Gratitude
November 17, 2014 § 6 Comments
A couple of week ago, I published this piece on the new racist discourse in the United States, thinking that this was pretty bloody obvious to anyone paying attention. I was surprised at the response. The post went viral, it’s been re-blogged a bunch of times, tweeted and re-tweeted, and got a lot of readers. I was also inundated by comments on the post, to the point where I had to close comments on it. I closed comments largely because I got a couple of threats in response to the post, I should note (nothing serious). This soured me to some degree, that people would take time out of their days to threaten me over what I wrote. Some of the comments that I did allow to be posted were bad enough, but there were a good 15 or so I did not post that were largely incoherent rants about Muslims, African Americans, and women, and how they are collectively ruining the world. But, it’s easy enough to dismiss wingnuts.
But what I suppose I overlooked in this storm of negativity is the positivity that came out of the post, and all the people who left positive comments on the post itself, as well as those who took time to send me a note of gratitude or agreement, all the people who re-blogged it, tweeted it, shared it on their own Facebook feeds. And, after having some time to reflect on all of this, all I can say is: thank you.
Matthew Barlow 
Your essay was good and thought-provoking. Too bad so many commentors decided to type obnoxious personal attacks and strawman arguments before trying to comprehend your essay. I allow comments on my website, but I dread the possibility of trolls hijacking a post someday. Too often people listen/read with the intent to reply rather than with the intent to understand.
Thanks, Nick. It was really something, most of the trolls clearly didn’t read what I wrote, they just had their preconceived ideas and attacked me.
It is such a given that we crucify the messenger. Your post is relevant in Australia although we don’t have such obvious racial divides. One thing that is clear here is that some of the most negative comments are from the immigrants who came in the 50s and 60s towards those who have come more recently.
I didn’t find anything in that article you wrote that would have stirred up that much animosity. The fact that it did makes me fear for the people who dredged up so much animosity. Those are the kind of people to fear. They are the ones that cause trouble and cause there to be a reason to have racism in the first place. I am thankful that I was raised to have a better moral compass in my life that leads me not to judge an entire race of people for what really amounts to no reason.
Thank you. And, yes, the comments that did get posted, many of them dripped with racism, the ones I did not post were disgustingly vile and racist. I don’t like censoring on my blog, I have tended to approve all comments. But this time, I suppose I learned why I have that option. But, yes, I don’t quite get why pointing out the obvious got so many people into a tizzy. But, I suppose we are lucky to have a moral compass, and these haters are the sad, pathetic people they showed themselves to be.
I was going back into your posts and reading ones I hadn’t read before and saw where I had left a reply here. Racism is a big thing for me. 16 years ago my family became biracial, and now, both of children have mixed race children. Three are half black and one is part Hispanic, I use part because his father is half Hispanic, but the look of Hispanic seems to stand out in my grandson. This grandson’s father is in prison and the father of another grandson is also in prison. This one is the man who is the topic my blog, http://mynameisjamie.net. Before this my family was all white. I never considered myself racist at all, but racism didn’t really affect my life – until my grandsons. Now I am scared for especially my two youngest grandsons who are half black. They look black. They will feel the bite of racism and I can’t protect them. They live in a highly racist state,Texas. But they are young yet. It is my daughter who feels the racism, from black women, who look at her with total disgust. I’m not sure why, but she does think carefully when she goes into a store depending on what town she is in because of comments that are thrown at her for having black children. I am so afraid in the next ten years of the the possibilities that could happen to my grandsons knowing what has happened in the past few years. There is no commonsense. There is no right and wrong. There absolutely no sense of justice. And there is little attempt to bring to justice the perpetrators of these assaults on people who happen to be black instead of white