The Warmth of Other Suns, the Great Migration & Ok Boomer

[irisblue]

This is stream of consciousness, it rises from a online convo last night about the new catch phrase- Ok Boomer. That will be (possibly justified) usage over the next months/period of time that will piss off a lot of #Not All Boomers/ I Am A Liberal So It Is Not Me.


I am a Boomer. I do not speak for anyone but myself.


Last night a 'Karen' had the absolute nerve to compare the "ageism" in OK Boomer to lynching. I am/was gobsmacked and offended and very very pissed. I kept repeating that the analogy was a false one, but on the 3rd tweet, I gave up b/c some people are stuck in their comfort and safe space.


This AM, I realizied I was going to try once more, since Karen had not blocked me. The book "The Warmth Of Other Suns", is such a base line for my changing/ learning on white supremacy that I wanted her to hear about that book.

From it's wiki- synopsis --
This work tells the story of the Great Migration and the Second Great Migration, the movement of African Americans out of the Southern United States to the Midwest, Northeast and West from approximately 1915 to 1970.[1][2] The book intertwines a general history and statistical analysis of the entire period. It includes the biographies of three persons: a sharecropper's wife who left Mississippi in the 1930s for Chicago, named Ida Mae Brandon Gladney; an agricultural worker, George Swanson Starling, who left Florida for New York City in the 1940s; and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, a doctor who left Louisiana in the early 1950s, moving to Los Angeles.


The title comes from this poem-
"The poem is excerpted here:

I was leaving the South
to fling myself into the unknown...
I was taking a part of the South
to transplant in alien soil,
to see if it could grow differently,
if it could drink of new and cool rains,
bend in strange winds,
respond to the warmth of other suns
and, perhaps, to bloom."

—?Richard Wright, Black Boy, 1945"


I need to buy a copy of this book. Again

Comparing ageism to lynching🤦🤦🤦🤦🤦. The comfort of her safety is astounding

[irisblue]

1. And..

I realize this could be seen as Cool Story Bro, but really read that book if you haven't, ( As always no benefits to me) it is at libraries & you can get it almost any bookseller

[bigbrother05]

2. Wow, guess if tRump does it, it must be ok

As an apparent white (more in a bit) born in '52 in Ok the comparison piss me off.

I can't deny my privilege to be white, male, straight, and old. I didn't grow up having to watch my surrounds/mouth/back at all times.

Yes, as a kid, cops weren't too friendly, but I wasn't going to be shot.
I didn't have to worry about where to live except based on how much I could afford.
Saw the integration of my town in the '60s and how local businesses handled it in a less than stellar manner.

Now the other bit.
In a medium sized city in Ok in the '50s/'60s the racism was open even with a military post on our boundary. I can remember seeing separate fountains and bathrooms in the county courthouse and there were sections of town demarked in a manner best unmentioned.

While the memory isn't erased, I grew beyond my surroundings to recognize the realities of the world and didn't pass on the links to the past.

As a reader and media consumer, I was aware of the Great Migration and it's effect on our country. I saw Dr. King and the Civil
Rights movement on the nightly news as a part of my growth into a responsible adult. I also saw the American Indian Movement attempt to follow in their brother's footsteps.

As a member of the Cherokee Nation, I have a past too. The Trail of Tears and the Dust Bowl are written on my heart as well. I don't wear the burden openly as the hair and cheekbones didn't look out of place. An old story from my area was that the train station had a waiting area inside for the whites, the blacks could wait outside on the platform, and the Indians stood to the side on the ground.

Anyway, if I'm giving someone grief about being naïve or inexperienced, Ok Boomer is earned.

Otherwise, we all need to be open to other realities, that's what we should have learned from Barack Obama.

[Recursion]

3. That book changed everything about my understanding of the US

Can't recommend it highly enough. There were more person-miles traveled in the Great Migration than by European immigrants to the US during the same period. Growing up in Mississippi I always asked "why the hell are we so poor?" and it wasn't until that book that I realized it was because we chased so many people away, who went on to make the north and midwest rich.

[yardwork]

4. Thank you for the recommendation.

An earlier book, The Promised Land, by Nicholas Lemann, is also excellent.

I'm ordering The Warmth of Other Suns now.

(By the way, I'm a boomer who thought "ok boomer" was hilarious. My wife and I have been saying it to one another for days. However, I'm not surprised that some privileged boomers got their panties in a wad about it. And we are seeing how some extremely privileged white folks are reacting to a perceived loss of power and influence by shouting that they're being oppressed, er, lynched. Cause it's all about them.)

[irisblue]

5. How many hundreds of Millennials are killing...

Articles have been published over the last 3-4 years?



And that 'Karen' equating ageism as being as bad as lynching...


That is horrible