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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2015 8:36:36 GMT -5
Michael, Makes me wonder where these folks who only have reference points for colonialism have been living because it sure as heck wasn't the black neighborhoods we lived in in DC. For them hate seems to be an abstract concept, not something with real consequences. Even when that hate comes from a minority of blacks. I say a minority because it is. A recent survey showed the majority of blacks prefer "all lives matter" not the much touted "black lives matter" You can tell I'm upset today. A good man is being buried today because of the perpetuation of hate. My feeling is that most people, no matter the color of their skin,grieve long with me. Colonialism is BS. It will become progressively more B S as we become even less white as a nation because I can tell you right now, other minority races aren't politically invested in white guilt. That won't fly much longer. Progressives will have to find a new crutch to prop up their hate.
It really seems that the most liberal of folks are ...deep down...the most prejudiced.
I mean...when did it become so bad to be a straight white American?
I know that police have gotten a lot of bad publicity...there is lots of good things about our police that NEVER gets reported.
I mean...we as a people must support our police...what would it be like without them...I don't want to know.
Police are people too...most with the same goals and lives like the rest of us.
As you may know...I did 3 years in Millington as a patrolman...you would not believe the crap that you have to put up with.
The public seems to be mainly ignorant as to what police do...it is not doughnuts at the corner.
While I am on the doughnut subject...what is wrong with hanging out at an all night cafe...it is cold out and they waste gas.
The police are at a place that you can find them...would folks rather them hang out at the squad bay?
I know what some would say...they should be out looking for crime...hey crime will find them...that is a given.
It is a job...but more than that...the police are here to serve and protect...they are my friend...and yours.
It is my responsibility to support them...it is all our responsibility to support them...the laws of our country.
For anyone that is afraid of the police...just go down to the station and just sit and watch what happens.
Or go to a courtroom and watch the proceedings of the judicial system...when I had a couple hours to spend...I would do it there.
Oh...my ...God....to shoot an officer in the back...for no reason...other than color...is an unforgivable sinner.
Has this country strayed from its path so far that we forgot the difference between right and wrong?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2015 8:44:54 GMT -5
Hey Jeffery...this has been on my mind for sometime...I was hoping that maybe...you could...if it wasn't too much trouble...
Ah shucks...daddy always told me to just spit it out and say it! (<<<not really<<<)
Could you make a cool banner for this site...you know...something cool...like only you can do.
Oh...I forgot to ask...Jo and Kim...could you hang up what and if Jeff makes?
Believe me...it should be all Taylor and George...and James...but that's just me!
What say you?
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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2015 9:07:41 GMT -5
Actually while I am on the subject...
I think one of my favorite reasons to visit here...is because it is facebook free.
That in itself should sell the site...maybe get a couple has been artists to write in.
Heck...we could get new artists to write in easier...
not that their opinion on things is more important than anyone elses...just cool.
Now Kim created this site and it is so clean...I love it...but I also love my music room.
Kinda like my house...Mrs Clean is alive and well...no musical reference anywhere.
Then ...imagine if you will...a ramp leading down into a musical fantasia...all this memorabilia.
Instruments albums autographed things stereo equipment monitors wires weird things dogs refergerator
aquarium songbooks sculptures paintings weaponry food clothing optional congas mics and a Cadillac.
I hope you get the picture...better yet...I need to post a picture!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 5, 2015 9:11:51 GMT -5
As you know...you can only get covers of Taylor songs on you tube.
This woman did justice on my favorite song on "1989"...Clean.
Please sit back...enjoy the tune and feel my hugs around all of you.
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Post by youneverknow on Sept 5, 2015 9:31:12 GMT -5
Michael, I have no clue how to hang a banner but I will ask Kim.....she!s the smart one. Your our music room sounds really neat. I'd love to see a picture. I'm not on Facebook and thought I would skip it entirely. I can picture you as an MP.....and a great one. Thank you for your service.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2015 7:35:07 GMT -5
Michael, I have no clue how to hang a banner but I will ask Kim.....she!s the smart one. Your our music room sounds really neat. I'd love to see a picture. I'm not on Facebook and thought I would skip it entirely. I can picture you as an MP.....and a great one. Thank you for your service. Thanks Jo...But the horse somehow got tangled up behind the cart...Jeff still needs to commit!
Being Facebook Free is one of the best parts of a forum like this.
There are actually scams on FB that freely gather all of your information in exchange for a name.
They called me "buttercup" and ran with my information...I suppose I like to be more in control.
I can tell you this though...people spend way too much time watching life and faces pass by.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2015 7:47:12 GMT -5
@josephkahn
Sad thing is when people make false accusations of racism and the public rejects it, it makes real racism harder to fight.
Really...this is Nash speaking now...our past is our past...the present has just past...our future is all we have left!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2015 8:35:43 GMT -5
Short story...
Port call in Port Arthur Texas...at the Coast Guard station.
Playing chess with this champion chess player...who was and hopefully still is black.
His name was "Skinner" who I liked right away due to my from my love of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
He was invited to a championship chess game in D.C. representing the coast guard...
while I was there...that was cool...I felt a need to celebrate...he had a car!
I asked Skinner if he would take me out to a country bar...where Mark...Tracy and Clay played.
We ended up at a nightclub type place...I told old Skinner...no...I'm looking for a bar.
He took me to a bar...ho hum...I says Sinner...take me to the most redneck place in town.
Oh...Skinner was still in his C.G. work blues...and I was kinda lit...and the sun was still up!
Ole Skinner took me to Vidor Texas to a small dive on a gravel road...this is it I say...this is it!
I am sure that Alan Jackson was playing on the Juke Box as we entered..."Don't Rock The Jukebox".
Now friends and non friends...you may want to quit reading now...this is Sunday you know.
The honky tonky atmosphere is not for everyone...and certainly it takes a certain type to like it.
The neon lights and smell of cigarettes dried blood and puke...the darkness where someone yells...
Now just what in the hell do you want...I says...I am looking for a gd cowboy hat...
someone said that this is Texas...and I don't see nothing but gd ball caps!
The must have been owner lady said well come on in and try this one on...it must have been a size 3.
Anyways I was in and so was Skinner who had slinkerd off in the shadows...drinking drafts.
He said...it's cool man...go have your fun...I felt that I could have beat Skinner in Chess...at this point.
They seemed to be a good bunch of folks...they took my insults as intended...to be of good nature.
The next day...I went into the Coast Guard station and there was old Skinner pointing at me yelling "there he is"!
"There is that crazy Mikey that took me into the heart of the Klan...and lived to tell about it."
I had no idea what Skinner was talking about...I wondered if I danced on the bar... again!
Anyways Skinner took me down there to have fun...and have a little fun is what I did...no statement being made.
No reason for bringing Skinner with me other than I wanted to...oh yeah...he had a car!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 6, 2015 8:53:27 GMT -5
Now to end this thought process...that maybe I should have never started in the first place.
Ole Skinner made such a big deal about it...constantly blabbering on about it during chess games.
Blabbering jabbering jabbering all day...everyday...until I yelled out... Checkmate Brotha!
I asked him for a ride to run errands before our ship was to pull out...and he did.
Old Skinner even offered to drive by the old honky tonk once more...I laughed and told myself...I should.
but didn't.
Alas I boarded the ship and got underway that evening...never saw Skinner again...but I bet he remembers me.
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Post by youneverknow on Sept 6, 2015 14:52:50 GMT -5
On the banner, Kim says she thinks it's a great idea. So, it's up to Jeff.
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Post by youneverknow on Sept 6, 2015 15:09:32 GMT -5
Michael,
When we lived in the DC suburbs, it was almost all blacks and new immigrants around us. So much so that when son started school, there was only one other white boy in his class of 40 first graders. We didn't think anything about it because I haven't lived in a white neighborhood since 1978.
We moved to Houston and started son in school. First week, he came home pretty quiet. Then he said, mom, I think some of the kids in my class might be sick. They are so white.
Nobody was sick....he'd just never seen that many white kids in a group before.
The first year he went to college, he went to a really good college but it was in San Marcos. Which is a small town. Even as an adult, he couldn't believe how many white people there were compared to what he's always known.
His fiance is Chinese. The house she grew up in was her older sister (who pretty much raised her), her sister's husband (who is black) and the son the husband had from a previous relationship (so he's also black, rather than half Chinese).
There are so many cultures that are a part of the world we live in.
Part of that, after Hurricane Katrina, were the poorest of the poor from New Orleans. They had no money to rebuild so they were here to stay. It took additional police resources to clean up the gangs that came with them as well as the criminals who had been released from the New Orleans jails so they wouldn't drown and who blended in with the general population on the buses that came here. It also took additional educational resources for the influxes of extra students into our school district(s). A large part of that money for the first year came from an anonymous donation of $1 million from someone in Saudi Arabia. This is an oil town....people work with people in Saudi all the time. It's part of the fabric of our lives.
Son has worked at the UPS distribution center for the past 5 years. He's pretty much the only white guy in a sea of black folks. Many of them transferred from UPS in New Orleans after Katrina and rebuilt their lives here. At the cancer center, he's the only white person in his department as well as being the only white person who got one of the much coveted internship before he got put on payroll. Hubby has been in his job for a couple of decades now and I can't tell you all the races of the folks he's worked with in that time. Currently, the new guys are from Ethiopia. They replaced the guy from Syria who moved onto another job. The guy from Syria had lost his entire family and some of his cousins in the conflict in Syria. ...and it goes on and on and on.
My sister-in-law met a guy online and he came to the U.S. for them to get married. He's from the Netherlands. In order for them to get the paperwork for him to come here and for them to get married, he had to show he had the savings to support himself for 5 years. He did...he's a brain. He did do something complicated with the programming for the US stock market. Now he's working for google.
Unless I leave our neighborhood Michael, I rarely see another white person when I'm out walking or running errands.
I like where we live and I'm comfortable with that. Well, I wish there was less traffic and less construction...but that has nothing to do with race.
IMHO, if some folks lived in a more multi-cultural environment...one that works very well just as it is...they wouldn't be so quick to think that everything needs to be changed for racial integration to work very well. It already has in many places.
That said, Houston has it's own troubled area...the Third Ward. Poverty and crime are real problems. If you read about demonstrations here, that's usually where they come from. It's also the area that has it's own inner city music scene. To put it in perspective though, the Third Ward has a population of roughly 34,000. Houston metro area has a population of over 6 million.
Guess I should do the math....about one half of one percent of the population lives in Houston's Third Ward.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 7, 2015 8:29:48 GMT -5
On the banner, Kim says she thinks it's a great idea. So, it's up to Jeff.
Jeffery...Jeffery...JEFFERY!
Jo your story was really cool...I love your stories so much!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2015 10:49:13 GMT -5
On the banner, Kim says she thinks it's a great idea. So, it's up to Jeff. Jeffery...Jeffery...JEFFERY!
Jo your story was really cool...I love your stories so much!
At ease troops...we have some music to tend to...and some talk too!
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Post by Deleted on Sept 8, 2015 10:50:56 GMT -5
A letter from a horse of a different color...
Dear White People Ryan Douglas
Dear self-deprecating white people,
For the love of all that is pure and holy, please, cut that XXXX out. First off, I can do bad all by myself. So, when I break the law by willfully committing crimes and get arrested, thus becoming another “black man” statistic, I am to blame, not you. When I point a gun, or a facsimile of one, at a police officer and get shot, I am to blame, not you. When I skip school to hang out on the corner with my equally irresponsible friends, I am to blame, not you. When I have opportunities that my parents and grandparents could only dream of, and I fail to take advantage of those opportunities, thus becoming another statistic, I am to blame, not you. When I get stopped for a seemingly insignificant traffic infraction, and I am found with drugs and/or paraphernalia, thus getting arrested and becoming another statistic, I am to blame, not you. Ten percent of my life I have zero control over; what other people choose to say or do to me, the weather, the economy, traffic, etc. The other 90%, I, and I alone, am fully responsible for. Not you.
As I am typing this on a computer and as it is uploaded onto social media, it is safe for you to assume that I was not alive during slavery. Neither were you. It is safe to assume that on both our sides, none of our family within 3 generations lived during slavery. Therefore, I do not need you to feel guilty for the existence of the North American Slave Trade. I don’t need you to sit with your equally self-deprecating hippie friends and chain yourselves together, wearing t-shirts that say “Guilty.” That means absolutely nothing to me. It does absolutely nothing in my life but make me ask myself, “What is it with these white people?” If you choose to feel guilty for something you did not do, for something neither of us were alive to experience, that is your choice. But do not sit there and claim that it is on my behalf. Do not claim to do it for my sake. It has nothing to do with me. In fact, it only serves to speak toward your own bloated self-importance. It speaks to your own narcissism-to think that events that ended 150 years ago somehow center around you making apologies and declaring yourselves guilty, to think that your own self-perceived guilt is somehow a major factor in my life, who are you? I am more than capable of feeling guilty for my own flaws and misdeeds. I do not need to carry your self-aggrandizing and misplaced guilt as well. You were not there. I was not there. So what makes you think you owe me anything? What makes you think that your own importance, relative to the passage of time in relationship to those events, has any bearing on my life?
Our parents and grandparents lived during the social upheaval that was the Civil Rights Movement. We did not. Maybe your family was on one side and mine on the other. Maybe they were both on the same side. The point is that neither of us were there. You did not lynch me. You did not kidnap me. You did not burn crosses in my yard and terrorize my family. You did not refuse me service in your establishment. You did not call me “nigger.” Nor was I alive then to experience any of those things. I can understand later generations apologizing for the actions of earlier generations. It happens often, however, not to the point that the apologetic parties begin to hate themselves or feel guilty for what they have not done. The apology is still sincere, however, it is an acknowledgement that what was done in the past was wrong, and an agreement to find better ways in the present and future.
What you fail to realize is that as a black man in America, I was raised by this society to be ashamed of my blackness. I was raised to be ashamed of big lips, a big nose, “nappy” hair, etc., all things I could not control. I was raised to believe that there were only two places for a black man to end up, jail or the cemetery. I was raised to believe that the primary purpose for a black man was to play basketball or football. Imagine the surprise on the actual bigoted racist white people when they found out I completely sucked at basketball and was not passionate about football. Imagine their surprise when they found out I was an avid reader. To this day, people are still surprised when they have heard my voice or read my writing and then actually meet me. As a black man, I am not supposed to be eloquent or well versed. Even further still, I am not supposed to have an intense fondness for rodeo, country/bluegrass/folk music, NASCAR, baseball, big trucks, country girls, and country living. But I do. I am who I am. The point of all that is not to give you further reasons to torture yourself. It is to tell you that I know what it is to feel ashamed of yourself, based not on any valid reasoning, but on the actions and prejudices of others. THAT is not something you want to take upon yourself-being ashamed of your identity and factors out of your control. At the end of the day, I am-as we all are-who I choose to be.
I cannot be held accountable for the deeds and words of my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather, etc. In the same vein, I cannot, and will not, hold you accountable for the deeds and words of your predecessors. That, in itself, is just as unfair as subjugating someone based on an ignorant prejudice. We all have numerous things we could feel guilty for. However, we do not need to invent new kinds of guilt to add to our collection. You do not need to carry your white guilt like a cross of crucifixion. I do not need you to do it either. If you want to do something positive and invaluable, stop with the wholly unnecessary “white guilt,” stand up, look me in the eye, and let us address each other on the same footing. Let us put our hearts and intelligences together and find a way to ensure that our children never experience any of these things. Let us work side by side, as equals, to fix the problems of the past so that we may build a better future together. Let us finally release the past and relegate it to its proper place behind us, so that we may look forward together and share the same vision of the future. That’s what I need you to do.
Your constant apologies, well intentioned as they may be, do absolutely nothing for me, for my son, for our future, or for yours. Your self-flagellation produces no other results than drawing attention to yourself and keeping both of us from working together to create a future in which none of this is even necessary. Just as we cannot be held accountable for what our descendants do generations from now, we cannot be held accountable for what our ancestors did. All we can do is hold ourselves and each other accountable for what we do today. If we do not let go of the past, we will have no room for the future. If we continue to stare into the past, we will never see the future. We cannot change what happened yesterday, nor can we dictate what will happen tomorrow. The one and only thing we can do is work together today
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