@Big Fin, I imagine this thread has been close to getting shut down several times, but I want to thank you for leaving it open. This is a
difficult and emotion filled issue to discuss right now in the world, but one that is important. This forum's members have, for the most part, been civil even though many varying views have been expressed. It has been educational and I for one appreciate everyone's willingness to share their life experiences and points of view.
Yes, since it was posted, I have it on my alerts, something I never do. I have come close to closing it many times. But, I am an optimist that it can be beneficial.
I have confidence in the Hunt Talk community that even though we rib each other sometimes and we might get heated in our discussions, the collective group can keep the conversation beneficial. I hope my confidence doesn't turn out to be incorrect.
A lot of diverse discussion, especially on a topic as important as this, can be helpful to all. I can only speak for myself when I say that geographically I have almost no interaction with people of different skin tone. I can try to imagine their situation, but my imagination is not going to match their reality. I try to expand interactions outside my geographic confines, but that still is not the same.
For me, I look to parallels in my life to try understand. I don't have to look very far. I look at my friends I grew up with who came from the two tribal reservations nearby. They were never given the same benefit of doubt as I was. As a teenager I did things that strayed outside the rules, same as they did. They ended up with a different treatment than I did. They had to fight almost weekly in grade school, monthly in high school. I likely fought once a month in grade school and maybe once a year in high school.
I can't imagine getting on that school bus every morning for an hour-long bus ride, knowing some guy three years older and forty pounds bigger was going to mess with me and make fun of me because I came from a reservation. I wasn't faced with the reality that if I ignored that big ogre he and his pals would try to physically intimidate me. I didn't have to deal with any of that. As I grew, I came to admire my tribal friends, what they endured, how their humanity contradicted all the 1970s stereotypes I'd been told, and I came to appreciate what they taught me (like hanging antlers in trees
).
If I were as artistically talented as my Ojibwe grade school friend Peter Rolo, I would have likely had an easy path to art school, likely becoming a famous artist or illustrator. I likely would not have had to fight every week at school if I had a stuttering challenge as he did, having no family resources to help him get speech therapy. I likely would not have died a young man, as he did, rather continued to live a life free of the struggles he had.
From Peter's example and that of his brother Mark and sister Ruth, I learned a lot. A lot about myself and my own ignorances born of my mental laziness. Their example and some other life events showed me how blessed I am/was to be born a white male in America.
I've made some really stupid statements in my life. As a kid, I said some racist things that I had no idea were hurtful to those who I said them to. Yet, when you saw the look in their eyes and the betrayal of friendship they felt, even as a twelve year-old I could see the damage I caused. I went through a period as a young man, confident that my view of the world was the correct view. I've embarrassed myself with my confidence born of ignorance and small-world thinking. From those events, I've come to realize how much I learn when I listen; when I truly try to take my mind to a different place and different circumstances.
I'm still ignorant of these issues when it comes to day-to-day interactions and I hope conversations like these can help me learn. I'm not ignorant to the realities I see in our society that make it clear to me that life is different for most people with a different skin tone or a different set of chromosomes.
I'm mostly listening and trying to learn, here and where other meaningful discussions are happening on this topic, FB not being one of those places. If some start down a path that get this thread off the rails, I will be extremely pissed, as most the comments give a lot for us to think about.
