Conversation #1: Sue Taylor
Like a number of emails, this one I think shows why it's important that
we have involved discussions with the people that we most disagree with.
While it's nice to go to meetings with people we already agree with and pat
each other on the back about how right we are, ultimately, the way to solve
problems is to address the core of why the problem exists in the first
place, and that means going right to the people who feel most passionately
opposite of what we do: or in actuality, who seem to.
Here Sue makes a point regarding our honoring of the dead. While it
would be easy to simply say "The dead are dead, and it's not my
problem", there is a better way, I think, and I try to make this point
below.
If you need a summary, my point below is that the best way to honor
those who suffered before us is not to spread that suffering
further, but to understand how it came to be, and to swear to not let that
happen in our world today.
Hello Sue,
I'm sorry to take so long to reply to you: I'm hoping that since it also
took you long to reply that you will be understanding that I've been
extremely busy lately. But I haven't forgotten about your email, and am now
getting to it.
I've thought a good deal about what kind of message I want to give to you
in reply to what you've sent me. I think I've written something that might
resonate with you, and I ask that you give it some thought. I also ask that
you take this one slowly: this is quite a download, and might take a bit of
reading to digest fully.
Rather than respond to the individual queries that you sent to me, I
decided to take your message as a whole. I'm quoting it back to you in full
right here, slightly formatted for readability:
> You're guilty of letting African Americans build this country (check out
> the economic impact of millions of Africans clearing the land, draining
> the swamps, converting the fledgling US to a world powerhouse) and then
> relegating them by law into an inferior position (which did not happen to
> any other ethnic group) whose status remains uniquely negatively
> stigmatized. As with most Americans, your attitude towards the
> contributions of African Americans is contemptuous.
>
> Why aren't you asking for interred Japanese to repay the reparations
> paid to them, or for the Jewish slave laborers and their descendents
> to return the money paid to them?
>
> If your grandparents and great grandparents had worked their entire lives
> FOR NOTHING, and left your parents no land, no money, for them to pass
> to you, I'm not so sure you'd be so dismissive.
>
> Medical anthropologists have been studying the bones of the 400 or so
> (mostly children) discovered while excavating for a federal building in
> New York City--now known to be a slave burial site. They exhibit
> abnormally large sites where muscle attaches to bone and show evidence of
> the muscle tearing the bone off. This occurs when muscle contraction
> meets or exceeds human capacity. One six year old had a fractured neck
> from such excess.
>
> Tell me how you can dismiss their lives ( and deaths ).
>
> The question is not how much (or if) to pay. They have already paid.
> The only question is how you, as a fellow human being, American, or
> parent, can honor them.
>
> I can only pray that your heart is opened and you find the relief and
> joy that comes from compassion, instead of putting your considerable
> skills to so questionable an endeavor.
> Sue Taylor MD
I'm going to start by stating that I think I have an understanding of what
it is that you are saying, and if I am correct in this analysis, then I
think you have your heart in exactly the right place. What I hope to show
you is that what you and I are seeing is really not terribly different at
all. Please forgive me ahead of time if any of this is not completely
accurate.
Now, here's what I get from what you are saying. You've seen the suffering
of people in days gone past, and cannot extricate yourself from them. You
seem to indicate to me that their pain has been passed to you, and that you
cannot just drop it like a garbage bag, but must do something with it now,
and you seem angry at me for not feeling the same way.
I won't go so far as to say people "must" feel this way, because I don't
believe in telling other people how to live their lives. However, I can tell
you that I feel the same connection to those of the past. I don't believe
in any permanent walls between us: I think that we are all connected, and
of us who have ever lived, and who ever will live. The question then, is
the one that you mention: how can we honor them?
For this answer I look to who I consider to be humanity's greatest
individuals. I look to Christ (which I think one can do whether or not you
are a Christian), I look to Gandhi, I look to Martin Luther King. All of
these people suffered in various forms for what they did. That is
important. What's more important was why they suffered:
So that future generations would not have to.
When you ask me then what it is that I think that we can do to honor
others, both the dead, the living, and the still to come, it is to take the
most clear, unafraid look we can at what has happened and is happening,
figure out what when right or wrong, and then once we know it, do only
what's right, don't do what's wrong, and teach others to do the same.
It is to learn from the experience of our species, and vow to improve
the lives of ourselves and those around us from it.
That is what I think that honoring others mean. What I don't think it means
is to relive their pain any more than is necessary to learn from it, and to
revisit their pain needlessly on others.
For a good modern-day example of this, take a look at the Ellen Jamesians.
They cut out their own tongues feeling that this was the best way to honor
Ellen James, who had her own tongue cut out by a rapist when she was 12.
Ellen, however, came out saying she was horrified by this type of action,
and that she did not want to see what she went through turned into a
multiplication of pain. This was their way of "honoring" her, and she,
still alive, rejected it.
To bring it closer to home, imagine it is yourself who is making a sacrifice
for something. Think of something that you would consider laying down your
life for. Would you still consider doing it if you knew for a fact that it
would make no difference, and that whatever you were trying to end would
continue completely unabated after your death?
On the other hand, if you knew that accepting some type of pain would mean
that no one else would ever have to experience it, would that knowledge not
make you more willing to go through it?
When I look at the possibility of instituting reparation payments to people
who may be distant descendants of slaves from people who may be distant
descendant of slave-owners (but in all cases is simply unclear), I don't
see anything that amounts to honoring the deceased at all. I don't see
anything which justifies the experiences of anyone from days gone by,
either those who suffered or those who thrived. The reason is that I don't
see exactly what it is that reparations can possibly solve for any person
living today. I don't see any walls to acheiving true joy in this time that
a very crude transfer of money from one set of people to another based
alomst exclusively on their skin color can possibly solve.
What I do see is this doing the opposite. I look at the horrificly bloody
war that we went through that "solved" this problem, and think that it
should have been enough. And then I look at what has happened in this
country to people who have already been given reparation payments, and see
that we'll only be spreading that disease of violence to others as well
(see http://www.wewontpay.com/prophecy.html to see what I'm talking about).
Reparations, in fact, I feel would amount to possibly the most horrible
dis-honoring of them that I can think of. The message of much of the
reparations movement is that African-Americans today cannot succeed without
this. That type of message is the most terrible and destructive that I can
think of. It not only spits in the face of how incredibly far we've come,
but more importantly, it continues a psychological mastery.
It tells others today that they are inferior, that they are incapable of
succeeding without the assistance of others, others who don't need this
same type of assistance. That is the true face of racism, and I do not
believe in it for one moment.
I believe that every man and woman today is capable of miracles. I believe
that there hasn't been a person who has ever lived who has ever reached
anything beyond the slightest sliver of his or her potential. I believe
that every living being is part of a greater creation, and can channel the
blindingly brilliant power of that whenever they choose to.
And that comes full circle to the question of learning from the past, and
how I apply that to my fellow man today.
As I said above, I agree with you that we are connected to the past. But we
are not enslaved to it, and I use that word for good reason. We are here
today, and we have our own lives and choices that we can make today. There
is nothing in the past, either in our own lives or those that came before
us, that ever, *ever* prevents us from starting anew, right here in our time,
to make before us whatever world we want.
To believe otherwise is to believe that something that happened before
prevents you from making the kinds of choices that you want now. That is
true slavery. For ultimately, it is not whips, chains, handcuffs, bullets,
money or cells that enslaves us. Those things certainly add important
parameters to our choices, and I'm not denying their importance.
However, the only true chains on us are the ones that we choose. For as
long as we breathe, for every last second of our lives in which we have any
kind of conscious choice, we are free, a freedom that no other human being
can ever touch unless we let them...freely let them. And whatever our
surroundings are, as long as we live, we have the a freedom that lets us
use them for whatever it is that we believe in.
This is a freedom that recognizes that no matter what happened before, that
we are living beings, right here and now, and that we can choose right here
and now anything we wish to choose, and that no history removes from us the
ability, nay, the power to use that choice for all the good that we want.
It is a freedom that recognizes that as long as we live, we always have
time to choose a new way.
So if you want to ask me how it is that I can honor the suffering of those
who came before, my answer to you is that I want to show people in this
time what I've seen as the root cause of all of this. Supporting a philosophy
that, ultimately, will just allow slavery to persist in this time but under
a different name is the worst honoring that I can give to those who came
before me, and the worst legacy I could leave to the world which will come
after me.
I would rather (freely) choose to spend the rest of my life in a cell, if
it means that people will begin to understand the true nature of themselves
as beings which are both completely free and at the same time, inextricably
connected to each other. Don't get me wrong, I'd really like there to be
other ways. But if I knew that this would get the message across to enough
people, and there were no other way, then this is the honoring that I would
choose.
I hope that I haven't overwhelmed you too much with this, but this is one
of those things that cannot be soundbit too well without losing much of its
meaning. There's certainly more to it, but this seems enough of a reply for
one night. I hope you can consider what I'm saying here, and see whether or
not you see in it what I do. If you have any other thoughts then about
this, I'm right here.
Take care,
-Robert Chesnavich
robert@chesnavich.com
http://www.wewontpay.com/
> I appreciate your thoughtful reply. One question you didn't answer, though.
> What about the descendants of Japanese interred in WWII and those
> descendents of Jewish slave laborers? Have reparations dis-honored them
> and placed a stigma on them? Are you calling for that money to be returned?
> Thanks,
> Sue
Hi again Sue,
I actually wrote a failry long answer to this one on the web site: you can
find this at:
http://www.wewontpay.com/othercases.html
However, since you were kind enough to read my last long rambling reply,
let me take a moment to give you another one. :-) Specifically, I want to
put this question into the context of the last answer that I gave you.
Also, the answer that I give on the web site, now that I look at it, is
pretty harsh, so I should give another impression here. Warning, though:
this one is truly a monster, and will probably take even longer to digest.
I'm definitely not opposed to any types of reparations, and I don't know
anyone who is. I think it's pretty universally accepted that when you wrong
someone, you compensate someone as best you can. But here's a question:
why? Why exactly does it seem to us to be just so natural to do this? What
exactly is the purpose of restitution?
Here's the answer that I would come up with. If you resepct your fellow man
as being able to do positive, important things, then it follows from there
that if you forcibly interfere with that, then the best course of action is
to return that person to the same point as they were before you did
anything, so that they can freely continue on with their lives in the
manner in which they were doing before.
That answer seems to make sense to me, and I think it's what we aim to do
with any type of compensation. There's just one small problem with it: it's
impossible to actually do. No wrong can ever be undone, and any attempt to
do that with compensation ultimately amounts to bringing someone back not
to where they would have been, but to a crude estimate of it.
Let me give you an example: let us say Joe Burglar robs the house of Bob
Niceguy. Joe finds $10,000 in cash, and swipes it. Joe eventually gets
caught with the cash, convicted, and Bob has his money returned to him. So
Bob is now back to where he started from, yes? Well, not actually.
First, it probably cost him some money to convict him. OK, then you can
just tack on the lawyer's fees to the settlement (we'll assume that Joe has
this extra money). But then, Bob also had a credit card payment to make that
he missed, and now he's been charged late fees, and a higher interest rate.
Well, we'll add that on as well. Now we're even, right?
Not yet. Because he was so busy dealing with this court case, he missed the
graduation of his daughter, who he was on shaky grounds with the begin
with. Also his boss is upset with him: he warned him about moving into this
neighborhood, and now there was a project deadline that was missed because
Bob was unavailable, and resultingly a contract lost. And even forgetting
those specifics, he simply lots time of his life that can never be
regained.
How do you quantify these things? Perhaps you can try to estimate some
dollar figure, but that's all that it will be: an estimate. It can function
as a "best guess" as to how to return someone to a position in life equally
advantageous to what they had before. But it can never undo the damage.
Nothing can ever truly be undone.
>From this realization, we see that there is one factor that, more than any
other, defines our ability to compensate others in any reasonable manner:
time. The more time that passes between a wrong and it's fix, the more
crude the fix becomes.
When we look at the case of Japenese-Americans, we see that in fact, a long
period of time did elapse between their internment and their compensation.
This is significant, but there is one important difference. While it was a
long period of time, it was still short enough that the exact people
interned were both easy to look up through documentation and, most
importantly, still alive.
This doesn't change the above: it was still a very long time, and like I
showed above, you can't "undo" the time they lost. All you can do is make
a best guess, and hope that it will let us move on. And there I think is an
even more important difference.
You asked whether or not this would put a stigma on these
Japanese-Americans. But since these payments have already occured, we can
actually answer that question, and the answer seems to be a pretty clear
"no". There are no movements that I know of for further compensation,
programs, laws, and so forth, and there are no significant country-wide
racial tensions towards Japanese-Americans (tiny spots of it probably do
still exist to be sure, but that's about all that I can see). So this
effectively closed out the issue, and we did move on.
Now let us go to the case of African-Americans. We see first of all, that
the case here is much more complicated, since we not only had slavery until
1865, but about a century of Jim Crow laws. Whereas Japanese-Americans had
a single wrong that was easily measurable, we have nothing remotely like
that with African-Americans. It's a bit ironic that the case for
reparations for African-Americans is harder because they had more wrong
done to them, not less. In any event, trying to put a measurement on what
kind of money would "undo" the damage is just impossible, especially since
in their case, there was no "normal" American life for them from before
slavery that they could return to. You'd have better luck trying to
forecast the weather for 2100 than in trying to answer the "what if"
question of what would have happened if slavery in America never existed.
There's more, though. Japanese-Americans have, as you pointed out, moved on
from this without any stigma attached to them. I think though that,
regardless of whether you feel its deserved or not, African-American
culture does currently have a stigma attached to it as a result of 40 years
worth of the War on Poverty. If you look at the actual pledge page
(http://www.wewontpay.com/who.html) you'll see the anger that has resulted
from this.
This is where we start to connect this answer with the one that I last sent
to you. I actually have spent a long time in lower-class neighborhoods. I
was born and raised in Jersey City (a nice part of it to be sure, but it
definitely wasn't Beverly Hills). Since moving to Pittsburgh I've spent a
lot of time in the "bad" neighborhoods. For about a year a worked in an
almost all-black neighborhood (Wilkinsburg) as a convenience store clerk.
And now I've purchased what used to be a crack house (no joke), and live in
the poorest section of Pittsburgh.
So I've seen first-hand what people complain about regarding the "welfare
state" and the "lazy (expletives) who won't get off their (expletives) and
find a job." Do I think it's accurate?
No. But I think it's understandable.
When I look at the people around me, I don't see free-loaders. I see people
doing the best that they know how to do. But that's where the problem comes
in. Forty years and about $5,000,000,000,000 worth of government assistance
have taught people that this is the way that you do things: that if you want
to get ahead, that you should look to others first. And this has become so
prevalent, that it reaches far beyond "the ghetto", and even my
tech-oriented co-workers will occasionally tell me I should go to the state
and get assistance, without thinking twice about what it is that they're
saying.
But despite that, this kind of attitude is restricted generally to the
lower-classes. And I think that in today's time, this is why they are
still there. I think that the very nature of the state in our world is one
that discourages people from being their own solution.
In "Why We Can't Wait", Martin Luther King wrote about reparations to those
immediately affected by Jim Crow Laws and what was at the time some very
racist southern towns. His appeal for it is definitely more understandable,
as he was standing right there next to the people who were being attacked
by dogs and shot down with fire hoses. Yet if I knew what I know now, and
could communicate it with him, I would plead with him to not make this
call, and I would use the long-term results of that period of turmoil as my
primary evidence.
The theme of the upcoming Millions For Reparations march is "They Owe Us!"
Forgetting that the organizers aren't even defining who "they" and "us" are
(much harder than you might think), it exemplifies the problem. Instead of
accepting the open arms of a society which has truly come a long way (I
think that there are precious few true anti-black racists left any more)
and seeing what it is that we can now work together on, the organizers of
this event are spending countless hours and dollars to not do anything but
stand in place and make demands: and encouraging others to do exactly the
same thing.
And that is where the dishonoring comes in. African-Americans today enjoy
freedoms that those who were dug up in NYC possibly never thought their
progeny would ever see. And the result is that now that they have them,
instead of doing something positive, like becoming scientists and
discovering important truths, or becoming entertainers and bringing joy to
others, or simply choosing to live a quiet, peaceful life of their own
design with their family, they (those calling for reparations, that is) are
simply standing unbudged saying that despite all of the avenues now opened
to them, which were never open before, that they simply cannot move a
finger until they get this money.
If the point even still isn't clear, then compare this with the following
quote:
Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the
granddaughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me.
Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful
and the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle
that made me an American out of a potential slave said "On the
line!" The Reconstruction said "Get set!" and the generation before
me said "Go!" I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the
stretch to look behind me and weep. Slavery is the price I paid for
civilization, and the choice was not with me. It is a bully
adventure and worth all that I have paid through my ancestors for it.
-Zora Neale Hurston, "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," 1927
That is how we should have honored our dead, and some today do in fact say
exactly such things. But it is not what we are saying, at least too often
in the case of African-Americans. Japanese-Americans do not have this
legacy, as it's pretty accepted that a single payment closed out the issue.
>From my understanding of it, in fact, it was not even the Japanese who were
pushing for this, but legislators. I'm admitting here that I don't really
know as much about this one, but my understanding is that there were no
equivalent Japanese-American organizations standing up and saying that they
were incapable of making it without reparations. Instead, it seems to have
just happened that payments were made without much call for them, and that
we moved on to the next problem. I admit fully that I could be wrong about
this.
So now let me take a moment to make something very clear here. If I thought
for a moment that the same thing would happen with African-Americans
through a single transfer payment, then I would heartily pay out, and you
can quote me on that. I want my money used for good, and if I thought this
was good, I would do it. However, every bit of evidence says that it will
do nothing but, as I said in my last reply, just help extend out the very
problems it's trying to address.
Evidence:
---
1) We've already spent an amazing amount of money on the War On Poverty,
and every bit of evidence that we have suggests that it only made this
poverty worse. Every call for money that was received and followed has
simply been met with an eventual call for more, and where the most money
was received, so did the most pvoerty tend to follow. It clearly has just
not worked, and if $5 trillion didn't fix this, we have to ask just how
much in reparations payments would.
2) But according to many reparations advocates, that's not an appropriate
question. Many of them call reparations a "first step."
A "first step???" If there's any logic whatsoever to paying reparations, it
should be a "last step." It should be a dollar payment which, once paid,
would end any grievances about the past and put us back towards the path of
being one people. Through these claims, however, proponents come right out
and say that this issue will not end with reparation payments. If it
doesn't, I don't see what will.
3) If reparations were a last step, then not only would more payments not
follow it, but in fact, all legal initiatives aimed at improving the
standing of African-Americans should logically end, immediately. After all
the rationale for reparations is that it would make things "even" again,
and if that's the case, then no other program should be necessary.
But not only is no one on the reparations side even cracknig a joke about
doing this, but in fact a few people have said that reparations should
never happen because it would in fact logically lead to this conclusion,
and we can't have that. In other words, it would solve the problem, and
that would be a bad thing.
If someone's argument is that solving a problem is a bad thing, then I'm
pretty much set at doing the opposite of what they do. I want problems
solved.
4) While Americans shouldn't be expected to follow another country's
policies, we can actually look at what is going on in Germany as a
precursor of what we might expect. The phrase "holocaust industry" has
sprung up, and the complaint is that people are now being convinced that
the way to prosperity is to set yourself up as a Holocaust victim, whether
you were one or not. Relatedly, there are also charges that the money
simply isn't making it to the people who actually deserve it. Admittedly I
need to read more about this, but I've heard this now from multiple
sources.
5) We could also look at what has gone on right here in America as a
prophecy of what to expect. American Indians have gotten reparations
payments and, as a result, violence has started breaking out over who
should get it (http://www.wewontpay.com/prophecy.html). We've scratched onr
problem and added another, and now created new racial tensions that
previously did not exist.
---
In short, whereas the evidence with Japanese-Americans is that it did fix
things (how often to you hear about this ethnic group in any sense, good or
bad?), the evidence with African-Americans is that it would not. We honored
the interned by doing something that did work in closing out any grievance
they might have. That same type of honoring, however, will not work with
those believed to be slave descendants. The claims are different, the cases
are different, and in this case, the remedy must also be different.
Let me acknowledge something at this point. It may very well sound to you
like I am making excuses, that I'm inventing justification to support on
group and deny another. That isn't the case: at least, it's not what I'm
consciously trying to do.
I'm a libertarian (small-l), and as such, I believe in the absolute minimal
use of force of any kind, government or otherwise. One of the arguments I
typically make with people is that even if the state is honest in it's
attempt to "help" you, that there is no way that it could effectively do
it, because it does not know you, and therefore could not possibly know
what exactly it is that you need. Those who are close to you, however, know
you better, and can better give to you what you do need based on your own
unique circumstances.
And it can be just about anything. Sometimes you do in fact need money.
Sometimes you need family. Sometimes you need love. Sometimes you need
acknowledgement of what you've done. Sometimes you need time. Sometimes you
need solitude. And sometimes, even, what you might need is less of all of
these, including money. I learned many of my most important lessons by
being dirt broke, with no one to turn to but myself.
This is the case with the reparations debate. I want to help my fellow man.
I truly do. In this case, however, I think the best help I can give is to
say "no", and not budge. It is to say, "Look: you are doing something so
badly wrong, that the only way I can help you is to deny being a part of
it, even at risk to my own life. You will be better off with me in prison
than you will be with any amount of money I could give to you."
I should begin to close out, but there is one final note. Suppose that I
did think that reparations to Japanese-Americans was wrong: why wouldn't I
say anything? Well because, my whole point is that instead of constantly
trying to redress wrongs, we should move on: so if I did think that, I'd be
contradicting myself by asking them to pay it back. Instead I'd be saying
"All right, we shouldn't have done that: let's not make that mistake
again."
And in fact, I think at this point that's exactly how I'd feel. The case
for Japanese-American repayment was certainly strong. However, statute of
limitations exist for a reason, and the very debate that we are having is
why. Like I said above, there is simply an amount of time after which you
just can't effectively address problems: their influence is just too far
removed.
So even though at the time I was marginally in favor of it (note that my
views on the world have changed pretty rapidly over time), I think now I
would say no. The reason again is not that I want to help, but that I think
it serves our society best to pick a time frame (probably longer than 7
years, I'd say 20 or so), and then not budge from that. After that,
legally, you move on. Note that this doesn't prevent people from
voluntarily helping each other, but prevents us from using the war method
known as the American legal system to solve a problem that it just can't
solve after a long enough period of time. I think the fact that we are even
having this discussion is proof of how much of a greater good we are
supporting by simply legally drawing a line at a certain time frame, and
not moving from it. Else we can endlessly fight each other, and not wanting
to see endless fighting is exactly why I'm doing this.
To make another analogy, I personally am opposed to just about every dollar
that our governments (federal, local and state) spend. Whenever I start
losing motivation for doing what it is that I'm doing, I just look at my
paystub, see how much I lost this week, and I'm right back on track.
But if it were to happen that we would start rolling back on our
tax-and-spend culture, I wouldn't be out there demanding "my money back".
Instead, I would be saying "Great: we're getting the idea now. Let's keep
going with that and see what else we can improve". I really just want to
see us get better, all of us. I want it bad enough that I'm willing to take
on a dangerous cause, because I feel that I've seen what the miraculous
payoff it could be for all of us, to start focusing with intensity on
reaching more of our vast potential. So yes, if it were to happen tomorrow
that what I see as this wrong would be addressed, I wouldn't demand
reparations. I'd just want to move on.
I think that really, what's most important to me is simply to get people
out of the mindset of feeling that they need to look to others to solve
their problems. If you ask me about this scenario or that one and whether I
would pay, then I'll grudgingly look into all of the cost-benefit analysis,
much like what you see above. And to be sure, there are a number of things
at this point that would make me stop paying taxes: I think we've gone on a
really wrong path, and reparations really is in a lot of ways the straw
that broke the camel's back for me.
But really, instead of answering whether or not I'd pay this or pay that,
I'd rather help get us all to the point of realizing the non-value in
constantly asking others to make these kinds of decisions. I think the good
from realizing that vastly eclipses any amount of good that anyone could
even claim would come from any of these payments.
So there's my answer. Too much time has passed, and there is already too
much of a "They Owe Us" psychology. The latter is unique to the case of
African-Americans, and the former applies to both. Both mean that in this
case, restitution will simply make more problems than it solves. I will
give money to what I think will help, and in this case, I see no evidence
this is one of the things that will help anything.
Before I close out, please let me note something. I could easily see the
charge of "racist" applied to the above screed. Some conservatives would
get angry at me for even replying to it, but I'm not them, so I will.
I do not call myself one. It's up to you whether or not you want to believe
me when I say that, but it's not something I believe in. My enemy is not
any person or set of people. My enemy is the set of bad ideas. In the case
of African-Americans, the idea that I am trying to fight is the one that
says that you cannot succeed because of your skin color. Really, I honestly
think that it's racism that I'm fighting, not supporting. Saying "You are
black, and therefore you have an inherent disadvantage" seems about as
racist a statement as they get.
That idea is the subset of every type of defeatist idea, and it is the
entire "I can't do it" mentality that I am ultimately fighting. I'm
actually writing a book that focuses on the proof that that idea is wrong,
and if you look at my personal quotes page
(http://www.chesnavich.com/quotes.html), you'll see that I'm putting as
much energy as I possibly can towards this.
I think that the legacy of slavery in this time is that very wrong mindset.
It is the unfinished work that I now feel the need to be a part of. It has
taken one from of racial slavery and morphed it into another, this one a
slavery of the mind. To be cheesy, but I think accurate, the Matrix has us.
We need to free our minds (and if you haven't seen this movie, to say the
least, I heartily recommend it.)
Whew. I told you this would be long. :-)
As long as that took, I'd be glad to discuss this with you further if you
want. I think I've made it clear at least that this is something I feel
passionately about. Also I should note that the last reply I included on
the web site (http://www.wewontpay.com/responses1.html). If you strongly
object to this then I can take it off, or remove your name, but I think
that the message I have for you effectively applies to anyone else who
would be thinking the same thing.
So thank you for writing me again, thank you for working your way through
my latest novel, and I'm here if you want to discuss this further.
Cheers,
-Robert Chesnavich
robert@chesnavich.com
http://www.wewontpay.com/
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