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Hug a Racist Month

  • Posted on April 8, 2010 at 9:24 pm

I would be the first to tell you that I am not a fan of Barack Obama.  For me he is too much of a Republican and not enough of a real Democrat.  I also didn’t like the way he ran his campaign including the way he treated both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin.  He also basically implied that Bill Clinton is a racist.  Race was used throughout his campaign and it made me crazy.  No one could say anything against Barack Obama without being called a racist.  I felt this was all wrong during the election.   I really felt it divided our country instead of uniting it.

Leave it to the Republicans to make me slide to the side of President Obama.  Governor McDonnell from the state of Virgina has declared April to be Confederate History month.  I thought the Civil War was over and the slaves were set free.  Yes, the winners got to write the history book and thus get to celebrate their victory.  However, the victory was a victory for our country.  I get tired of hearing about the Civil War.  Back in the eighties I lived in Oklahoma.  Just about every pickup I saw had a Confederate flag hanging in the back window.  That flag is a symbol for racism.  The fight was about slavery.  For a governor in the 21st Century to want to celebrate anything about that war I find it just ridiculous and an amazing step backwards into ignorance.  We have a racial and class divide in this country as it is why would any politician want to push those buttons of hate?

Living in Oklahoma was interesting.  The people were really nice and friendly but some of them were racist.  They loved the University of Oklahoma black football players but they only loved them for winning a game.  They certainly wouldn’t want them dating their daughters.  I could feel it.  They flew their Confederate flags with such pride that I thought the war was still going on.  They would reference the war to me solely because I was from the north.  I, of course, never even thought about the Civil war.  I went to Michigan State University in the seventies.  While I grew up in a small town in Michigan where it would be rare to even know a black person, attending the university allowed me to grow as a person and meet many people of color from all over the country and even the world.  I always felt like I lived under a bubble at MSU as it was sort of like a utopia in the way we all embraced our differences.  I can assure you that many of the people that I met in western Oklahoma thought about the war and when someone from the north was in their midst it was mentioned as though it happened yesterday.  Now I know that many of them lost family and friends in the war and maybe there was never a real “healing” for this but to want to celebrate such a tragedy in our history is a mistake.  Just when a wound is beginning to heal why should we pick at that scab?  I can only believe this is so important this year because Barack Obama dared to become President.  Gov. McDonnell mentions next year as being a 150 year celebration but what is there to celebrate?  The lives lost by both the north and the south?  That scab will never heal unless we all become one as a nation.  We shouldn’t celebrate the north and the south.  We should celebrate America!  If you are so inclined to celebrate April with Confederate History month please hug a racist as they need all the love they can get.

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What Motivates People?

  • Posted on April 8, 2010 at 11:53 am

I just watched this amazing video of a 96 year old man bungee jumping.  I found it strange but amazing.  First of all it is amazing when anyone does something that would really scare the hell out of most normal people.  However, when you’re 96 and doing these crazy, scary things one has to wonder what motivates you to do it?  This all got me thinking about what motivates people?

I know a lot of people are motivated by money either they have it and want to keep it or they don’t have it and want to obtain it.  Some people are motivated by jealousy.  They want something someone else has.  Others are motivated by thrills.  This would be the bungee jumper types and those people that want to climb every mountain they can find.  Some people are motivated by sex.  It defines their every real moment in life.  Some people are motivated by religion.  It is their center for all they do.  As I’m writing this I’m thinking this reminds me of the seven deadly sins:  wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony.  Maybe these are all of the things that really motivate us.  If you think about it and plug in the word each and every one of these probably motivates many of us.

Some people are motivated by anger.  Anger gets them to do things they might not otherwise do both good and bad.  Anger can be a great motivator when you want to show someone else that you are better than they are at something.  However, then you have to worry about that old “pride” thing.  I’ve never really understood why pride is a sin unless you are holding something over someone else’s head.  You know like “I’m better than you are stuff.”  Jealousy can fall under the old greed and envy sins.  They are all tied together.  We all know people that always think the grass is greener on the other side or those that feel like life has some how been harder for them, and maybe it has.  I don’t know if people are motivated by sloth.  I do know some people that don’t want to put much effort into anything.  We all know people that want to just “get by”.  They aren’t really motivated to push themselves for anything extra.  They aren’t motivated by money or much of the other things that motivate people.  They’re happy when they’re not challenged.  They aren’t motivated to clean up their own environment as that might take too much effort.  Many of us are motivated by food or alcohol or some other vice.  We’re motivated because it tastes or feels good.  It’s a quick fix for anything that might be ailing us.

Obviously, as I’m thinking about it many things can at any one time motivate us.  I have always been motivated by my own moral code and sense of honor and duty.  There is no escaping this thing inside me probably developed from Catholicism.  It’s that little thing that constantly tells me what is right and wrong and heaven forbid that I choose what is wrong.  It’s hard to live with a moral conscious but I’ve grown accustom to it all these years.  It doesn’t mean that I sit in judgment of other people, it just means there is always something in my head weighing most important decisions that I make.

Some people are motivated by other people.  I suppose Barack Obama motivated a lot of people with his “Yes, I can!” mantra.  We know that Hitler was highly motivating as he got many people to follow him.  Other people can be motivating to us whether we realize it or not.  Sometimes when I’m teaching I see my students get motivated by the artwork of other students.  They watch and learn and sometimes it will get them working and feeling like they too can create something wonderful.

I’ve never understood what motivates a lot of people.  I don’t think I’m very good at figuring people out at all.  I am just an observer of this crazy world we live in.  I will quietly think and write about all of the things that I think about.  What motivated me to write today was a crazy 96 year old bungee jumper.  My words cannot express the exhilaration he must have felt flying through the air but I can try to understand what might have motivated him.  Humans are a complicated species that are made up of risk takers and quiet writers that can only dream of the excitement and exhilaration of the oldest bungee jumper!

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