Month: April 2021

El Paso, Texas

Dear Elvira:

It was so good to hear from you again and to know that you and all of the Swines are well and doing good. Abel and I were sorry to hear about Rev. Snarl’s worsened hemorrhoids that caused his retirement and replacement by Rev. Mishak Abendigo with the bad hiccup and lisp. But I am sure that the congregation will get used to his style and Fred will still be able to sleep just as well during sermons.

Our cross-the-road neighbors, Reggie and Serena Salpeter are very nice but different. I forgot to tell you last time that when we first arrived at our new house, we found a white-flowered dish with two dozen butter cookies on the kitchen table from Serena Salpeter to welcome us. Her Reggie works for a large well-digging company and Serena, in addition to taking care of their two children plus Barnaby, their smelly pet goat, also works at the plant for the El Paso Water Company, as part time official taster. Yesterday, their naughty pet goat Barnaby took it into his head to eat up all her yellow primroses and some of their next-door neighbor’s Shasta daisies. She will just have to keep that Barnaby on a stronger leash. The two sons are Jason T. and Mason J. Salpeter. Reggie does the family cooking, due to the fact that the only things Serena says she does passably well, are American cheese omelets, fruited dry cereal and butter cookies (like the three dozen we found in the kitchen when we first arrived).

 Strange, I am puzzled about what church they attend because I always see them every weekend, in jeans, outside on their lawn, mowing the grass, watering, or chasing after Barnaby and when it is nice weather, snoozing on their camp chairs or, when rainy, their large screened-in porch. The two Salpeter sons both belong to the City of El Paso chapter of the Boy Scouts and the local Little League, so we almost never see them. But they seem very friendly and respectful when you do see them.

I would like to write some more but it smells out here on the porch like my new batch of butter cookies are burning.

Best wishes and stay safe,

Pam.

As we avidly follow the televised proceedings of the ongoing Chauvin trial, our thoughts are routed back to our earlier essay, “What Do We Tell the Children?” The earlier writing candidly focuses on American history’s dark periods, the most shameful of which, inarguably, was the period of the enslavement of black human beings, and the ensuing persistence of the injustice and immorality of Jim Crow prejudice.

Governmental legislation has been enacted relative to the elimination of the immoral, atavistic, and prejudicial treatment of black Americans, legally decreeing the equality of all citizens, regardless of race, color, or creed. Nevertheless, neither Statutes providing for universal equality, such as the Voting Rights Act and other major Civil Rights Legislation, nor confirming, precedential Court Rulings have, empirically, had sufficient ameliorative impact on our population of intractably bigoted citizens. An archaic and irrational perception and generally contextual prejudice, against people of color, appears stubbornly to persist, in the generational psyche of (too)  many members of the American society.

The fact-pattern  in the Chauvin prosecution is an illustrative example of the numerous instances of unconscionable treatment, including homicide, of unarmed black men, by white police officers. The Chauvin case is painfully demonstrative of the irrationally skewed context in which police, and too many others, maintain toward American people of color. It was an especial relief for all right-thinking citizens to take note that the white police chief, and the other white witnesses [as well as black] testified uniformly,  to the practice of brutally excessive and arbitrary force, practiced by the white police officer, Chauvin, against the handcuffed, supine and completely immobilized, black arrestee, George Floyd.

To be fair, the general context and maintenance of white prejudicial attitudes toward blacks has, of late, been somewhat ameliorated, but far too slowly and incompletely. Despite the appropriate enactment of civil rights Statutes, it has been our observation that legislation in this area is relatively ineffectual, without a concomitant change in the bigoted mindset of those whose inclinations are thus intended to be legislatively proscribed. In our view, effective personal persuasion, by morally inclined citizens, is a mandatorily requirement, in addition to legal strictures, to achieve meaningful results regarding this generationally, chronic inheritance.

The much-admired philosopher and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, wisely and memorably  said, “The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.”

Those Americans who sincerely aspire to the Nation’s attainment of its publicly avowed and emblematic promises of universal equality and moral justice have an historical mandate to become pro-active in the accomplishment of that aspiration. We are of the view that the American white citizens in equal measure to those of color have a vested interest in an America finally and redemptively, living up to its avowal of equality and justice for all. It empirically appears to be insufficient, merely to be in favor of civil rights; white Americans, perforce, have a symbolically historical, redemptive, and moral obligation to be outspoken and affirmatively, pro-active in the cause of existing racial and ethnic equality.

We are thus of the view, that when the occasion prompts, it is the derivative moral mandate of all white, upstanding American citizens, actively and resolutely, to join their fellow citizens of color in the effort to eradicate this evil and irrational prejudice, bequeathed to us all, as an unwanted legacy from an earlier National period. It would be tantamount to the engagement in a  symbolic historic redemption, for white American citizens, to actively and energetically, agitate for black racial equality.

Regarding the question concerning an acceptable response to the sensitive question, what do we tell our children, posed earlier, we might candidly advise them of the dark periods in American history, and of our dedicated and personal efforts to redemptively ameliorate them.

-p.