A friend of mine shared this with me on facebook. Now I'm sharing it with you.
Carlos Dews is an author, a professor of English literature, and chairman of the Department of English Language and Literature at John Cabot University in Rome.
I first heard this expression used to describe the Obama administration during a visit to my hometown in East Texas during the early summer of 2009. I understood what the epithet meant: Our minds are made up, the pres...ident lacks legitimacy, and there is nothing he can do that we will support. I was not surprised to hear such a phrase. I grew up in the 1960s during the ragged end of the Jim Crow era, where many of the books in my school library were stamped Colored School, meaning they had been brought to the white school when the town was forced to integrate the public school system. I recall my parents had instructed me, before my first day of elementary
school, not to sit in a chair where a black child had sat. And I remember my sister joked that her yearbook, when it appeared at the end of her first year of integrated high school, was in "black and white." The outward signs of racism of my home state have now disappeared, but racial hatred remains. My father and his friends still use the word nigger to refer to all black people, and the people of my hometown don't hesitate to spout their racist rhetoric to my face, assuming I agree with them. I hold my tongue for the sake of having continued access to this kind of truth. I learned long ago how not to accept the hatred I was being taught and how to survive not having done so. More recently, I realized that I also learned another lesson: how to recognize racism when it masquerades as something else. More than 40 years after my first experiences with racism, I am thousands of miles away in Rome, but surrounded by ghosts. Last year, I received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a community program called the Big Read, which sponsors activities to encourage communities to come together to read and discuss a single book. I chose Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, in part because I thought that some of the most salient issues in the novel - racism, classism, xenophobia, the Jim Crow era - were perhaps relevant to an increasingly diverse, contemporary Italy. That there is racism in Italy is obvious to anyone who pays attention to current affairs. In fact, during the first week of the Big Read Rome, a story in one of Italy's national newspapers detailed the experience of a Nigerian woman being called sporca nera (essentially, dirty nigger) by two women she asked to stop smoking on a Roman bus. But I never imagined that consideration of the novel would prove so relevant to a country that had just elected its first black president. Ironically, until the election of Barack Obama, my discussions of racism in the United States seemed historical. I felt that with the passage of the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s, the country had turned a corner, that the slow evaporation of overt racism was perhaps inevitable. Now, my personal experience of Southern racism feels current and all too familiar. A news story about the Big Read that appeared in La Repubblica on Sept. 20 (unaware that my grant was awarded during the Bush administration), presciently brought Rome, Obama, To Kill a Mockingbird, and racism together in its headline: "Obama brings antiracist book to Rome." Jimmy Carter was lambasted for having recently explained that the vehemence with which many Americans resist Obama's presidency is an expression of racism. Carter was accused of fanning the flames of racial misunderstanding by labeling as "racist" what on the surface could be perceived as legitimate policy differences. Like Carter, as a white Southern man, I can see beyond the seemingly legitimate rhetoric to discern what is festering behind much of the opposition to Obama and to his administration's policy initiatives. I also have access, via the racist world from which I came, direct confirmation of the racial hatred toward Obama. The veiled racism I sense in the United States today is couched, in public discourse at least, in terms that allow for plausible deniability of racist intent. And those who resist any policy initiative from the Obama administration engage in a scorched-earth policy that reminds me of the self-centered white flight, the abandonment of public schools, and the proliferation of private schools, that followed the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate public schools. The very people, like my own rural, working-class family back in East Texas, who stand to gain from the efforts of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress are, because of their racism, willing to oppose policies that would benefit them the most. Their racism outweighs their own self-interest. Unfortunately, racists in the United States have learned one valuable lesson since the 1960s: They cannot express their racism directly. In public, they must veil their racial hatred behind policy differences. This obfuscation makes direct confrontation difficult. Anyone pointing out their racist motivations runs the risk of unfairly playing "the race card." But I know what members of my family mean when they say - as so many said during the town hall meetings in August - that they "want their country back." They want it back, safely, in the hands of someone like them, a white person. They feel that a black man has no right to be the president of their country. During a phone conversation a few weeks after Obama's election, my father lamented that he and my mother might have to stop visiting the casinos in Shreveport, La.: Given Obama's election, "the niggers are already walking around like they own the place. They won't even give up their seats for white women anymore. I don't know what we're going to do with 'em." My students often ask me how I managed to avoid accepting the lesson in racism offered by my family. From the time I was 4 or 5 years old - roughly the same age as Scout Finch, the narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird - I recall knowing that I didn't agree with racism. More important, my paternal grandmother provided me with the encouragement that I could ignore what I was being taught. She provided me with the courage to resist. My grandmother hoped that my father and his father represented the last generations of the type of Southern man that had shaped her life - virulently racist, prone to violence, proud of their ignorance, and self-defeatingly stubborn. It was a type of Southern man that she hoped and prayed I could avoid becoming. However, my father and his father were not the last of their kind; their racial hatred has been passed on. My grandmother, if she were alive, would recognize the same tendencies among many of the people who shout down politicians and bring guns to public rallies. She would also see how the only change they have made is to replace overt racist epithets with more euphemistic language. Rather than seeing my home state and its racist attitudes, slowly, over time, pulled in the direction of more acceptance, the country as a whole has become more like the South, the racial or cultural equivalent of what is called the Walmartization of American retail. It might be easy to see literature as impotent in the face of the persistence and adaptability of racism. But I continue to believe in the transformative potential of literature and its ability to provide an alternative view of the world. And for children who are not lucky enough to have grandmothers like mine, I believe that books like To Kill a Mockingbird can provide inoculation against the virus that is racism.
________________________________
This article originally appeared in the December 2009 issue of Aspenia, the Italian journal published by the Aspen Foundatio Michael
Monday, September 27, 2010
Thursday, September 16, 2010
2 Ways To Create Your Own Custom Subliminal Messages
Subliminal messages are basically suggestions for you mind which are exposed on you for such a short period of time, or hidden, that your mind does not consciously register what it suggests. Instead, you register it sub-consciously. And also, they can be either positive or negative. In this post, I will tell you about 2 different ways through which you can create your own custom subliminal messages.
The best way to prove to you that subliminal messages work is through an experience you have most likely already had. I am sure you have been in a crowded room with many animated conversations happening all around you. Now, if someone calls out your name, you would still most likely be able to hear it, wouldn’t you?
The first method I will tell you about is subliminal audios. The great thing about this method is that you can use them anywhere and everywhere, unlike the other method I will tell you about next. These audios usually come with either binaural beats or very relaxing music. The messages are repeated so fast, that our conscious mind has no idea what it suggests. You can get pre-made and also custom subliminal audios.
The other popular method is the one of flashing messages on your computer or movie screen. Here again, the messages are repeated so fast that your conscious mind does not have time to even read them. You would have probably heard stories of the government and large companies using them in advertisements etc. Advertising this way was even banned by the US government around 40 years ago!
In today’s expanding computer era, you can get software’s which display subliminal messages on your screen while you are working on it. You can choose and personalize the messages before they are even displayed too.
So there you have it! You now know of 2 different ways through which you can create your own custom subliminal messages. I hope this article was of use to you.
The best way to prove to you that subliminal messages work is through an experience you have most likely already had. I am sure you have been in a crowded room with many animated conversations happening all around you. Now, if someone calls out your name, you would still most likely be able to hear it, wouldn’t you?
The first method I will tell you about is subliminal audios. The great thing about this method is that you can use them anywhere and everywhere, unlike the other method I will tell you about next. These audios usually come with either binaural beats or very relaxing music. The messages are repeated so fast, that our conscious mind has no idea what it suggests. You can get pre-made and also custom subliminal audios.
The other popular method is the one of flashing messages on your computer or movie screen. Here again, the messages are repeated so fast that your conscious mind does not have time to even read them. You would have probably heard stories of the government and large companies using them in advertisements etc. Advertising this way was even banned by the US government around 40 years ago!
In today’s expanding computer era, you can get software’s which display subliminal messages on your screen while you are working on it. You can choose and personalize the messages before they are even displayed too.
So there you have it! You now know of 2 different ways through which you can create your own custom subliminal messages. I hope this article was of use to you.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Gifts From My Friends at MyYearBook
These are some gifts that my friends at MyYearBook sent me. I think they are sweet.
If you want to check out my profile page or become friends on MyYearBook juct click here.
From Kevin a Head Massage
Head Massage worth L$50,000
From James Ice Skating
Ice Skating worth L$50,000
From James Jet Ski
Jet Ski worth L$50,000
And From Jerry the best one Whales. I love whales!
If you want to check out my profile page or become friends on MyYearBook juct click here.
From Kevin a Head Massage
Head Massage worth L$50,000
From James Ice Skating
Ice Skating worth L$50,000
From James Jet Ski
Jet Ski worth L$50,000
And From Jerry the best one Whales. I love whales!
Thursday, September 9, 2010
A "must have tool" for any Internet Marketer - ImFaceplate
Set up in a minute your free IMfaceplate account and enjoy all the benefits like Create, Brand and Connect yourself with the world.
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