results. Why did I tell Pretty?

    She brought me back down from my euphoric state by saying that same 60% (in another survey) believed all US companies have the right to refuse to do business with anyone who identified as LGBTQ. Whaaaat? Say it ain’t so, survey taker. Hush up, Pretty.

    Now I’m down a rabbit hole and can’t get out which I will blame on Pretty because I decided to look outside the United States to see how LGBTQ people are treated. What I found stunned me.

    Predominantly Islamic countries such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Somalia have laws that follow Sharia teachings of  homosexuality as a “vile form of fornication, punishable by death.” Kill the doer and the receiver by any available method like public stoning which averages as many as six per day in Saudi Arabia or throwing people out of buildings in Iraq and Syria. Peace be unto you is the standard greeting for most followers of Islam, but apparently not for the gays. A more appropriate greeting for us: death be unto you.

    Thank goodness for Israel with its Gay Pride parade every year in Tel Aviv and its progressive policies which make Shalom much more than a word I love to say. Despite original teachings in Judaism condemning male intercourse as contrary to their teachings, the Israeli government has been evolving toward a positive position on equal rights for the LGBTQ community since the 1980s. Somebody stop me right here.

    But no. I included India in my rabbit hole because of the character Raj on The Big Bang Theory which is our go-to nighttime relaxation therapy show, but I probably shouldn’t have because homophobia is evidently rampant in India. Homosexuality is punishable by law with a possible life sentence in prison, although a recently enacted right to privacy statute in India allows the gays to safely express their sexual orientation. Hm. Now I’m wondering how that works in real life. It’s okay for me to say I’m a lesbian, but if I say I’m a lesbian I could be put in jail for life. Tricky. Instead of Namaste, I should say I might be gay or I might not be.

    I could go on and on with Christian denominations in every country such as the Roman Catholics and Protestants who have cheerfully wielded amazing power in condemning the LGBTQ community within the confines of their sanctuaries, spilling over into the ballot boxes and other expressions of political influence; but I’m afraid even Pretty wouldn’t want me to go there on a day as beautiful as this one.

    I will leave you with the reason our UN Ambassador Nikki Haley voted no on a resolution to condemn death penalty sentences around the world against gay people for having sex. Ambassador Haley explained her vote was “because we feared it would lead to all executions being banned in the United States.” Seriously? In what world does that make any sense…

    Enough is enough already. Stick a fork in me. I’m done. I am climbing out of this rabbit hole into the sunlight of a gorgeous day in Columbia. Pretty has moved on to other work activities so I think I’ll see if Spike and Charly want to catch a few rays outside with me. To borrow a happy phrase from Pretty’s good friend Shelley whenever she leaves our house, “Well, toodle do.”

    Toodle do and stay tuned.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • I stand with Emma – we call BS


    We don’t get them back, y’all said Jennifer Hudson in the middle of her moving musical tribute at the March For Our Lives in Washington, DC today. Hudson sang The Times, They Are A-Changing with a DC choir backing her up and a clearly spiritual feel to the finale of an amazing gathering of hundreds of thousands of Americans who rallied with the survivors of gun violence in our schools and on our streets in the nation’s capitol and around the world.

    Led by high school senior Emma Gonzalez, a survivor of the Parkland shooting, chants of democracy in action and never again rang through the air of the nonviolent protests of our children and their families and friends who are committed to changing the gun culture that rules in the halls of Congress and the office of the President.

    The movement’s major mantra was R-E-V: Register to vote, Educate yourself, Vote!

    Be afraid, incumbents everywhere, be very afraid.

    Pretty marched in Columbia today 

    and captured this memorable image

    of South Carolina teens registering to vote

    Our children want to come home safely in our houses, our schools, our churches, our synagogues, our mosques. They want to feel safe on city streets and country back roads. They are crying out for help, adding organized action to those cries – and not leaving outcomes to the same old, same old. It’s a new day, America.

    I don’t know about you, but I’m standing with Emma and calling BS on anyone who refuses to listen to the voices of  change for a new and better America. United we stand. I hear you. I’m with you.

    Onward.

     

  • Maya Angelou and Coach Dawn Staley – the power of personhood


    American poet, author, civil rights activist Maya Angelou (1928 – 2014) and Coach Dawn Staley, head basketball coach of the University of South Carolina women’s basketball team – what’s not to love and admire about these women in March or any other month?

    https://thedrabble.wordpress.com.

    http://www.espn.com/espnw/feature/22732028/for-south-carolina-coach-dawn-staley-game-life-life-game

    Stay tuned.