Greetings Gentle Readers!!
I have been interested in "Southern Rock" for a while, the Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and others from the 70s and found this great video of that era: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_E1I-ERdJYU
And it is a good video, but at the 40 second mark there is a scene from the south of the cinema of a happy African American "Domestic" serving dinner to her "white" family with what looks like a sense of joy, or "I'm so pleased that I can serve my gourmet delights to my 'white' family".....this is so much bs and nonsense......If a woman had children and no husband or man to contribute income, or if the woman was unmarried, what types of employment were available to them back to my grandmothers' days?? By being a nurse or teacher, if she was fortunate enough to have been educated......and the other choices were prostitution and domestic service. Domestic service was poor paying and made the woman put the lives and well being of their employers above the lives and well being of their own children.
I think that all of my female ancestors who weren't married and some who were worked as domestics....absolutely true of my father's family who arrived in the US in the 1860s and also true of my mother's family who arrived in the early 1900s....the early immigrants suffered a lot but by the 2nd and 3rd generation, the unmarried women died off and the married women produced offspring who were able to do better than their parents....in general....I must add here that my father's relatives tended to work in the leather factories of the Peabody/Salem area and none of the men lived to be 60.....consider Gentle Readers that our skin is our hide and when tanning leather without any sort of concern for the workers, their skin got tanned as well, not to mention breathing in toxic waste at the work place.......the only person I am related to that worked in the leather factories who lived beyond 60 was my grandfather.....he left school at 15, along with every other son of a poor family and went to work in the leather factory.....but he got somehow identified as being bright and was moved into an office, sent to North Eastern University on the leather company's dime and ended up with many single author patents.....
Now I come to the main topic of today's blog, MLK Jr's "I have a dream" speech and how this relates to what I have written today....As we look at today's society in the USA, we can see African Americans as president, as politicians, as wealthy sports personalities and not weird to see in the work place......but MLK Jr's dream is nothing but a dream to too many African Americans.....the homicide rate, the black against black violence, the utter hopelessness for youngsters growing up in housing projects who see their local dealer as an example of an "entrepreneur".....I am not sure what was the difference between the Irish, who were discriminated against, etc.....I had a book once "How the Irish became White"....it was too boring to read so I gave it away....but somehow JFK became president and now, when Kerry ran for president, his being Irish was not even mentioned.....This is not true for Obama's presidency or for too many African Americans......I must say that Obama has done little or nothing to help African Americans, particularly the young men, to become part of society......but this is an issue that effects us all......The Irish, not always, but very often, had a family to back them up, to support them.....not always, but most often, the children in a family had the same parents.....this is too often not the case with African Americans......and I can say, in regards to myself, that the short period of time when my family structure was ruptured, and my siblings and I were in essentially foster care for a month.....that in no way could I have been as successful as I have been.....I need peace, quiet, calmness, etc to study and without it, I wonder if I would have graduated from high school......
And this is where we stand now in regards to "I have a Dream." And how to fix this.....I am clueless.
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