300 Words: Thoughts of a pretired French Teacher

First of all, maybe I should not be on Facebook. I am, however, as I want to be able to keep in touch with people. I am there.

I am preaching to the choir.

I am preaching to the choir in terms of reposting quotations, thoughts, etc. It has come to my head that I am probably doing nothing to help but at least, at the very least, it is cathartic for me.

Catharsis is what it is all about. I blog as catharsis.

Never would I have thought that our society would behave in such a way that I might need catharsis. People who are hanging on to their racism, their hatred, their overall lack of empathy, to their fear of total equality, their supposed religion that leads them to believe absolutely crazy things. I my eyes, the religion they espouse is the antithesis of religion.

When would Jesus have every been supportive of the things that people do and have done in the name of religion? These issues of people twisting Jesus’ words to whatever evil thing piques their interest goes way back, think Crusades, for example.

It amazes me how the blinders get put on these people. Maybe I am wearing my own personal blinders, I am human after all, but it seems to me that I am more open to trying to understand what others think and why.

I saw in my own family a racism within which I grew up. It was clear to me that the naive peasantry of my family brought them here for a better life, but that in coming here, they faced almost impossible situations that they were unprepared for and English was one of those things. They spoke and understood better English than I ever thought, by the time they died but it came at a huge price. My mother’s family was a fine example: losing homes, living on welfare, poor financial moves. My mother told me of horrible times that could try the best of humans.

One racial anecdote that is representative of a moment of shamefulness that I felt was when my grandmother was ill, in the hospital, and hallucinating. My maternal aunt, who at that time of her life was an ardent sun tanner, was quite dark. From both maternal sides, we have an olive skin that is accepting of the sun and gets dark even from wind. My aunt was really dark and in Hungarian, I recall that my grandmother was saying that she wanted my aunt to be sent out. She made it clear in Hungarian, using the word ‘fekete,’ that it was because of the skin color. I believe that it happened when an African-American had just walked in the room. Luckily, with the Hungarian, we were able to not be caught in an unfortunate, racial difficulty. My poor, sweet, racist grandma, was a victim of a new person in this country who, for whatever reason, badly needed not to be on the bottom of the ladder. She ironically, showing how stupid racism is, wanted to be rid of her own daughter.

I remember that my grandmother’s need to not be on that last rung also caused her to dislike my father’s Hungarian family as they lived in what my maternal grandparents deemed to be the wrong side of the town. It was only after my father died, that he became a saint as my maternal grandparents pitched in and helped my mother.

So, there I am on Facebook and attempting to get out a message of reason and I think I am just satisfying a strange feeling I have that I am able to do some good.