Not my fight, but our war
Sophia Hill,
Sarasota, FL
The troubles of the world seem to be closing in on us, but I have faith in my fellow man, and I believe that one day we will be proud of the fight we put up now.
The Hiroshimas were good Americans.
Ken Prestwich,
Worcester, MA.
The Hiroshima family included my first friends growing up on a small farm just outside of LA (they had one too) in the early 50s — the parents, like so many where we lived, had been interred during the war. They were fine people; a second family to me (I am white).
Was your dad in the war?
Petra Snowden,
Virginia Beach, VA
As a German-born immigrant I always felt this to be a sensitive question, especially when asked by my Jewish friends. I usually responded with a long story of his life , pre and post WWII , explaining that he was not a Nazi! The collective guilt of the German people I somehow carried with me my entire life.
Your German parents started the war
Janice Cooper,
MN.
My newly married parents immigrated to the U.S. from Germany via Ellis Island during the mid 50’s to follow the American Dream. Growing up in small town Michigan and attending Catholic school, my younger brother and I were constantly accused of being Nazis during our grade school years. Even though my parents spoke English well, their German accents were enough ammunition for our classmates to think that my parents, and their unborn children were responsible for WWII. I will always remember seeing a drawing, along with that sinking feeling in my stomache, when I saw the confiscated piece of notebook paper on my 4th grade teacher’s desk with drawings of American bombers striking our clearly-labled German house).
Many years later, I can laugh at it now, since the race card stopped following me once I hit high school…But I also I think about how the race card does affect those young and eager families who still come to Ameria to chase their own American Dreams.
White Male Privilege Is A Lie!
Thomas Hardy,
Chico, CA
I grew up in an extremely poor family. My father was a WW11 vet that lost most of his knee in the war. He was tough though and had his own tree service where he, himself climbed. We had 7 kids and 6 of us boys slept in one bed, shared baths, and helped to hunt and fish to put food on the table. We went to Catholic school thanks to my father doing jobs for the church so we could attend because he would never accept charity. We took our sack lunches and ate outside while the students that paid for their lunches got to eat inside. Catholics, even before all the sexual assaults by the priesthood- were never looked up kindly and were often treated poorly. It helped that my mother was a God-fearing Catholic that kept us all on the right moral track. I quit the last year of school and was drafted into Vietnam. I learned because of my darker skin, (I’m Irish and Portuguese and very tan from working all those years outdoors), I was looked upon as a minority. Racism was very bad “out of the country” between the blacks and whites but, you never hear about that.
I came home to the family tree business and worked extra jobs. I worked an extra job as a custodian for a University that continues to teach that being a white male is privileged and racist. That the Catholic church was no different than the KKK at a Diversity meeting that was required. That somehow, I don’t understand what it is like to be poor, looked upon because of the color of your skin or religious affiliation!
Often, it is the privileged people in the media, colleges, sports and the celebrities telling the rest of us, what we should think. How we should feel. Causing more hate. Dividing us. Instead of working to better our problems. Real racism should be stopped. It goes against our morals. Our Constitution. The love of our fellow Americans!
So, don’t tell me as a white male I’m “privileged”. This rhetoric just makes me listen less. As Americans, we need to come together and heal and fix our country before we have another Civil War.
Constant conversation with my radical mom.
Alexis Danzig
New York City, NY
Manhattan
This exhibit moved me to tears. I am so proud of the Brooklyn Museum, delighted to see the work of my college art teacher, May Stevens! I was wishing I could share the experience with my mother, Naomi Danzig. My mother was born into the modern Jewish orthodox community of Liverpool, England, in 1934. Liverpool was the second most heavily bombed English city after London. Her innate sense of fairness – applied inward to her birth community, and outward to the larger society – and her experience of war shaped her lifetime of fiercely intelligent activism for social justice and her nose for bullshit. Her first forays into street activism included anti-Apartheid protests in London in the mid-1950s. When she emigrated to the U.S. to marry her American husband, my father, she brought a keen eye, tuned to hypocrisy, to her experience of a wealthy, young country largely untouched by war and unwilling to ask hard questions of itself. The first time I saw my mother cry was the day Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. She raised me and my brother to think for ourselves, to resist sentimental tribal ties, to question received wisdom, to speak truth to power, to love and serve. I have been an activist and educator all my life at the intersection of feminism, anti-war, LGBT rights, anti-racism, and AIDS movement; my brother makes theatre containing a strong thread of social comment and teaches emotional awareness. We are raising our children – in the absence of their grandmother who died of breast cancer at age 67 – in the same mold. To live their values, to be part of ideas and communities bigger than themselves, to refuse to be constrained by ‘what is.’
Being judged bad for white skin
Terri,
West Roxbury, MA
Feels like a war happened, I woke up, and my country was taken over, and I have to behave by new standards or else
Blood Ancestor Weeps wherever Hatred Creeps
Dr. Eric Montgomery,
Wayne State,
Detroit, MI
Until the philosophy which holds one race superior, and another inferior, is finally, and totally, and permanently, abandoned– Everywhere is War (Haile Selaisse and Bob Marley) “War”
We All Deserve Better Than This
Matthew Wisotsky,
Wayne State,
Detroit, MI
It’s 2018. LEADERSHIP is failing us. WE are failing us. We’re still going to war oversees and in our own streets over things that we’ve already gone to war for oversees and in our own streets. The nightly news highlights our setbacks. Leaving the last 30 seconds of the telecast to show that there is still good in the world. I’m embarrassed by my race. I’m embarrassed by my gender. I’m embarrassed that I’m not doing more. The bad should not outweigh the good.
We deserve better than this.
I will do better.
Not accountable for ancestors actions
Noah McDonald,
Warren, PA
It’s time to get over it! Before you point your finger at me, and call me a racist! Don’t forget there are three of your own pointing back at you! I won’t be held responsible for my ancestors actions! Educate yourself! Look at history. Every race, religion, and creed has been persecuted at some point! The man who was credited for freeing the slaves was a republican! And now all black people vote democrat! What’s wrong with this picture? The north won the war! Life’s a bitch get over it! The only people I hate are stupid ones! If that makes me a racist, than so be it!
Confederates waged bloody war for slavery.
Rick Schuch,
Bell Center, WI.
The confederate flag is bad and must be gotten rid of.
As significant as an eye color.
Troy Mills,
Iowa City, IA.
This quote is inspired by my fellow islander Bob Marley, who truely predicted war until a persons race is of no more significant than the color of their eyes.
“You’re white, you wouldn’t understand.”
Elizabeth
Las Vegas, NV
Because I have white skin, people automatically strip me of any heritage I have. Please don’t mistake “white” as the absence of culture. My family have lived through many wars, prejudices, struggles, and also victories.
Their war is now our battle
Drew Powell
Bangor, ME
When the American Civil War ended 150 years ago, slavery was abolished in the United States, and the war between whites and blacks was seemingly over. But, a statement couldn’t be further from the truth. Although the war on slavery was over, there remained a nationwide tension between white people and black people. No, black people were no longer enslaved by whites, but many questions concerning their available rights remained in society. In our country today, under the leadership of our black president, blacks are given every right that a white person is presented with. But, the battles are far from over, as there remains a societal view that white people have a greater self worth than black people. Everywhere we look today, in the magazines and in the movies, there are countless young white woman and men, whereas it is a rarity to spot a black person in the same place. Even though black people have every right that white people have and are seen as equals in the eyes of the law, there remains a sense of confliction between the two races. Society’s view of beauty and self worth as we know it today is intact, but with an increasing amount of respect and pride for the black community, the long held beliefs are becoming uprooted. Although it’s been 150 years since the men fighting in the Civil War saw slavery abolished, and American society has evolved a great deal, and it is apparent that their war is now our battle.
As significant as an eye color.
Troy Mills,
Iowa City, IA
This quote is inspired by my fellow islander Bob Marley, who truly predicted war until a persons race is of no more significant than the color of their eyes.
War lyrics
What life has taught me
I would like to share with
Those who want to learn…
Until the philosophy which hold one race
Superior and another inferior
Is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned
Everywhere is war, me say war
That until there are no longer first class
And second class citizens of any nation
Until the colour of a man’s skin
Is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes
Me say war
That until the basic human rights are equally
Guaranteed to all, without regard to race
Dis a war
That until that day
The dream of lasting peace, world citizenship
Rule of international morality
Will remain in but a fleeting illusion
[- From :http://www.elyrics.net/read/b/bob-marley-lyrics/war-lyrics.html -]
To be persued, but never attained
Now everywhere is war, war
And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes
that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique,
South Africa sub-human bondage
Have been toppled, utterly destroyed
Well, everywhere is war, me say war
War in the east, war in the west
War up north, war down south
War, war, rumours of war
And until that day, the African continent
Will not know peace, we Africans will fight
We find it necessary and we know we shall win
As we are confident in the victory
Of good over evil, good over evil, good over evil
Good over evil, good over evil, good over evil
