Dear Kleinheider,
You’ve finally managed to render me speechless. I literally do not know what to say to you. In fact, I have to take a break from this letter right here to write another one.
Hold on.
Dear Sean Braisted,
I sometimes get the feeling that you don’t like me. I don’t think you hate me. I just sometimes get the feeling you see me coming and are all like, “Oh, great. It’s her.” That’s fine. I sometimes look in the mirror and say the same thing.
I only mention that because I’m concerned that your indifference to me will make you indifferent to what I’m about to say, and that would be too bad.
I’m going to say it anyway.
Thank you for your “original sin” comment at the end of Kleinheider’s latest rant.
Sincerely,
Aunt B.
Okay, Kleinheider, back to you.
“Very few modern whites can be held responsible for Jim Crow to say nothing of slavery.”
Very few modern whites can be held responsible for Jim Crow?! Good fucking god, when do you think that was? Emmitt Till, the kid the white folks killed in Money, Mississippi? He was born in 1941. He was only four years older than my dad.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was born in 1929. He’s younger than my grandma, who is still alive.
Shoot, ask John H. about when the lunch counters here in Nashville were desegregated. He was here. He remembers. Or take your ass to a show of Ordinary Heroes, and look around the audience and see how many of those folks in the audience were there during those days.
You think the folks who upheld Jim Crow are all dead? Their victims and their witnesses are still alive. Which means that they are too. Yes, they’re getting older, but please, “very few?” Only if your math is funky.
You know what? Forget it.
You’re right. History doesn’t matter. What’s in the past is in the past. Today is a new day. We’ll just set aside what happened back then, because it has no effect on us, right Carter?
Humans are not the sum of their experiences but they do help mold us. The same is true of history. We can try and whitewash out personal histories but the memories are still there and they are important.
God, you know, that bit–We can try and whitewash out personal histories but the memories are still there and they are important–is pretty persuasive. I wonder why it didn’t have an effect on you.
Love,
Aunt B.
Tiny Cat Pants 
I explained to him today that the analogy doesn’t hold water because slavery–and the slavery mentality of segregation and other more recent atrocities–happened just a few years ago when compared to the killing of Christ. It’s just a look back over the shoulder.He didn’t seem to get that.
I think he refuses to get it. Really. He’s too smart to not get it otherwise. He just is. He’s too smart to not get it unless he’s just being bull-headed about it. That the man can show nuanced compassion for Forrest when writing about him, but not spare a little for what it must be like to grow up black in America? It makes no sense unless it’s willful.
I think it is willful, otherwise he would respond and defend himself against valid criticism and questions about his statements. Like today when I asked him about immigration restriction at NIT. Or any number of times that his commenters or another bloggers completely blow his arguments out of the water. But he doesn’t respond. He’s already off to the next post.
The hell? The legal system that sustained slavery, Jim Crow, and a hell of a lot of encroachments on the civil liberties of many people of color still exists and thrives from those encroachments by pretending that changing the laws compensates for the bloodied land upon which this country stands. An apology by this point isn’t even enough, but to deny its necessity at all? Takes a whole river full of De-Nile.
Brittney, your timeline is skewed. Christian atrocities against Jews are about as recent as some of the worst vestiges of Jim Crow. Ask me about the Polish-American sergeant in the US army, who beat up my father, the Jewish private in the US army, for being a Jew. During WW II.So … Kleineider’s reasoning is flawed to begin with, since he’s willing to accept the theory that y’all don’t still ask us for "apologies."
My parents remember the segregated water fountians(sp?) they are both 54 babies. They also remember the stores that wouldn’t allow them in. Many white people seem to have older relatives that are in their 70s and 80s Today a white girl in my class proudly noted that today was her grandmother’s 90th birthday. White folks are living longer nowadays, you know.
Shannon, thank goodness. I was beginning to wonder if white people didn’t all die at 40 only to be replaced by androids and no one told me.NM, what a good point! Why, exactly, does Kleinheider suppose all those Neo-Nazis are so angry at Jewish people? I mean, the Pope didn’t get around to letting all Jews throughout time off the hook until just a decade before Kleiheider was born.
The very fact that that fool in Virginia could use a slur like that about Jews, and expect it to have resonance, proves that people tend to be very, very slow to "get over it."
Betsy, that’s why I have often referred to him as empty. Yes, he is smart, but his writing usually leaves me cold. Perhaps he’s trying to perfect the art of professional detachment, but wouldn’t that require more objective reporting? I’ve stopped engaging him on VV, because he doesn’t defend his positions. His whole take on the Nunez case just floored me, as did his attempt to smear Yuri Cunza. There are plenty of people I respect and like that I disagree with, (Sarcastro come to mind) but this hit and run style of "reporting" leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
He’s not arguing. He’s broadcasting. He’s working from conviction rather than persuasion. Con-vincere = by force (stentorian braying over and over until people shut down and stop opposing your ideas.) VS Per-suare = with sugar (attempting to lead with reason and kindness towards one’s own ideas). FOXnews doesn’t rethink their editorial positions because thousands of viewers point out that they are full of shit. They cater to the people who want to buy what they have to sell. K believes that he’s really a newsman, not a mere blogger. As such, he doesn’t have to (and maybe shouldn’t? what do the journalists among us think?) engage his letters to the editor.
Mmmm. That could be. His understanding of what he does may be totally different than my understanding of what he does.
The past isn’t gone. It isn’t even past.