Red, White and Yellow
The boys had a friend over yesterday. The kid was telling racist jokes. I told him to stop. "We don't make jokes about those kinds of things in our family."
Today, we went to the dreaded fireworks display at our town's main park. We were sitting next to a large family group of about a dozen people. We didn't have any conversation with them, but I overheard some conversation that pegged them as of Polish ancestry. We were on their left. On their right sat a family of recent immigrants from India. Our town has a very large number of Indian families, as we're close to a huge, and unbelievably beautiful Hindu temple.
The patriarch of the family next to us, a man apparently in his late forties, kept making comments about the family to his right. "Where is their prayer mat?" The rest of the family giggled and half-heartedly shushed him. "I'm expecting any one of these guys to stand up and start shooting. Why would they even come here? It's not their country."
This was during the fireworks. I had one of the twins on my lap. I feel ashamed that I didn't say something to the guy.
When push came to shove, I was able to tell a 10-year-old kid what my feelings were, but I failed to do the same to an adult.
One kind of funny thing, the village was pumping out music to go along with the fireworks. Some Toby Keith crap that I couldn't name. Neil Diamond. And Neil Young.
Neil Young.
There's colors on the street
Red, white and blue
People shufflin' their feet
People sleepin' in their shoes
But there's a warnin' sign
on the road ahead
There's a lot of people sayin'
we'd be better off dead
Don't feel like Satan,
but I am to them
So I try to forget it,
any way I can.
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
I see a woman in the night
With a baby in her hand
Under an old street light
Near a garbage can
Now she puts the kid away,
and she's gone to get a hit
She hates her life,
and what she's done to it
There's one more kid
that will never go to school
Never get to fall in love,
never get to be cool.
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores
and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people,
says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
got roads to drive.
Keep on rockin' in the free world,
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, July 04, 2006 at 11:23 PM.
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8:51 AMMost Americans fail to see the true meaning of songs about our fair nation. Case in point, Born in the USA. Reagan wanted to use it as anthem during his campaign, but Springsteen wouldn't allow it. Had Reagan even heard the words? Not likely.
10:49 PM
next time, sysm. next time.
we will always (sadly) have opportunities to educate the ignorant. or at least, tell them to shut the hell up.
your kids are gonna be some of the most decent people out there, i swear it.
10:52 AM
I like to think that being an ignorant bigot is its own punishment but I suspect they don't feel the same way
2:40 PM
It's strange how people in our country forget that most of us didn't start out here and have become so biggoted toward people who are just trying to make their lives better in what our country is supposed to be: a melting pot.
3:31 PM
Fucking polacks.
Seriously, though, you can't fight every battle. Good for you for correcting your sons' friend - you will most likely make more of an impact on his way of thinking than you would have with Jokey McRacist.
6:19 AM
First: this is the best 4th of July post in the history of the blogosphere. No, really, I checked them all. Kudos to you, sir.
Second: you've put your finger on the fundamental American flaw. We're all immigrants, and yet stupid shit like this happens all the time. So basically, we're a country of stupid immigrants. The even more fundamental issue you raise, though, is timeless: how does a moral person with good intentions best react to malignant ignorance? And why does the outcome, more often than not, feel like cowardice, even though if put in the same situation again, you most likely would (not) do the same thing? We all know that Jesus and Gandhi thought about these questions for a long time, and probably came up with the right answers, but in the real world that's a tall order to fill when the chips are down.
It's pretty much the nastiest pitch in the game, isn't it?
I had a similar experience in a cab in NYC last year. A Pakistani cab driver shared with me that (surprise) he didn't pick up black fares, ever. I probably asked him why (memory's fuzzy here, per usual), but did it matter? What answer would have counted as an "explanation"? I could have called him a stupid Paki, but would that observation, however true, changed anything? My weapon of choice in these situations, the eye-ray death-glare, isn't very effective from the back seat of a cab, so I simply withheld the tip. Of course, all that did was make me feel better and the cabbie angry - which probably only made him mutter even more curses as he spurned the next gaggle of black taxi-hailers.
Third: I'm with Tits on this one: you maximized your benevolence by picking the right battle. It only feels like cowardice because kids are, er, midgets, but that's the only scenario of the two in which you could have made a real difference, and you did.
Kudos to you, sir.
1:51 PM
I love it when you're with me, Dr. S.
1:03 AM
Hey what a great site keep up the work its excellent.
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