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Hurtful

I am currently reading All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren. I've seen praise for this work for most of my adult life and finally got around to getting it out of the library. The writing is incredibly textured and so it is slow going. I have seen the 1949 movie version with Broderick Crawford several times (and enjoyed it) but in 1949 movie adaptations were not known for their fidelity to their source material so I'm keeping my mind open re the plot.

Another reason that it is slow going is that I am stopped short every time I see what is euphemistically referred to as the N-word. It is painful to see in print. The dialogue is set in the deep South in the early 20th century so it is truthful but that makes it more painful, not less.

I grew up in a Philadelphia suburb that struggled with integration. When the first family of color moved into my neighborhood someone greeted them by spray-painting "Niggers go home" on a stone wall facing their house. I was humiliated that our neighborhood would treat them that way (in my mind I generalized from the asshole with a spray-can) and too shy to make a point of reaching out to them myself.

My junior high struggled with integration; some of my white classmates did make a point of putting KKK on their textbook and notebook covers to declare their allegiance. I never did anything like that but neither did I speak out against it.

My life has been spent moving away from that kind of hatred into academic communities that are too proud of their diversity to tolerate it. I have not been a racist but if I feel ashamed of one thing long-term in particular it is that I have not been more of an anti-racist. 

For what it is worth it has grown easier to be anti-racist as our culture here in the US has grown more open to expressions of racism. Subtle forms of discrimination are drowned out by open endorsements of white supremacists in the Republican party. There are many voices opposing Trump and MTG and Gosar et al so my shyness is not holding me back. I just wish that I had been braver when it would have had more of an impact.

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