tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post7219836347944973467..comments2024-03-29T10:10:40.315-05:00Comments on Every goddamn day: 03/29/24: Martin Luther King DriveNeil Steinberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11468057838260476480noreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-72557425782782487292022-01-18T19:54:07.057-06:002022-01-18T19:54:07.057-06:00I never heard my father's slumlord older broth...I never heard my father's slumlord older brother (and boss) use any racial slurs, or utter an unkind word against people of color. But he did go off on Texas (and Texans) one evening. One of the things I remember best about his drunken Thanksgiving-dinner rant was about how Texas should be booted from the union. It was six days after JFK was killed.Grizz 65https://www.blogger.com/profile/02892702223228764894noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-76880369886395195132022-01-18T19:09:25.615-06:002022-01-18T19:09:25.615-06:00Thank you for these amendments to the column. As ...Thank you for these amendments to the column. As others have said, much food for thought.Annhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07065709548202393526noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-31602506666946863332022-01-18T16:20:34.640-06:002022-01-18T16:20:34.640-06:00In "Black Boy," Richard Wright recounts ...In "Black Boy," Richard Wright recounts how he and his friends used to gang up and jeer at the Jewish shopkeeper of their small Mississippi town, and for much the same reason: they perceived him to be exploiting them.<br /><br />My father's family owned a lunch counter/ice cream shop near the Juvenile Courts building. It landed in my dad's hands, and he ran it into the ground. He was a good man and a hard worker, but no businessman.<br /><br />As I grew up, the official family version was that the restaurant failed because "the neighborhood changed," and Black people, I dunno, don't eat lunch or like ice cream. Only much later in life did I wonder whether, in addition to my father's incompetence, the restaurant had been refusing service to Black people. A lot of Chicago restaurants did so before the war. But it's something I have a hard time believing of my dad, who never uttered a mean word about Black people (or any other minority) in his life.Bitter Scribehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04645909858616987997noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-83706274214212324112022-01-18T12:41:43.261-06:002022-01-18T12:41:43.261-06:00During my late teens (the year was 1966, the same ...During my late teens (the year was 1966, the same summer that MLK lived in Chicago), my kid sister made me aware that one of my uncles (who happened to be not only his older brother, but also his boss) was a slumlord. He owned a number of rickety and crumbling buildings on the South Side, in what was then known as "the ghetto." Ownership was in his wife's name. <br /><br />Apparently, Sis had overheard some of "the boys" (my father was the fifth of seven brothers) discussing financial matters. Maybe a slum or two would soon have to be sold off, to pay for long-term nursing-home care for my grandmother. <br /><br />That sudden disclosure was quite an eye-opener. I suddenly understood why so many Chicago "Negroes" had no love for Jews, and often called them "Hymies' (which was also the name of my best friend's father). It's still very disturbing to realize that my own uncle was one of the "direct exploiters in the ghetto" that MLK wrote about. <br /><br />The n-word was taboo in my family, of course, but "schvartzer" (Yiddish for "black man") was not. In both German and Yiddish, the word is a literal translation of "black." Not so nasty as the n-word, but harsher than either 'colored' or 'Negro' in American English at the time. It was a word I grew up with. Grizz 65https://www.blogger.com/profile/02892702223228764894noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-14535063400851014722022-01-18T12:36:47.561-06:002022-01-18T12:36:47.561-06:00Very interesting. King was suggesting that Black a...Very interesting. King was suggesting that Black anti-Semitism was a Northern phenomenon based on grasping Jewish shopkeepers and landlords, itself an anti-Semitic trope. It makes more sense that it's a reactive general anti-whiteness (reacting, it should be pointed out, to white bigotry). Thanks for sharing that. Neil Steinberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11468057838260476480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-70927870181086216082022-01-18T11:08:51.010-06:002022-01-18T11:08:51.010-06:00Dr. King's long-ago assessment of Black antise...Dr. King's long-ago assessment of Black antisemitism contained some home truths, but one wonders at his conclusion that the phenomenon doesn't exist in the South. The Black church tends to be a conservative institution, which suggests the persistence of antisemitic memes common to Christianity from ancient times. And then, more recently, there's the Reverent Farrakhan.<br /><br />But it is, of course, a many-sided issue. <br /><br />TomTomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09641357239788323783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-47815494611760038782022-01-18T10:59:28.946-06:002022-01-18T10:59:28.946-06:00Your writing over the last couple of days got me t...Your writing over the last couple of days got me to thinking so I read some things and wondered what you think about it. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/jsimes/files/ssj_simes_2009.pdfFMEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06829632906445535928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3972382144120426476.post-80698011397432426072022-01-18T08:22:57.677-06:002022-01-18T08:22:57.677-06:00Thanks for posting this. It gives food for thought...Thanks for posting this. It gives food for thought.privatehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18413982311699012802noreply@blogger.com