“May we who oppose this national malignancy, never become so devoid of lightness that we resemble those who celebrate it.”
—John Pavlovitz, The Miserable People
Cracker,
honky,
hillbilly,
redneck,
hick,
trailer trash,
whitey,
good ol’ boy,
peckerwood,
bumpkin,
white trash …
These words have never offended me or made me feel inferior.
I believe it is because as I was growing up, white people ruled everything.
I grew up with an awareness that other races were different,
not less than,
just different.
I knew I would never suffer the ostracizing that faced them every moment.
Like using the community pool,
separate drinking fountains,
because they were different.
Growing up I used to stare at black people,
not because I feared or disliked them but because they were different.
I never felt that my black and Asian friends weren’t true friends,
they just weren’t white.
I loved them dearly, yet,
they were different.
My unconscious acceptance of this stayed with me until the early 60s when I was living in Thailand.
I was one of three male white teenagers in all of Chiang Mai. The American Consul there was a black man married to a white woman. I used to visit their home often, his wife loved to play Harry Belefonte all the time, seeing them together was fascinating. I knew others thought it wrong,
I was enamored though
because it was different.
Then while in the service in the early 70s I found myself with more close,
truly close,
black friends than white friends.
There was something new that was different now,
it was me.
What I then began to see in others was a real fear:
Fear of not controling everything anymore.
Fear of losing their ‘whiteness’ to all the different races catching up.
Fear of not being the ruling race.
That ‘white fear’ is so strong and thick now you can cut it with a knife.
That fear is tearing this nation apart.
That fear is a matter of life and death to millions.
That fear may well put us in another civil war.
That fear however, doesn’t pit black against white.
That fear places their whiteness against an entire planet of a multitude of colours.
White pigment is the absense of all colours.
White light is the presence of all colours.
Pigment covers over.
Light reveals.
Pigment or light?
The choice is ours.
—Louis Warfield
Flommist Louis Warfield is a fabrication specialist who runs the award-winning Rhino Design Studio, “You dream it, we’ll build it.” Copyright © 2018 Louis Warfield.
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