I was in bed by 9 pm last night. I was tired. I slept well, straight through until 3 am. I spent the next two and a half hours in a rage. Several Facebook friends are far-right and posted comments, which upset me. A high school classmate posted that she wasn't responsible for the prejudice Afro-Americans are subjected to. She just lived an ordinary life with two parents. True. My question to her is, was she friends with the black kids who lived in Kings Point? That is an upper, upper-class section in an upper-class town. Her answer would have to be no because no Afro-American families lived in Great Neck except on one small street set aside as a place where families of color lived.
She claimed that Jews were able to make it. My questions here are 1) was anyone in her family a veteran of WWII and received the GI Bill benefits? 2) Did anyone in her family receive a bank loan to buy a home, start a business, or pay for an education? None of these benefits have been available to Afro-Americans. These benefits moved many white people out of a struggling lower class to the middle class. I wonder why Afro-Americans never made it there too.
Another FB friend wrote that the Black Lives Matter movement makes her more hostile toward people of color. Hmmm! Making her more prejudiced or forcing her to face her submerged prejudices, which says as long a 'blacks' know their place, all is good. This woman is truly a lovely lady. She would never be overtly rude to anyone of any color. However, she is unwilling to acknowledge her hidden bias. I'm sure she would deny categorically any prejudice toward people of color.
I called Dorothy on my walk first thing. She had Facetimed me at 5:11 am. She hung up quickly. I didn't even bother checking the phone until I got up at 5:30. She told me she couldn't talk for a long time. Her electricity was out because of a strong tropical storm, Isaias. She wanted to get off the phone to preserve her battery. She had to sit out in her car to recharge it. She heard that they were not expecting to have electricity again until Thursday night.
I texted my friend in Ohio to see how she was doing and then decided to call. She is doing very well. She blew up like a balloon that month in the hospital because they pumped fluids into her to keep her blood pressure up. She has been losing one to two pounds a day. She said she had seventeen more pounds to go. She hadn't called because her energy was still low. I asked her to text me to let me know she's okay now and then. She reported that her daughter, who lives in Philadelphia, was also out of electricity.
Dorothy called me back to tell me that she was sitting in her car, charging her phone outside a local Starbucks. She was getting poor to no reception in her house. Maybe a cell tower went down that affected her small area. She predicted that she would be going to bed early tonight. No light.
I spoke to a third friend later in the day, Melissa. She has a daughter on the east coast, further south than Philly. She, too, was out of electricity. Wow!
I have a solar lantern the B. gave me as a gift. I have it sitting on a table on the lanai so that it is always charged and ready to go. I thought that would be good for Dorothy, who lives with hurricanes and massive snowstorms; both knock out her electricity.
When I read the information printed on the lamp earlier in the day, I saw they were made right here in Hawaii. I called the number. This guy said he was in Kona but about to head home for Captain Cook. He could stop up before he went home. He drove up in a red convertible with the roof down. He pulled out the boxes he had. He spread them out in the driveway because the boxes had gotten wet. He checked to see the lanterns all worked. Very understated, to say the least. I wanted three; he said if I buy three, I will get one free. Good deal. I bought three for $20 apiece. I will mail them to Dorothy immediately. They won't reach her in time for this blackout, but it is just the start of Hurricane season.
I'm considering putting in a switch that will allow me to toggle between electric company-dependent solar energy and off-the-grid solar energy. I am preparing for the worst while hoping for the best. There are two off-grid options: a generator and another is some sort of battery supply. Either way, it will cost a pretty penny. However, if we have the option of off-grid solar, if all services are shut down, I might do it now while I have the money.
In the mail today, I found a check for $2400 from the Federal Treasury. That didn't sound right to me. I was going to have to check what was going on. I had heard of sums like $1200. I figured it was that high because it included Mike. Mike was counted in the last Income Tax return. As far as the federal government is concerned, he is still alive. When I file in 2121, his name will no longer appear. Getting ready for that. It is little moments like that which hurt.
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Musings: Racism is like flatulence.
Some people fart out loud to upset others. I understand this is big among adolescent males. Like those boys, some people are racists and loud about it. They think it is a good thing.
Then some wind up releasing some gas even though they don't want to. The gas just builds up, and they can't quite control it. They know it's coming out but wish it wouldn't.
Then there's most of us all the time. We are emitting gas. There was an experiment done to determine how much gas an adult human releases in a day. Some college students walked around with a tube inserted, which fed into a container in a backpack. Would you believe eleven (11) gallons a day? This is all of us. We all are doing a slow release. There's nothing wrong with us; it's a structural problem. Likewise, most of us are just emitting racism the way we emit gas. It's a structural, institutional problem. We are raised in a racist society. Racism is just part of all of us. We were all born into a racist structure; it's inescapable.
In the book White Fragility, I read people are defensive when it's pointed out that they made a racist comment. They see themselves as being accused of being a bad person. The author of White Fragility, Robin Diangelo, sees it as white defensiveness. I think there is another element that is at least as profound and as threatening. The accusation is that we are more than we think we are. We are unknown to ourselves. We have unconscious thoughts that define us, which differ from our conscious minds. Very upsetting. We're not all we think we are.
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