My wife and I have wanted to see the movie "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close" for some time now. Tuesday we had the opportunity to see it. A touching film of the events during and leading the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. The story develops as a young boy discovers clues left by his father and attempts to pick up the pieces to find more closure from his beloved best friend.
Several times throughout the film as I saw young Oskar in his struggles to find answers, my eyes welled up in tears. His encounters with complete strangers humanized the New York experience as he discovers their shared devastation from the catastrophic events. I reflected upon my own life and relationship with my own father. Though very different, my heart filled with love reflecting on the various good and bad times I had growing up around my father. This movie inspired me to write about my own life, about those people in my life who matter, and about the things in my life that don't matter which I choose to leave unsaid.
As a boy maturing through life's obstacles I found myself quite often in mischief, and what I'd like to call "learning things the hard way." As a child, I remembered as the clock ticked towards that magic time of day, the time of day when daddy comes home. I found myself withdrawing from his return, wishing quite often that he wouldn't make it home. In what seemed to be a daily ritual of fighting, yelling, and exchanging of hateful words, I accepted our indifferences. It wasn't so much the fighting and the yelling that wounded me. It was more the absence of our relationship that ripped at my soul, and knowing I just wasn't going to have that wonderful relationship with my father. Unfortunately in my adolescence our starved relationship became less and less important to me as time went on.
I presently work for a car transportation company, and if you can imagine in that type of business I have had many conversations with strangers. The other day on an hour long drive I had a particularly amazing conversation with a woman. This conversation seemed to be a realization, one of those I've-gone-full-circle type conversations. In our conversation I spoke to her about my father among many other things including her experiences, her family and her life. But about my father I told her of our adventures camping, fishing, of our laughing and joking together. After what I had said about him, it seemed to me she was convinced that I always had this positive type of relationship with my father. I explained to her it wasn't so, but included the following. "No relationship thats worth having is worth me giving up on."
The full circle part, is how I see my relationship with my father today. What matters to me today is that we are extremely loud and incredibly close. So loud, so close that I cannot hear the past. Today there are no empty holes in our relationship, I forgave him.
Fox News reported: In a profanity-laced tirade, a Memphis DJ last week used an on-air interview to berate a local Republican congressional candidate -- calling her a "token negro" who is doing the bidding of "white folk." Eventually, Bergmann said "we have a failure to communicate" and left the studio. Matthews continued to berate the congressional candidate.
"Get up and get your ass up outta here. Get your stupid, ignorant ass up outta my studio," he said.
As she left, Bergmann held out her hand to the DJ. "I don't need to shake your hand," he told her. "I'm scared because some of that whiteness might rub off on me." See story
I'm a white man, not an English man nor a German, no culture, just a white guy. While among my colleagues at work I once asked them what race I was? They were of all sorts of different races, the important thing is they weren't white. I was definitely a minority in the office, though they quickly told me, "well, you're just white." Wait a minute, I'm actually English/German with a dash of Scandinavian, how does that make me "just" white? What I don't have any culture? I'm bland, just white bread, a honkey, a cracker? No, I'm a human. Anyways, this article really hit home for me because I feel whites don't have much of a voice anymore.
So, what gives blacks the right to make such horrid jokes or statements about whites? This is not the first time I've heard a black comedian or spokesperson rant this way about whites. I mean I love the Dave Chappelle show, he's hilarious, and many of his skits are funny interpretations of whites. He's a bit of what I'd like to call a multi-racist. Which makes it kinda fair since he makes fun of blacks too. Aside from Mr. Chappelle, what makes blacks so special? Is it that they were once discriminated and enslaved by the white man? They aren't the only race in history to be enslaved. But, am I to endure this "racial inequality" for the rest of my life because in American history whites enslaved blacks? As a white man am I suppose to sit back and accept another black man or woman saying in a hateful tone racist comments about whites? Am I now just a second class citizen to the black man? I mean now we have a black president. Doesn't that make it fair enough? Are we EVEN yet? Is it always good to be fair, or equal? I mean we are all different black or white, hispanic or asian. Though I still don't feel treated as an equal in this society, not one bit. I'm sort of ok with that, since equality doesn't equal individuality and I'm more of an individual.
On several occasions while running my errands I've heard the words uttered, "You're not helping me, and its because I'm black!" This said as if it were a well thought out reason for commonly misinterpreted bad customer service, the kind where you feel ignored. This could be more accurately interpreted as, "You're really not helping me because you're just a dumb teenager behind the counter who doesn't give a crap about this job." I get that, I've been there before.
On one occasion I witnessed such a thing while working as a teller at a local bank. I remember a black woman cutting in line in front of this other white woman. When the black woman approached the teller and proceded to give the teller her transaction, she was stopped and asked to get to the end of the line because she cut in line. Now, this wasn't another case of "get to the back of the bus where you belong n*****!" (Sorry folks, had to sensor since that word can only be used by rappers or black comedians.) No, this was simply you were cutting in line, and you need to get back in line and wait your turn. Well this black woman took it to the next level turning it into something it wasn't by saying, "Its because I'm black!"
Jokingly after that incident I stole her catch phrase, but replaced it with my own verbiage, "Its because I'm white!" I said it whenever I felt discriminated against, when I felt I was treated unfairly or whenever I wanted to feel like the victim which wasn't hard to do. You know about America's hidden reverse racism agenda or so called affermative action? This would in turn regulate whites jokes about blacks, and their ability to find a job. Well not totally. This is probably off topic, though would make a great book entitled "measuring up against minorities." About an educated white boy trying to find a job, having no such luck and even getting rejected from working at McDonald's since he's not ethnic enough. But of course to not get sued corporations and businesses have that sign in their break rooms which forbids any discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in the hiring process. What ever happend to the best man or woman for the job? Does that still exists? So, whose the minority now? I believe its one thing whites and blacks may have in common. Or what blacks and whites may have in common, just to be politically correct I switched the verbiage. Anyways, we are both a dying race, make sure to step aside because hispanics are taking over! Last but not least, be prepared to learn spanish.
