Radical history is radical July 26, 1985
I spent the greater part of last night lecturing Joe.
He doesn’t have much time now, just two shifts, and there is
so much ground to cover.
This isn’t a matter of trying to convince anyone; lectures
are always boring. But I guess I’m trying to get people – including Joe – to ask
the right questions about themselves and to find real evidence to support that
they believe is true.
This started last night when Joe thought back to the only
person he ever met from South Africa and the kind of outrage he felt as a caddy
on an exclusive golf course. He could
not quite explain his reaction to the snobbery, and it radicalized him in a minor
way.
I have very little patience with radicals from my own
generation, who pontificate about the unfairness of the world, shoving their
opinions about race and money down the throats of other people, while rarely
living up to their how diatribes.
My first real encounter with these came during the summer of
67 when I had to go to summer school in Garfield where a woman named Mrs. Day,
who instead of teaching mathematics, she sat on the front of her desk and
spouted unamerican crap. She and her male assistant wanted us to understand
just how evil a place America really was, how racist we all were if we were
white, and how we oppressed people of color if we supported the war in Vietnam.
I was made to feel a bit of a fool when I stood up and asked
what this has to do with mathematics, and would I be graded less if I didn’t
get the exact tonnage of bombs dropped on those dirty communists overseas.
She tried to explain how the war was about maintaining colonialism
rather than holding back communism and pointed to how Tibet begged the United
States for help when the communists invaded, but we did nothing. Tibet unlike
Vietnam had no oil reserves, no rubber plantations and other things the United
States wanted and so we saw no point in defending them against the great red menace.
Later, I learned how much more complicated this was that
these radicals made it out to be and understood just how this fit the pattern
of radical thought, slightly altering information in support of their arguments,
such as the lack of logistics to help Tibet, where as in Vietnam we had nearby
allies.
Much of the blame for Vietnam – as with Haiti and other parts
of the world – can be laid on the shoulders of the French, who indeed betrayed
the people there after WWII by refusing to give the natives autonomy – as FDR
has promised. The U.S. supported the French war there to keep China and Russia
in check, and then basically took over after the Vietnamese kicked the ass of
the French.
Mrs. Day also went on about racism in the United States and
how we all benefited from it, ignoring the billions upon billions we spent aid
to cities, building housing, rebuilding schools and on and on. While racism
clearly existed, it was not the major problem – exploitation of the black
community by groups that benefits more from federal dollars than the needy did,
people running programs that seemed to make blacks more helpless than elevate
them out of poverty.
South Africa, of course, has replaced the Deep South of the 1960s
as the center of evil, with new radicals determined to bring down the economy
there in order to free the blacks that obviously live in slavery. White South
Africa is destined to fall, just as the Jim Crow south did, mostly because that
way of thinking is long out of date, unacceptable in the world at large.
The problem is without it, the radicals will need some new
group to target, someone to blame for all for the alleged ills of the world,
and it is difficult to say at what point these radicals will stop, if ever,
determined to continue their witch hunt long after they have run out of witches
to hunt.
Joe asked me if supported the war in Vietnam. I told him only
early on. But that the antics of the anti-war crowd so offended me I could not
stand with them either, the rock throwing, the bomb making, the spitting on
soldiers.
He asked if I thought Jim Crow was wrong?
Yes, I said, but I lived in the north, and had serious problems
with northerners going south to tell people in the south how to live their
lives – the way many of my radical friends did.
“People need to work out their own issues,” I said. “It
always seemed to me that white radicals going south were determined to stir up
trouble to prove a point.”
Joe seemed shocked by the fact that I took part in anti-Apartheid
marches.
“I don’t see any problem with non-violent protest,” I said,
noting how upset I got when I went to Chicago in 1968 and saw people throwing
rocks and other stuff at cops. “What were they thinking? Is it any wonder that
the same behavior later got four people shot at Kent State?”
Joe seemed puzzled when I said I was worried about the
future of public education.
“Everything seems to be going in the direction of that day
in Summer school years ago,” I said. “We have teachers who are supposed to be teaching
math and are brainwashing kids rather than teaching them how to think for
themselves. Newspapers don’t help either, spinning news to suit their audience
rather than to inform.”
Joe said he hated South Africa because of the men who had
mistreated him on the golf course, and assumed the whole country was full of
people like them.
“Maybe that’s true and maybe that isn’t,” I said. “The
system is rigged against blacks there. But are all the whites racist who live
there?”
I pointed out that Joe is about to move to the heart of Texas
where he is likely to meet people who do not have the same radical beliefs many
of here in the New York area do, and that he should keep his mind open rather
than get offended or even into a fight.
“We get taught a different history about many things here
than they do down there,” I said. “About Vietnam, about racism, even about the
Civil War. They’re brainwashing their kids in a different way than we’re
brainwashing our kids up here. So, they might not take kindly to having you
tell them something different from what they already believe.”
Joe only nodded.
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