I need a hugh platform
Yesterday I head this woman interviewed about whom she would vote for. One of her reasons as to why she would vote McCain/Palin, she said she could not vote for someone who was named Obama; that his mother was an atheist, his father a Muslim and his Christianity was not in the Bible. I felt like she wrapped up all the stereotypes in that one name.
This made me want to shout from the world stage, that if the African slave had kept their real names, Barack Hussein Obama would be as common as Andrew Jackson. Also that many versions of Christianity had justified slavery and Jim Crow and had created schools in Virginia to subvert desegregation.
The story where I saw the interview was broadcast last night on PBS' NOW called Virginia's Vote, the lady's comment comes near the end of the segment.
2 comments:
Leaving aside cases in which it is produced by psychosis, and therefore the result of disturbed brain chemistry, delusion such as this woman suffers from, is to have ignorance as its mother. Her offspring include superstition, prejudice and folly. As Henry Beecher asserted: "Ignorance is the womb of monsters."
I feel this women in her comment exemplifies the familiar tradition which elevates ignorance above knowledge, as a happier, more innocent state of being. The 18th century cult of “noble savage” extolled the supposed freshness and serenity of a life unencumbered by knowledge, a life bound only by the sky’s visible horizon and the natural lifespan of man. Thus she probably sees the boundaries of her world and experience stretching only as far as her front-yard. Thomas Grey famously wrote: "Where ignorance is bliss it is folly to be wise."
But that tradition is wrong. Ignorance is too fertile in wretchedness and tragedy, too ripe in error and falsehood, ever to stand comparison to knowledge. Philip Wylie exclaimed: "Ignorance is not bliss, it is oblivion."
Unbelievable, such one-sided , blind ignorance!
I have had so many monents of being face to face with that ignorant innocence, that I'm no longer surprised by it.
I say ignorant innocence, because things like that have been said in my face and the person has no idea that what they said might be insulting, hurtful or hateful. It is so matter of fact, as if I were one of their negores.
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