240 – 245 Part Two – Ideological dipping (old book 146-147)

Vincents text Norsk Ny dansk bog

240 Part Two Romans 7:15, 18-19 What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? 241 The Ghetto in our minds Thirty years of racism workshops for American students has reaffirmed my belief in people’s basically good intentions. They’ll gather food for the ghettos or hold hands all across America, as did the students seen below, for racism today has little to do with skin color or religion. I often hear whites say they wish they could adopt black children “so they can become just like us.” Thus, it’s their different behavior we “blame” and “distance ourselves from” in our racist thinking. The different behavior we form people with when we for centuries exclude blacks in the US or Roma in Europe. Or the different behavior from being shaped by oppressive cultures and dictatorships, as many of our immigrant Muslims – or our former Eastern European Jews – arrived with. Our self-understanding as “liberal-minded” northerners is therefore put to the first real test when we suddenly face an immigrant from outside “our” territory, someone whose behavior is incomprehensible in terms of “our values.” Here in Part 2 we’ll look at how, however good our intentions, we tend to react when millions of poor (Christian) blacks from the American South or immigrants from poor Muslim countries seek refuge in the north in the hope of finally being regarded as equals. Do we live up to our lofty ideals and include them in our community? Or do we escape from the challenge into “evasive racism” and force them into an oppressive ghetto, whether actual or mental? 244 Ideological blinders (or Deuteronomy 15: 7-11) Everywhere I go I meet a shocking lack of understanding among people toward the suffering which is all around them. People in the North talk about the poverty in the South, but are unable to see the poverty in their own ghettos. People in the East talk about the Indian poverty in the West without seeing their own black poverty; people in the West talk about the blacks’ poverty in the East, but don’t see the Indians’ poverty on their own doorstep. And in the South they don’t talk about poverty at all. I saw the most striking example of this blindness in Mississippi when I got a lift with a representative of the usual optimistic type. He talked on and on about how this was a country with opportunities for all. Everyone can be successful, if only they want to. Anyone can become a millionaire in ten years. If you have the strength and desire you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I hear the same phrases so often while riding down a road with shacks on both sides, that I probably wouldn’t have paid any attention to it if we had not on that particular day been passing through a completely flooded stretch of the delta. It was in the poorest part of Mississippi, where you see almost nothing but tin-roofed shacks inhabited by poor tenant farmers, whose only property is often just a mule and a couple of pigs. The Mississippi River had recently overflowed its banks and a lot of drowned mules and pigs were lying along the road. People sat on the roofs of their shacks, and in some places only the chimney stuck up above water. Others rowed around their houses in boats trying to save their drowning mules. After we had driven through these surroundings for about an hour, I asked him if he knew the expression “to let people paddle their own canoe,” after which I asked to be let off even though I knew it could be days before I got another ride in that part of Mississippi. One day I was strolling down the street in Detroit with a black woman who had been a Black Panther when she was sixteen, but who was now a Trotskyite and a feminist. We were on our way to a Trotskyite meeting, so it must have been on a Friday. I always go to such meetings on Fridays in the big cities, as they usually serve free coffee and cake. On Sundays and Wednesdays I usually go to coffee get-togethers in the churches. At a church it normally takes only an hour before you get your coffee, but with the Trotskyites you really have to go through hell before you get your final reward. Often you have to sit through a stiff three-hour sermon about saving the “masses,” but then on the other hand you throw yourself upon the cake with that much more joy afterward. Well, on this Friday, when we were on our way to our cake-for-the-masses meeting, we passed a beggar on the street standing with outstretched hand. Then the thing I least expected happened: the woman totally spurned the beggar, knocking his hand away. I was rather shocked and asked her why she had not given him any money, since I knew she had some. “That kind of nonsense has to wait until after the revolution,” she replied. I thought it over a bit and then asked slightly provocatively, “Well, but what if the revolution doesn’t come in his lifetime?” There was no more talk on the subject. In contrast to the middle class, from which these two instances come, people in the upper class are often touchingly helpful toward the poor and their sufferings, if they accidentally catch sight of them. I encountered a stirring example of this in Gainesville, Florida, when I lived with a rich man who owned an insurance company. One day I went with him when he was out helping a tenant farmer pull his only mule out of a mud hole it had fallen into. The tenant farmer was standing down in the mud hole in water up to his neck, struggling to keep the mule’s head above water, while the rich man sat up in his helicopter trying to hoist the mule out. The situation was so much like a cartoon in a communist newspaper that I couldn’t help laughing, but neither the proletarian nor the capitalist could see the fun in it. It would be perfect if the rich man himself fell into the mud hole, I was thinking. My pious hope in fact came true, for shortly after, when he landed and approached the water hole, he slipped in the mud and unluckily broke his leg. Since he would have to stay in bed for some time, I was allowed to borrow his Mercedes, and it was during one of my drives in it that I found Linda’s shack far out on a deserted back road. One day the playboy millionaire Tommy Howard (page 170) picked me up in his Jaguar and took me to a fancy ski resort where he spent tons of money scoring “girls”. Yet he was so impressed by my vagabond slogan, “Security is being on the road with no money”, that he first gave me keys to his fancy home, but soon after found his dating life so empty that he sold all his business to “live by your vagabond philosophy” and spent the next 7 years hitchhiking and travelling all over the world. In Africa he made his first black friend ever. The irony was that he lived in a town 50% black but had never had a black in his house except for those I came hitchhiking with. et my vagabond sociology had long ago taught me that my outsider pocket philosophy of finding happiness and security would be an offense if turned into ideology. Whether you have nothing or too much money it is arrogant blindness towards all those who through misfortune have been forced into homelessness and poverty. That Tommy since could switch to a huge motorhome in which he wrote his travel book “The Freedom Machine” – while I since could travel around in my customized van lecturing on “the freedom to say yes” - again demonstrated our shared white privilege in an unfree society. From letters 247

Part Two Romans 7:15, 18-19 What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? 241 Ghettoen i vore sind Tredive år med racismeworkshops for amerikanske studerende har bekræftet min tro på menneskers grundlæggende gode intentioner. De vil indsamle mad til ghettoerne eller holde hinanden i hånden i kæde tværs over Amerika ”for at hjælpe vore nødlidende”, som de studerende, der ses nedenfor, for racisme har i dag ikke meget med hudfarve eller religion at gøre. Jeg hører ofte hvide sige, at de ville ønske, at de kunne adoptere sorte børn "så de kan blive ligesom os". Det er således ”de andres” anderledes adfærd, som vi "bebrejder" og "tager afstand fra" i vores racistiske tankegang. Den anderledes adfærd, som vi former mennesker med, når vi i århundreder har udelukket sorte i USA eller romaer i Europa. Eller den anderledes adfærd af at være formet af undertrykkende kulturer og diktaturer, som mange af vores indvandrede muslimer - eller vores tidligere østeuropæiske jøder - ankom med. Vores selvforståelse som "liberalt indstillede" nordboere bliver derfor sat på den første virkelige prøve, når vi pludselig står over for en indvandrer fra et sted uden for "vores" territorium, en person, hvis adfærd er uforståelig i forhold til "vores værdier". Her i del 2 vil vi se på, hvordan vi, uanset hvor gode intentioner vi har, har en tendens til at reagere, når millioner af fattige (kristne) sorte fra det amerikanske syd eller indvandrere fra fattige muslimske lande søger tilflugt i nord i håb om endelig at blive betragtet som ligeværdige. Lever vi op til vores høje idealer og inkluderer vi dem i vores samfund? Eller flygter vi fra udfordringen ud i "undvigende racisme" og tvinger dem ind i en undertrykkende ghetto, hvad enten den er fysisk eller mental? 244 Ideologisk nedblænding Femte Mosebog 15: 7-11 Overalt, hvor jeg kommer, møder jeg en rystende mangel på forståelse hos folk over for de lidelser, der omgiver dem. Folk i Norden taler om fattigdommen i Syden, men kan ikke se fattigdommen i ghettoerne, der ligger klos op ad dem selv. Folk i Østen taler om indianernes fattigdom i Vesten uden at se deres egen sorte fattigdom; folk i Vesten taler om den sorte fattigdom i Østen, men ser ikke indianernes fattigdom lige uden for døren, og i Syden taler man slet ikke om fattigdom. Det mest slående eksempel på denne blindhed fik jeg i Mississippi, da jeg fik et lift med en repræsentant af den sædvanlige optimistiske type. Han snakkede op ad stolper og ned ad vægge om, hvordan dette var et land med muligheder for alle. Alle kan få succes, hvis de bare vil. Enhver, der gider, kan blive millionær på 10 år. Har man kræfterne og lysten, kan man trække sig selv op af skidtet ved at hive i støvlestropperne. De samme fraser hører jeg så tit, når vi kører på en landevej med shacks på begge sider, og jeg ville sikkert ikke have bidt mærke i det, hvis ikke vi netop den dag havde kørt på en totalt oversvømmet strækning i deltaet. Det var i den fattigste del i Mississippi, hvor man praktisk talt ikke ser andet end blikskure beboet af fattige daglejere, hvis eneste ejendom ofte er et muldyr og to svin. Mississippi-floden var netop gået over sine bredder, og masser af druknede muldyr og svin lå langs vejen. Folk sad på tagene af deres shacks, og nogle steder ragede kun skorstenen op. Andre sejlede rundt om husene i både og prøvede at redde deres druknende muldyr. Da vi havde kørt i disse omgivelser i en time, spurgte jeg, om han kendte udtrykket ”at lade folk sejle deres egen sø”. Derefter bad jeg om at blive sat af, selv om jeg vidste, at der kunne gå dage, før jeg fik et andet lift i denne del af Mississippi. En dag kom jeg spadserende ned ad en gade i Detroit sammen med en sort pige, som havde været Sort Panter, da hun var 16 år. Nu var hun trotskist og rødstrømpe. Vi var på vej til et trotskistmøde, så det må have været fredag. Sådanne møder går jeg altid til om fredagen i storbyerne, da der bliver serveret gratis kaffe og kage. Om søndagen og om onsdagen går jeg gerne til kaffebord i kirkerne. I kirkerne tager det normalt kun en time, før man får kaffen, men hos trotskisterne skal man virkelig gennem et helvede, før man får belønningen. Ofte skal man igennem en stiv prædiken på tre timer om at frelse masserne, men så kaster man sig til gengæld over kaffebordet med endnu større glæde bagefter. Nå, men denne fredag, da vi altså var på vej til vores kaffebønnemøde, kom vi forbi en tigger på gaden, der stod med udstrakt hånd. Så skete der det for mig uventede, at pigen totalt afvisende slog tiggerens hånd til side. Jeg blev ret chokeret og spurgte, hvorfor hun ikke havde givet ham penge, når hun havde penge på sig. ”Den slags pjat må vente til efter revolutionen”, svarede hun. Jeg tænkte lidt over det og spurgte så lidt provokerende: ”Jamen, hvad nu, hvis revolutionen ikke kommer i den mands levetid?” Så blev der ikke snakket mere om den sag. I modsætning til middelklassen, hvorfra disse to eksempler er hentet, er folk i overklassen ofte rørende hjælpsomme over for de fattige og deres lidelser, som de tilfældigt får øje på. Det mest gribende eksempel på dette fik jeg i Gainesville i Florida, da jeg boede hos en rig mand, som ejede et forsikringsselskab. En dag var jeg med, da han var ude for at hjælpe en daglejer med at få hans eneste muldyr op af et mudderhul, som det var faldet i. Daglejeren stod nede i mudderhullet i vand til halsen og kæmpede for at holde muldyrets hoved oven vande, mens kapitalisten sad oppe i sin helikopter og prøvede at løfte muldyret op. Situationen var så komisk, at jeg ikke kunne lade være med at grine, men hverken daglejeren eller kapitalisten kunne se det morsomme i det. Det kunne være sjovt, hvis han selv faldt i mudderhullet, tænkte jeg. Mit fromme ønske gik faktisk i opfyldelse, for da han lidt efter var landet og nærmede sig mudderhullet, gled han og brækkede det ene ben. Da han så måtte ligge i sengen den næste tid, fik jeg lov til at låne hans Mercedes, og det var på en af mine ture i den, jeg fandt Lindas shack ude på en øde bivej. En dag samlede playboy-millionæren Tommy Howard (side 170) mig op i sin Jaguar og tog mig med til et fornemt skisportssted, hvor han brugte tonsvis af penge på at score "piger". Han var dog så imponeret over mit vagabond-slogan "Tryghed er at rejse uden penge", at han først gav mig nøgler til sit fine hjem, men kort efter fandt han sit datingliv så tomt, at han solgte alle sine forretninger for at "leve efter din vagabond-filosofi" og tilbragte de næste syv år med at blaffe og rejse rundt i hele verden. I Afrika fik han sin første sorte ven nogensinde. Det ironiske var, at han boede i en by, hvor 50 % af befolkningen var sort, men aldrig havde haft en sort i sit hus, bortset fra dem, jeg kom blaffende med. Men min vagabond-sociologi havde for længst lært mig, at min lommefilosofi om at finde lykke og tryghed som midlertidig outsider er krænkende, hvis den bliver til ideologi. Uanset om man intet har eller har for mange penge er det arrogant blindhed over for alle dem, der gennem uheld er blevet tvunget ud i hjemløshed og fattigdom. At Tommy siden kunne skifte til et kæmpe motorhjem, som han skrev om i sin rejsebog "The Freedom Machine" i - mens jeg kunne holde foredrag i min polstrede beboelses van - viste igen vores fælles hvide privilegium i et ufrit samfund. Fra breve Brev til amerikansk ven