Every other month or so, Susan and I make a two-day drive to South Carolina, with our giant dog Elsie in the back seat, to visit our daughter, who has lived there for fifteen years, and our grandson Max, who is a touchingly empathetic six-year-old. It’s an exhausting, thousand-mile-each-way trip for us, but it usually results in a very sweet visit. We’re lucky enough to own a small apartment in Columbia, the state capital, which is a relatively “liberated” blue town within this red state, and apart from playing with Max we take many walks with Elsie on the SC University campus, which is a veritable arboretum, and in our Five Points neighborhood, which is full of mansions and gigantic shade trees.
Thank you, Larry, for this thoughtful, beautifully written piece. I was born just outside Birmingham, Alabama 79 years ago and witnessed the horrors of Jim Crow first hand. As a people, we cannot erase the horrors of the past, but the issue I most grapple with is the reluctance of so many Americans to insist on making things better now. I have often found race difficult to even discuss in our community. If all white people would say, "ENOUGH!" our country could move forward. As it is, we are stuck with the actions of our history in a racial environment that is poisoning us and our children.
Reading from England, with our own shameful history of reliance on slave wealth, and with a corrupt and frighteningly right wing government, I, and English Jew, was very moved by your writing. I was wondering if you have ever written in this way about the current treatment of Palestinians - both as second class citizens in Israel, and as people with no civil or human rights at all in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Isnt it possible to say today that Israel has never confronted the cruel underpinnings of its own establishment, "has never contemplated or educated its children about its evil past, never paid reparations (to those driven out, whose land was seized, who have been bombed to smithereens in Gaza etc), never repented, never renounced its racism - and is now doubling down on it?
This is such a powerful essay. We privileged will always carry a layer of guilt even as we try over and over again to create a better future....it's never ending but has to be done. Thank you for your necessary writings.
Thank you, Larry, for this thoughtful, beautifully written piece. I was born just outside Birmingham, Alabama 79 years ago and witnessed the horrors of Jim Crow first hand. As a people, we cannot erase the horrors of the past, but the issue I most grapple with is the reluctance of so many Americans to insist on making things better now. I have often found race difficult to even discuss in our community. If all white people would say, "ENOUGH!" our country could move forward. As it is, we are stuck with the actions of our history in a racial environment that is poisoning us and our children.
Reading from England, with our own shameful history of reliance on slave wealth, and with a corrupt and frighteningly right wing government, I, and English Jew, was very moved by your writing. I was wondering if you have ever written in this way about the current treatment of Palestinians - both as second class citizens in Israel, and as people with no civil or human rights at all in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza. Isnt it possible to say today that Israel has never confronted the cruel underpinnings of its own establishment, "has never contemplated or educated its children about its evil past, never paid reparations (to those driven out, whose land was seized, who have been bombed to smithereens in Gaza etc), never repented, never renounced its racism - and is now doubling down on it?
Compelling and moving Larry, good job! Let’s keep on learning and saying ‘what is.’
This is such a powerful essay. We privileged will always carry a layer of guilt even as we try over and over again to create a better future....it's never ending but has to be done. Thank you for your necessary writings.