19 Comments
User's avatar
Sharon Foster (CT)'s avatar

So they stole an image from the web, didn't credit the illustrator or the publication, and didn't notice the Klansmen. Okey-dokey. Standard operating procedure for the MAGA Party. (The Republican Party is dead -- I thought they would have heard by now.)

Expand full comment
Thomas Dombroski's avatar

Racism is so deeply imbedded into American life that many wear it like a warm coat

I never needed to hear that on tv or read about it in a newspaper or magazine

It was all around me

It was in my family

It was in my neighborhood

It was in my school

It was in my workplace

Much of it was subtle racism

Much of it was ignorant racism

Hearing people say that whites are the minority while they lived in New England always makes me laugh

When I would point out that fact they would say that down south it’s all black

I would say so you’re telling me that the red states down south are all black???

They always cocoon themselves in their ignorant racism by saying I just believe what I believe

I should point out that some of the people I’ve heard saying some of the same ignorant things were and are democrats

However most are diehard republicans

Expand full comment
Susan Campbell's avatar

It's that shrug that accompanies the "I believe what I believe" that pushes me over the edge, as if they cannot help it, that's just who they are.

Expand full comment
Thomas Dombroski's avatar

I point that out to them

It’s usually about that time when they tell me that they can’t talk to me anymore

Expand full comment
Susan Campbell's avatar

Their loss.

Expand full comment
Deacon Art's avatar

Ask a man what it feels

like to be pregnant !

Expand full comment
Susan Campbell's avatar

My grandmother used to say if men had the first baby, and women had the second and the deal was to alternate, families would never have more than two children.

Expand full comment
Deacon Art's avatar

👍🏽

Expand full comment
Bill Katz's avatar

Interesting, I fully agree with everything you said but I didn’t readily see the klan embedded in the elephant. It is an optical illusion. Perhaps someone who is not republican installed it to embarrass them. That would have been my kind of tactic.

Expand full comment
Susan Campbell's avatar

If you look within the elephant’s legs, there are three hooded figures. The image was drawn purposefully with those images included.

Expand full comment
Bill Katz's avatar

I understand. I didn’t see it at first. It was hidden at least for me. I saw the image before somewhere I just didn’t pay much attention so it’s again, hidden or partially hidden — for me, anyway. I think most or at least, many republicans, and maybe I’m giving them too much credit, don’t want to accept that they might be racist. Historically, everyone knows what the klan has stood for. In my more recent reading, I didn’t know that Woodrow Wilson almost single-handedly, resuscitated racism in the new 20th century. This was not readily decimated in school history books at least it was never brought to my attention. In that sense, Trump has much in common with Wilson.

Expand full comment
Susan Campbell's avatar

I don't believe all individual Republicans are racist. I do believe a good portion of their party policies are, which makes me wonder...

Expand full comment
Bill Katz's avatar

I recently camped one night at a national forest camping ground in Virginia close to I-81. The host was a kindly older fellow. He proudly told me how historic those grounds were. I inquired. First he said that Robert E. Lee was buried close by. Then he mentioned that Stonewall Jackson had his offices nearby and that these grounds had changed hands no less then 70 times. It wasn’t necessary for me to offer opinions. He was just proud, naively so, of that tradition. I wondered after getting back on the road, how he would have felt bad I been Black. I will never know. I think he probably feels the revisionism removing statutes was unnecessary. In this sense, if he thus believes so, he has a terrible closed mind understanding our complicated history. Our nation was founded firmly on the bases of enslavement and prosperity through this horrible notion. And it’s just too easy to stroke the insecurities and fears of Caucasians as has been done today. Sorry, I’m going on… I’ll stop now, lol.

Expand full comment
Susan Campbell's avatar

You're not going on. You're speaking truth. I have often wondered how situations would be different if I was another race, because I'm mostly white, and have a Southern accent, and perhaps you can understand how people place me under particular flags to which I will not show fealty. I have grandchildren who are Hispanic, but their appearances would not tell you that, and they've been party to conversations by racists who assume we're all in this together, as fellow white people, and so we can say the nasty stuff we used to keep limited to the kitchen table. The only way -- THE ONLY WAY -- I can exist is to speak up. Did you owe that man a history lesson? No. Is there a way to have that conversation without it being uncomfortable? I'm not sure. My way -- drop a bomb and then leave -- doesn't work, either.

Expand full comment
Bill Katz's avatar

I agree one should choose which battles to fight and not every encounter is one. I have a unique experience because as an art dealer of African American art, I have entered Afrocentric conventions and just two weeks ago, returned from one in Atlanta. I’m in recovery now and I’m only interest now, in cleaning my house which will take days. It’ll make me happy if nothing else does.

There is resentment in these shows from both vendors who consider me to be an outsider as well as some potential clients. I’ve been aware of this for 25 years but this time, it seemed more intense. It’s imperceptible but it’s there. My artist friend tells me so. A Black vendor acquaintance told me when she does a mostly Caucasian show, they hardly buy from her. So horrible on both sides but at least, I understand why there is such anger among Black folks toward white people. I too, feel the same animosity toward my own race. One of the biggest fist to cuffs fights I had in my childhood was with a neighborhood chum who insisted on using the N word. Why did I resent it and he enjoy using it? I think our mothers had something to do with it.

But when will all this end? I don’t know. But I do know it has gotten a whole lot worse now. And I just want to move to a village somewhere and live beside a stream and not have many people around me anymore. I’m tired of talking to people — well, present company excepted, lol. Now, I must go back to washing my floors and cleaning the refrigerator.

Expand full comment
Susan Campbell's avatar

I understand that feeling entirely. But when you’re done with your floors, feel free to come do mine. I washed the kitchen shutters and that about cured me of wanting to clean house.

Expand full comment
Bill Katz's avatar

If you clean my refrigerator, stove and only some of my windows, I’ll do your floors.

Expand full comment
Susan Campbell's avatar

I'm sorry. I can' t hear you over my vacuum....

Expand full comment
James Strillacci's avatar

Well, bless their pointy little heads.

Expand full comment