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INGRID C DURDEN's avatar

Two of the nicest neighbors I had were black. The newspaper now and then has thumbnail pics from criminals. Usually 2 or 3 white on a whole page. One has to look at everyone person by person. There are all colors of nice people and all colors of criminals! and there are lots of BIG criminals who will never be judged and unfortunately most of these are white.

Citizen Satirist (CS)'s avatar

Southern blacks (especially the church going crowd) are some of the nicest people you will ever meet - often nicer than the whites... But urban and Chicago blacks in particular are often another story............................

INGRID C DURDEN's avatar

Absolutely! I had a very nice doctor who was black, and a very nasty one who was Indian! I live in rural Georgia, with a 60% black population. Some neighborhoods are not safe, I am told, but after 20 years I had only one problem with a black person, and that was the one who did my citizenship test. She was really nasty and then 'misplaced' my file, so it took twice as long before I finally became an American citizen! Forgiven but not forgotten. Racism goes both ways so it seems. Lots of cashiers and nurses are black and most of them very friendly and helpsome.

TriTorch's avatar

A call for coast to coast unity and grace from the mountains high to the wave crashed coasts:

"The person down the street who votes differently than you is not your enemy. They are your neighbor. They worry about the same things you worry about. They want their kids to be safe and their bills to be paid and their country to be a place worth living in. They have been manipulated just like you have been manipulated, fed a different flavor of the same poison, sorted into a different tribe by the same algorithm, pointed at you as the enemy by the same people who point you at them.

The working class Republican and the working class Democrat have more in common with each other than either of them has with the billionaire class that funds both parties.

You share the same struggles. You face the same rigged systems. You are being crushed by the same economic forces that have transferred more wealth upward in the last fifty years than at any point in human history. And instead of uniting against the people doing this to you, you are screaming at each other on the internet about pronouns and flags and whatever fresh outrage the algorithm served up this morning.

This is exactly what they want. A nation at war with itself cannot resist a takeover. A people consumed by mutual hatred will accept any authority that promises to protect them from the manufactured enemy. Every empire that fell was divided before it was conquered. Every free people who lost their freedom were set against each other first.

The red versus blue war is not real. It is a show put on by people who own both teams. It is professional wrestling and you think it is a real fight. The wrestlers go backstage after the match and laugh together while you are still screaming at the guy in the other section who was rooting for the wrong character.

This Is Our Country Not Theirs

This nation belongs to the people who live here and work here and raise families here and will be buried here. It does not belong to billionaires who hold citizenship in three countries and will flee to their bunkers the moment things get bad. It does not belong to tech oligarchs who view democracy as an obstacle to efficiency. It does not belong to foreign interests who have purchased so much influence that they might as well be writing our laws themselves.

We have to stop letting them divide us. We have to start seeing each other as fellow Americans again instead of enemy combatants in a culture war that was manufactured to keep us weak. We have to remember that the person screaming at us online is also a victim of the same manipulation, and maybe if we stopped screaming back and started talking, we might realize we have been fighting the wrong enemy this entire time.

Turn off the television. It is not informing you. It is programming you. Question everything, including the sources you trust, especially the sources you trust. Talk to people who disagree with you and do it without trying to win. Listen to why they believe what they believe. You might discover that the monster you have been told to hate is actually just another person trying to make sense of a confusing world with imperfect information, exactly like you.

Remember who you are.

You are an American. Your ancestors came to this land or were brought to this land or were already on this land, and regardless of how they got here, they built something together that was supposed to be different from the old world’s tyrannies and aristocracies. That project is not finished. Every generation has to fight to keep it alive against the forces that want to drag us back to a world where a handful of rulers own everything and everyone else serves at their pleasure.

Stop letting them divide you. Your enemies are not your neighbors. Your enemies are the people who profit from your division and are building machines to replace you the moment you are no longer useful.

Start acting like it before it is too late". —The Wise Wolf

"We must learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools." —MLK Jr.