My mother used to say that life isn't always fair. But it's that way to everyone. She told us never to see yourself as a victim. Bad things happen and there are mean people out there. Brush yourself off and pick yourself up. Get help if you need to, but move on, move past or move around your obstacle. Don't let other people determine who you are.
You will eventually find what you believe in: ie. the wolf that wins, is the one you feed.
All of these are pretty simple concepts that I believe are getting increasingly lost on our current culture. The culture of victimhood crosses all boundaries and the damage it can cause is very real. It doesn't matter what you look like, the clothes you wear or how you walk.
The ethos of stoicism: when faced with obstacles, first do your utmost to surmount them with your own efforts. The exercise will clarify just how much of the problem is due to a personal lack of skills and qualifications, and how much of it is due to some outside agency determined to get in your way- and also the severity of the impediment they present. (There's no shame in not being suited for a job. I could never do kitchen work, for instance. I'm not even a good dishwasher, much less making it to salad prep. Too much of a dreamer. It isn't my groove. Restaurant work demands much more linear focus and on-task efficiency than cooking at home. But I'm good at some other kinds of work. Including some other stick jobs.)
But if you're making the grade and it's clear that someone is out to make you wrong, no matter what- THEN you have a clear-cut case to book.
Isabel Wilkerson's book The Warmth Of Other Suns is replete with such examples, drawn from the Jim Crow era that she researched. The evidence indicates that there's been a lot of improvement since the era of American history covered in that book, although I still read enough plausibly supported accounts of antiblack racial harrassment and injustice on the job to get that it still happens sometimes. From reading Wilkerson's book, it's indisputable that it used to be really bad. And there was often no help for it.
The other part of the deal is- and damn it, it's true of all litigation pursued by those of us who aren't rich, and/or who aren't ourselves lawyers- are you up for the protracted siege of calling on some institutional remedy? Or does it make more sense to take the loss and drive on, to find someone who isn't an a-hole to work for, or do business with? Not a question I can answer for anyone else. I only know that while some people thrive on such disputes, I'd have to really be done in before finding the hassle worthwhile. Still less am I going to get all trigger happy over it- there's too much to lose. Once I met a guy who told me he had found his old lady in bed with another man, and he went to shoot the guy. The other guy was quicker on the draw, and the guy who told me the story was telling it from a wheelchair.
So it can end up like that sometimes. The outcome of a gunfight is not determined on the basis of who has a justified grievance. And it's a grave mistake for anyone to be convinced that they have nothing left to lose, when they actually do have something left to lose. The shadow side of an exaggerated honor culture- people will maim, kill, get crippled or kill themselves rather than upset notions of self-respect they've accepted that are more about social conditioning than personal integrity. Victimhood culture is similarly unhealthy conditioning. Those who fall for the hype have a way of cornering themselves in their own minds.
OK, Homer Plessy = PBS Pinchback, (but not Homer Simpson!). So why’d ya throw that slider — same photo for two different names? And Wikipedia shows same image for both names, too. (Yeah, the scheme was originally by design, to entrap and expose state government racism.) And the racist Supremes (of District of Columbia, not Motown!) said it was ok as long as “separate but equal.” But you assert that “it’s not Homer Plessy”. Yet Homer Plessy was the plaintiff in the Supreme Court. “Will the real Homer Plessy please stand up?” Plessy gets messy here. Was he a personable strawman with two names? Help us out, please. We’re confused.
Aside: There are French poodles in several colors — black, brown, beige, grey, white (but not pink, except when dyed). If a French poodle wears an American dog tag, is it still French?
I think we agree that monetary reparations are racist nonsense. Maybe they worked for Japanese-American citizens, condemned for their features and citizenship, and then confined in concentration camps during WW2; but not well for Native Americans repeatedly bilked out of reservation land by treaty. Slaves liberated at the end of the Civil War who were offered 40 acres and a mule are long dead. Sending their reparation checks to the cemetery will change nothing. Those who harbor racial hatred are victims, just as are those whom they hate, so blaming the victims goes nowhere. MB Eddy wrote well when she penned this line from her poem, titled The New Century: ’Tis writ on earth, on leaf and flower: Love hath one race, one realm, one power. (We would all do well to honor this with our lives.)
The picture is not of Plessy. The entirety of the internet is wrong in identification of the black hero, how wrong can we all be about the meaning of race? Completely.
Great article!
My mother used to say that life isn't always fair. But it's that way to everyone. She told us never to see yourself as a victim. Bad things happen and there are mean people out there. Brush yourself off and pick yourself up. Get help if you need to, but move on, move past or move around your obstacle. Don't let other people determine who you are.
You will eventually find what you believe in: ie. the wolf that wins, is the one you feed.
All of these are pretty simple concepts that I believe are getting increasingly lost on our current culture. The culture of victimhood crosses all boundaries and the damage it can cause is very real. It doesn't matter what you look like, the clothes you wear or how you walk.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this!
The ethos of stoicism: when faced with obstacles, first do your utmost to surmount them with your own efforts. The exercise will clarify just how much of the problem is due to a personal lack of skills and qualifications, and how much of it is due to some outside agency determined to get in your way- and also the severity of the impediment they present. (There's no shame in not being suited for a job. I could never do kitchen work, for instance. I'm not even a good dishwasher, much less making it to salad prep. Too much of a dreamer. It isn't my groove. Restaurant work demands much more linear focus and on-task efficiency than cooking at home. But I'm good at some other kinds of work. Including some other stick jobs.)
But if you're making the grade and it's clear that someone is out to make you wrong, no matter what- THEN you have a clear-cut case to book.
Isabel Wilkerson's book The Warmth Of Other Suns is replete with such examples, drawn from the Jim Crow era that she researched. The evidence indicates that there's been a lot of improvement since the era of American history covered in that book, although I still read enough plausibly supported accounts of antiblack racial harrassment and injustice on the job to get that it still happens sometimes. From reading Wilkerson's book, it's indisputable that it used to be really bad. And there was often no help for it.
The other part of the deal is- and damn it, it's true of all litigation pursued by those of us who aren't rich, and/or who aren't ourselves lawyers- are you up for the protracted siege of calling on some institutional remedy? Or does it make more sense to take the loss and drive on, to find someone who isn't an a-hole to work for, or do business with? Not a question I can answer for anyone else. I only know that while some people thrive on such disputes, I'd have to really be done in before finding the hassle worthwhile. Still less am I going to get all trigger happy over it- there's too much to lose. Once I met a guy who told me he had found his old lady in bed with another man, and he went to shoot the guy. The other guy was quicker on the draw, and the guy who told me the story was telling it from a wheelchair.
So it can end up like that sometimes. The outcome of a gunfight is not determined on the basis of who has a justified grievance. And it's a grave mistake for anyone to be convinced that they have nothing left to lose, when they actually do have something left to lose. The shadow side of an exaggerated honor culture- people will maim, kill, get crippled or kill themselves rather than upset notions of self-respect they've accepted that are more about social conditioning than personal integrity. Victimhood culture is similarly unhealthy conditioning. Those who fall for the hype have a way of cornering themselves in their own minds.
OK, Homer Plessy = PBS Pinchback, (but not Homer Simpson!). So why’d ya throw that slider — same photo for two different names? And Wikipedia shows same image for both names, too. (Yeah, the scheme was originally by design, to entrap and expose state government racism.) And the racist Supremes (of District of Columbia, not Motown!) said it was ok as long as “separate but equal.” But you assert that “it’s not Homer Plessy”. Yet Homer Plessy was the plaintiff in the Supreme Court. “Will the real Homer Plessy please stand up?” Plessy gets messy here. Was he a personable strawman with two names? Help us out, please. We’re confused.
Aside: There are French poodles in several colors — black, brown, beige, grey, white (but not pink, except when dyed). If a French poodle wears an American dog tag, is it still French?
I think we agree that monetary reparations are racist nonsense. Maybe they worked for Japanese-American citizens, condemned for their features and citizenship, and then confined in concentration camps during WW2; but not well for Native Americans repeatedly bilked out of reservation land by treaty. Slaves liberated at the end of the Civil War who were offered 40 acres and a mule are long dead. Sending their reparation checks to the cemetery will change nothing. Those who harbor racial hatred are victims, just as are those whom they hate, so blaming the victims goes nowhere. MB Eddy wrote well when she penned this line from her poem, titled The New Century: ’Tis writ on earth, on leaf and flower: Love hath one race, one realm, one power. (We would all do well to honor this with our lives.)
The picture is not of Plessy. The entirety of the internet is wrong in identification of the black hero, how wrong can we all be about the meaning of race? Completely.
Thank you for properly crediting Governor Pinchback’s image. No one knows what Plessy looked like, just his racial proportions.