I'm a 59 year old African American woman. I've desegregated a town, a school system and many other spaces. When I discuss racism in this nation, I'm not going to ameliorate my speech for the comfort of anyone. I don't exist to comfort others about the reality of what I was born into - what we all live in together. If that's a problem for you, I suggest you embark on some self-reflection to determine what your actual role is within this system. #racism#politics#BlackMastodon #blackmastodon
@StillIRise1963 The first black kid I met was the son of a retired football player in the Canadian Football League, Ed Ulmer. It was 1974. Even though Winnipeg, Manitoba, gets as cold as -40C in winter his dad didn't want to go back to Mississippi. Then, as the immigration rules to Canada changed came a flood.
Everything changed.
The ones that came first faced an incredible amount of horrifying shit. They were the toughest most together kids I knew.
@komputernik It's interesting. I don't think I understood how strange my life had been until I started working with POC college kids. Their reactions made me see it all a different way. I knew it was weird and people of my own generation thought my stories were crazy, but it just was.🤷🏾♀️
@StillIRise1963 My father was born 100 years ago in a dirt floor farm house in nowhere, Ukraine. A slave laborer during WW2. My sister and I are the first in my family to finish high school and then go to university. My son will be the first to get a PhD.
I'm one generation, one, from what was essentially still the middle ages. So I feel it. Goddamn do I feel it.
@StillIRise1963 When I was a kid Ukrainians were considered farmers thugs and brutes. Considered "unsuited for politics" by the WASP elite.
The children and grandchildren of the people who suffered that shit are now for the most part conservative and reactionary. They ignore their own history and the humiliation faced by their own recent ancestors.
@ricardoharvin None of it! My dad was the first in a multinational corp in the late '60s. We moved around the nation with his job into situations where no one like us had been before. Started for me when I was 5 - 1968. In retrospect, I can't imagine the stress my parents must have had.
@StillIRise1963 My dad was one of the first Black Border Patrol officers, and the U.S. Attorney General had to order that he be allowed take the test, even though he was a U.S. Marshal.
He was also the first Black Immigration Inspector at the Port of Miami.
So yeah, we moved a few times to very different situations, including Puerto Rico.
@ricardoharvin Yep. I'm sure there are many "firsts" on this platform right now. We're being condescended to by some people who have no earthly idea what we've had to endure.
a paternal ggfather was PRs first US Marshall appointed by Gen Miles in 1898. though negro, he ran his own school & spoke English (am conflicted about this one tbh)
papi was in Puerto Rico's first Olympics delegation & held PR's 200 & 400 with hurdles record for 30 yrs
me and my brother were the first to sue PRico's Catholic Church (and managers of our school) for racial discrimination
in USA, am the first black boricua blogger (2000-1)
btw, though my mom was a blondie, she was mestiza --her grandmother was literally one of the hundreds of thousands of taínos both Spain and USA claimed didn't exist in Puerto Rico.
mami was in the first woman's volleyball team of her (and Sonia Sotomayor's mom's) hometown; San Germán. it's the second oldest town in PR and one of the most conservative too.
VB is huge in PR; so back in the 1950s, that was not just groundbreaking, but radical.
@clayrivers@StillIRise1963 We're the second post-Civil Rights generation, but the first to have those legal protections last from childhood into adulthood.
We're also the second post-Civil Rights generation to lose such legal protections.
It's like waves on a beach, rising, receding and sometimes reaching further onshore, but always returning to the depths.
This constant, slow churn has surely made me seasick. I hate that we can't yet get to tenths and hundreds.
@ricardoharvin@clayrivers Growing up, I had this weird fear that we'd be like the Reconstruction Black people who were eventually written out of history. Seems like the fear was for good reason.
@ricardoharvin Thing is, we had no guides. No one had ever been in that position before, so we all just did the best we could. There are so many stories. @clayrivers
@ricardoharvin@StillIRise1963
I always say, it's not just history, there are people among us that had to go to a different restroom and water fountains in the 60s!
It's not just old history
@StillIRise1963@samir@ricardoharvin My 93-yo mother was once privileged to hear Dr. Martin Luther King, Senior (ie, MLK, Jr’s father) speak. A group of students & faculty at her university invited him, the hall was booked, announcements were printed, everything was on track.
Then, the day before- it seems like it’s always at the last minute- the hall was canceled. It was Oklahoma in the late 1940’s…
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@StillIRise1963@ricardoharvin …& a Black man Could Not Be Allowed to speak on (their all-White) campus.
A huge scramble for an alternate venue ensued, & finally somebody found a place that would let Dr King speak there. Anyone with a car was dragooned into giving attendees rides to the far side of town.
And that was how Mom & her fellow Divinity students came to hear one of the most widely respected religious scholars of the day, whilst standing in a freezing cold rat-infested warehouse.
@samir@StillIRise1963 Virginia Key beach, just south of Miami Beach, was where we could swim.
We weren't allowed to swim at Miami Beach, and Jews couldn't stay at most of the big hotels there (South Beach as we know it now didn't exist, that's where the Jews could live and swim).
@StillIRise1963
I am sick to death of people who are clearly more worried about hurting the feelings of fascists than they are with those the fascists would kill if they succeed in ending the republic.
This includes a lot of establishment Democrats and the mainstream media.
I'm not going to refrain from calling fascists fascists just to satisfy some appeaser's sense of decorum.
I was reading the thread of “firsts” this post got started; then it dawned on me that in a just society none of these firsts should have been necessary!!
I often leave humbled by your posts.
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