TERRY MOSHER
TOP OF THE TOWN – Stephen A. Smith doesn’t so much talk on ESPN’s First Take show as yell. But if you can stand his loud mouth, you can, sometimes at least, learn something new. Today (Aug. 26), he struck a chord with me when he said white people don’t need to just not be racist, but anti-racist. He’s right. So many of us pale faces like to say, maybe even pretend, we are not racist. Who me? Never. But if that is true, which sometimes it probably is, it doesn’t go far enough, as Smith yells. You need to rail against racism. When you see it, you need to speak out. Your silence is, whether you like it or not, acquiescing to it. So until we stand united against it, racism will continue to flow among us, and that is not a good thing. I realize it is difficult to eliminate racism when your leader, the most powerful office holder in the world (Trump) is a racist. A lot of Americans follow him and if he says something they parrot his words into action. This alone is good enough reason to get rid of Trump in the November election (which will be harder than I or you might like because he is rigging it). If we can cleanse ourselves of the corruption of Trump and his family that would be a good start toward unifying the country and moving forward on the systemic racism built into our culture. I mean it doesn’t take a genius to know that shooting a person point-blank seven times in the back is not justified at anytime anywhere, with the possible exception of war. I had a Facebook discussion with a guy about this because he felt it was justified. He had a knife, he was going for his gun, the guy wrote. I argued even that even if that was true, and we still don’t know yet, it still was not right. I wrote back to the guy to remind myself not to get near you. Then he wrote something to the effect that he would empty his clip if he was in that position to do so. At that point I felt the need to terminate the conversation. But this man’s judgment is what we are dealing with when we encounter people who support Trump. I have determined that the majority of Trump’s support comes from people who believe, with some justification, that Trump will defend their white position in society. It’s called white privilege or white superiority or white nationalism or white supremacy. Trump uses fear as a weapon. He instills into his supporters the fear of losing their white place in society. Fear is a powerful emotion. It can make people do things they would have never done before the fear swamped them. Trump is good at instilling that fear, that hatred. He’s made a great living doing it, stretching from his young days with his equally racist dad to now. We have to stop him to have a good chance to repair not only the damage he has done, but to solve our racism problem and unite the country once again as one. If we can come together (and we don’t have to agree politically) we can accomplish much. But divided, as we are now, we will sink. Bottom line is that color does not matter. It’s the character of the person not the color that makes him or her. And being black, brown or Asian or Hispanic or whatever does not a bad person make. If I turn my back on you, it’s not an invitation to shoot me seven times.
A good start toward unifying the country is to root out all the stuffy old white men that have made a good living making bad laws codifying the gap between white and black. We must not only accept people of color for who they, but change the laws so they can have equal economic and physical opportunity to be as good as they can be, which in the end will improve our society and make us once again the beacon of hope that so many saw us before Trump. God bless you all, and God less America. Let’s do this together in unity. Peace and love.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.
