JUST SAYIN' (PART TWO)

So, I've been busy lately leaving long comments on various Facebook friends' threads and realize I've got to be more succinct, or better yet not linger on Facebook so much. But before I do, I thought I'd post a copy of this response to a thread on my old friend, the poet (and philosopher to my mind) E. Ethelbert Miller's Facebook page and blog (see the list on the right to link to his E-notes):


Hey E, beautifully put, but as an older gent I want to remind you of how much better the world is than the world I was born into. The world has never been as violent or destructive as it was during WWII ever since. There have been wars, but nothing as bad as then. Institutional racism defended by our government and its policies has never been as bad as it was during slavery, or after that since the Jim Crow institutions of Reconstruction and post-reconstrautction times etc. Or after that, during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and '60s. I was stationed in the South when legal segregation meant people designated as "Negro" (which could mean as little as "a drop" of "black" blood as they used to say in some states, so stupid that even this pink skinned descendant of Irish ancestors could convince some that I was "part black" etc. while relatives of "black" friends were passing for "white" etc.) couldn't go to the drive-in movie in their own car, let alone eat at drugstore counters etc... My parents and older siblings suffered through the Great Depression and despite economic ups and downs the world has never been as economically rocked as during that period, and despite hunger and poverty today, starvation and death due to those things is not as prevalent as it once was, so...yes, some things are worse, damage to the environment (though back in the 1950s air and river pollution were much worse in the USA and elsewhere) continuing racism in some hearts and locations, economic inequality for sure (though not as bad as when my father was a boy at the turn of the last century) etc. etc. Much work to be done, as always, but much accomplished by those who sacrificed in the past so we would have it better...