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Stepping out of SUMMUMBONUMBOOJUM, by Joe Starck



 
 
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Old February 28th 05, 04:06 AM
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Default Stepping out of SUMMUMBONUMBOOJUM, by Joe Starck

Last summer I created a word collage and posted it to this list as
"Buzzy Crumhunger's 'Tales with the UNKNOWABLE/JS,' Episode One."

There are any number of ways to make collages, with any number of
materials, like, with pictures, or with any item that, in and of
itself, and with, and in contrast with other things, create myriad
meanings.

I don't know about the rest of you folks, but I think mostly in
pictures, predominately visual, with thought pictorials and thought
film ever on. Why that is, I don't know for su nature/nurture. I
didn't speak much as a child, but certainly thought lots, and it wasn't
until my twenties that I began to add verbal thought to deep, methodic
-- actual and representative -- running visuals. Lately, I've been
asking people how they think, and it's interesting to find differences
and similarities on the range of thought styles, adding more to the
verbal/visual spectrum, kinetic, for example.

My "Tales" word collage morphed into "Two Bicycles," Five Bicycles,"
"No Bicycles," and finally to a number of SUMMUMBONUMBOOJUMs, with a
cast of characrters in the form of pronouns, common nouns, proper
nouns, concrete nouns, and abstract nouns.

There is probably no better source of definitions and understanding of
all the abstract nouns that lead to and make up one big, bad abstract
noun, "hatred," than Willard Gaylin's "Hatred: The Psychological
Descent Into Violence."

When I was just a kid, I do know that other kids, and probably myself,
commonly used "jewed" and "gyped" for the notion of having been
"cheated." I don't know about the other kids, and I'll give them the
benefit of the doubt, but I was unaware that I was using terms with
origins derisive of religion/culture until about Junior High
School('72-'73), when we began to see graphic footage of the atrocities
of Nazi Germany. And in elementary school, when another kid showed me
how to draw swastikas, I drew them all over my notebook because I
thought they were just some cool symbol, oblivious to there symbol of,
among other things, anti-semitism.

We played King of the Hill in the winter: who could stay on the top of
the snow pile longest, and in the summer, we played Smear the Queer:
who could outrun all the longest with the football. Grade School, 1966
to 1971.

Some years ago, Michael Jackson used the vulgarity, "kike" in one of
his songs. I think he said "...kike me..." or "...don't kike me..." or
something like that in one of his songs. There was a strong reaction
from Jewish leaders, and rightly so. As I recall, one leader protested
that the term had been dead and buried for so long and that it was
unconscionable to revive it into the public conscious. I had to look it
up in the dictionary back then, having never before heard it.

I suppose a year doesn't go by that the horrors of the Holocaust
aren't aired on television. For me, beginning in earnest in my
mid-thirties, and as my years pass, a day doesn't go by that the
horrors of the Holocaust aren't played in my mind, and epecially now,
post 9/11, post murder of the several thousand innocents on that day,
and present killing/murder in Iraq/The Mideast/and around the World
every day.

Soldiers are trained to kill. And it is my understanding that they, by
necessity, are trained to hate the enemy to expedite the killing of the
enemy.

In Vietnam our enemy was the "gooks."

In World War 2 our enemy was the "japs" and the "krauts."

Now our enemies that are said to make up "Al Qaida," are mostly Arabs,
Muslims for sure, and defined by a number of cultural and racial,
derogatory vulgarities. I'll leave it at that.

We Americans in the U.S. are defined by our present "Al Qaeda" enemies
as the devil, mostly white devils. That's a long way from "cracker;"
we're not just someone to put down, but someone to kill, now.

Contrast "white devil" with "heeb" or "bitch." I haven't seen a "white
devil" magazine, but I do read "Heeb" magazine, and I've seen "Bitch"
magazine, and have probably perused it. Where "bitch" has been turned
around from a woman who would be characterized as lewd and malicious,
to a feminist taking on what ails them, "Heeb" is, a new generation of
Jews taking on themselves. I'm not even sure how derogatory "heeb" ever
was for a Jew, shortened from Hebrew. What say you?

Now, while I had to look up "kike" in the dictionary when I first heard
it, and while there are plenty of racial and ethnic slurs for all the
kinds of people in the United States of America, no term is as commonly
used, historically and presently, as "******," for African-Americans.

In literature, in films, in music, it's quite commonly used in a number
of ways, for example, as was originally intended, a racial slur aimed
at the most historically villified people in America, or, as inward
examination from African-American comedians, or, as turned around by
rappers in the originally intended's face.

In 2001, the Philadelphia Theatre Company produced a play set in 1949,
titled "No ******s, No Jews, No Dogs."

In 2003 came Randall Kennedy's book, "******: The Strange Career of a
Troublesome Word."

In my "SUMMUMBONUMBOOJUM" that I posted to this list on Labor Day of
2004, I wrote "******" 135 times.

And I wonder, would 135 be an average week outta the mouths of those
who hate African-Americans? Would 135 be an average outta the mouths of
characters outta a season of films outta Hollywood? Would 135 be an
average day outta the mouths of African-American rappers? Or even,
would 135 be the average, of whatever duration, in the minds of
whoever, whereever, whenever, however and whyever?

135. Go back 135 years to 1869 or thereabouts. In 1814 the Dutch
abolished slavery. In 1848 the French abolished slavery. In 1869
Portugal abolished slavery. In 1886 Cuba abolished slavey. In 1888
Brazil abolished slavery. It wasn't until 1936 that Northern Nigeria
abolished slavery. One could go on around the World, from whence
slavery came, from whence slavery ended, but that's another story or
two.

On the first day of 1863 President Lincoln issued the Emancipation
Proclamation, freeing slaves, albeit requiring the newly freed to
immediately fight and die for the land they were slaves on the day
before.

In 1882, a labor union organized the first Labor Day, a "workingmen's
holiday," held in New York City. The holiday grew and expanded to other
cities, then to states, and finally, 12 years hence, in 1894, Labor Day
became a national holiday.

Only one year later, in 1895, was slavery abolished in the United
States of America with the 13th amendment to the constitution.

Then came the Jim Crow laws, the lynchings, the segregation, the
struggle for civil rights, and all the humiliation, pain, oppression,
murders and hatred that occured, and there are African-Americans living
today who experienced it all first hand, whose children and
grandchildren make up the the greater part of African-Americans living
today in the U.S.A.

It seems to me Labor Day ought to be expanded to Labor History Month,
with the work of African-American slaves honored, and the work of all
honored, and included, with an emphasis on fairness in the workforce. A
great share of work in the trades of carpentry, plumbing, electrical,
heating and air conditioning, machining, masonry and others is done by
low-wage Mexicans in Southern California. In Wisconsin, the workforce
is mostly white, high-wage. Two examples, either way, there are
obstacles for African-Americans to be accepted into jobs in these
trades. It is an issue for many African-Americans who want in on these
jobs, who, like so many whites, aren't college bound, who, like so many
whites, want to rise out of minimum wage jobs. I've been a craftsman
half my life; I had opportunity; everybody should have opportunity.

Now, I suppose one could retort that capitalism is business is free
enterprise is competition is nobody ever said life was fair.

I'm with that retort up until "nobody ever said life was fair." It
seems to me that everybody has said life is fair, or at least, life
will be fair. It seems to me that fairness is the ultimate spirit of
the three major religions. It seems to me that, in Judaism, God's law
to Moses in the form of the Ten Commandments is all about fairness.
Ultimately, with Christianity, everthing Jesus said is about fairness.
What little I've read of Islam, I've seen the spirit of fairness.
Ghandi? Fairness. I believe fairness to be the supreme civilizing
precept, forever.

Fairness, really, is what's lacking in relations between black and
white, between others and others. 135 "******s" I wrote. I suppose I
could have just as well alternated "******s" with "wiggers" with "uncle
toms." We've got a problem in these here United States with crossover
inclusion. Both blacks and whites preaching race-traitor ****. Is that
fair to either, for a step from the right to the left, for a step from
the left to the right, for a step to white from black, for a step from
black to white, in the name of understanding, and ultimately, fairness?


If the man on the moon is heralded for "One small step for man, one
giant leap for mankind," surely a man or woman, black or white or
other, ON EARTH, should be heralded for the same?

So much goodness in the USA and elsewhere can be found with just a
step.

Me, I have flaws, skeletons, demons, failures, amends to make, and yet,
I need apologies too, you know, but I can wait; for no one's done me
such harm to the extent that slavery did to African-Americans, to the
extent that Nazis did to Jews, to the extent that suicide bombers do to
others, to the extent that global, nationalistic, and political
maneuvers that come before and after the tragic suicide/murders do.

Joe Starck,
madison, wi

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