I wasn’t
consciously a racist/ white supremacist; but I had been raised in the cult.
Racism is
like Christianity – it is a cult.
You are born
to parents that are members of the cult.
Your aunts and uncles and the adults in your orbit are members of that
cult. You are taught by adults to walk,
to talk, to use the toilet, and what is considered appropriate in the cult. You don’t question your nurture, because it
is the norm of the cult.
My grandmother
raised me. She was born in Mississippi
in the late 1800’s. Her uncles fought
for the glorious south in the Civil war.
The white racist Mississippi cult did not celebrate the fourth of July,
because that is when Vicksburg fell to Yankee aggression. As a
child, my friends and I dressed up in Confederate uniforms and paraded in
Vicksburg on Jefferson Davis’ birthday.
We did not hate, or even dislike black people, we had been taught that
they just were not our equal.
We went to church, we said the prayers, we
sang the songs and we drank the Cool-Aid, because that is what was expected of
us.
I left
Mississippi when I was eighteen and never returned. It took me nearly two decades to realize the fallacy
of my indoctrination.
It is like becoming
an atheist after you have been raised in the church; when you finally question
the logic of your beliefs and find them lacking.
the Ol'Buzzard
