We write and talk a lot about the bigotry of racism, sexism and so much more. We keep that talk on an institutional level. Very seldom do we write and talk with individual, real -true-to-life examples. That would interfere with our ability to deny – which is the foundation of what allows those structures to continue to exist. Start to talk about your real, true-to-life example of having experienced racism, sexism and all the rest and denial will immediately pop-up to explain away your real life experience. It is the most potent way we have of continuing bigotry’s existence. Raw, unwashed, in-your-face bigotry, maintained, continued, developed through denial.
We see denial being institutionalized in our educational system. Florida and the laws it is passing is an example. Those laws parallel the laws of old which made it a crime to teach slaves to read and write. Why criminalize something so seemingly harmless as teaching reading, writing and arithmetic? Because that was the beginnings of an effective way out of slavery. Today, we are trying to re-instituionalize a modernization of those criminal laws. Why? To maintain the “better than” in this society of white male northern-europeans peoples. And even to make a difference within that group of those who believe one way as against those who believe another. Bringing culture, religious beliefs and more into that “better than” equation.
Our world was rocked when we saw and got to know many of the victims of the bigotry against the elderly. We had seen bits and pieces of it pop-up, but to really experience the bigotry the elderly must live with, ignore and end their lives living in the most humiliating and vicious way – usually very broke after everything they worked all their lives to acquire – is an earth-shattering experience.
Society is structuring itself to maintain the elderly totally apart from the rest of world. That allows grifting, theft, physical – mental – medical – legal abuse to come to the forefront and happen with everyone looking on while denying what they are seeing and turning it into something positive. What is most annoying is that those doing this as the leaders of this pact are just like you and me. They look normal, talk normal, participate in their part of the world just like you and me with no one the wiser. They, however, begin to acquire wealth we don’t even give a thought as to from whence it has come.
We have published several articles on what happened to Rev. Dr. Robert Bennett and Marceline Donaldson. African Americans – Elderly – with fairly substantial assets. Mostly, what we published has been ignored except by those who experienced the same thing. We were surprised at how many elderly are experiencing this “putting the elderly into poverty” and then, let us use a small percentage of what is taken to keep them barely surviving and right under the nose of and with the approval of their families. Or, I should say because of the neglect of their families who are very, very busy. That is one real-life example which has uncovered many more. What we saw is that you don’t know when something like that will hit you. As a society we are taught “denial”. I am not my brother or sisters keeper – let them work it out on their own. That is our attitude towards bigotry of all kind. That is why it is so prevalent, long lasting and horrific in this society and in this world.
Guardianship is one evil in this society which has been practiced mostly against Jews, but is beginning to spread to other minorities as the wealth of different groups increases.
Murder of the youngest generation of minorities is happening because the numbers of minorities in this society are increasing and those who we refer to today as minorities are predicted to be the largest functioning group within a decade or so. How to cope and reverse that? Kill the children of these minorities. Well, you will get a few children of the majority group, but then Hitler targeted and killed Jews, but also included non-Jews to be most efficient and effective in his goal to remove Jews from the world. And the result of this killing of the children? When the oldest working group of minorities retires or dies there will be far fewer minorities to replace them, effectively re-establishing the inequality that currently exists. Those who would replace them have been murdered by the hundreds.
Corporate America has long had a very high wall, to protect those at the top, which they have built over time and are now re-enforcing so that wall will last many more generations. The wealthiest people in this society are those who have developed businesses, new ideas, etc. Those are all white-male-mostly Northern European types who are the world’s billionaires – or working very hard to become such with support of their cultural, racial, ethnic brothers.
How has that happened and how has that line been kept so free of minorities crossing into the land of entrepreneurial opportunity? From our perch, we have seen the ideas and hard work and success of minorities and women in the entrepreneurial area stolen by this group of white male, etc. There has been a re-definition of things like “theft” and more so this group of white males have a smoother road as they cruise down to reach that billionaire status on someone else’s back. Take a look at the history of Silicon Valley – only don’t leave out the minority businesses stolen; the women-owned businesses stolen; the refusal of investors to support and invest only in business brought to them by their “own kind”. Don’t leave out the young white males who raced through Cambridge and places like MIT, Harvard and more to see who was doing what that they could steal and take to investors who would look at the ideas with a cover to induce blindness against those from whom those businesses were stolen.
What has most disturbed us, because it is going unnoticed, supported by the extremely wealthy few, and within this group “theft” re-defined to make the actual theft going on constantly a non-event. If you break into my house and steal one of my artifacts, jewelry, furniture – even food, you are subject to arrest and jail for that theft. If you break into my computer and or corporate location, steal my business plan, take all of the ideas, structure, customers, experience I acquired while building a substantial business, etc. and at the same time do everything you can to destroy my business so I will be busy just trying to survive while you develop the model you coveted, that is not considered theft and subjects you to no criminal action. It also does not disqualify you from being considered for funding for the ideas and businesses you stole from others.
Every day, we come across people who have been crushed by such theft after 20 to 30 years of working to build a business with ideas all their own and have been successful in the process as they introduced to society a new way of doing something or a new product or something not out there before. We also see the people who crushed them and tried to leave them and their business by the wayside because they decided to set in place a copy of their business and because the people so crushed tend to be minorities and/or women the white males used to succeed. They have access to capital to grow their business, which the minorities and women don’t have; they have access to partners, those who have worked at the top of large white-male owned businesses which take an interest and the kind of theft and destruction which took down the business they copied is ignored. Unfortunately for all of us the ethics of such businesses are in the gutter, however, most of us go along with the growth of this stolen business as it becomes an intrinsic part of this society with which the rest of us have to live.
Real Estate is a biggy! The structure, wealth, schools in the geographic location of where you live depends upon your culture, race, religion, ethnicity, sexual choice, etc. and that institutionally racist structure was put in place eons ago. It began in slavery and was intensified when we changed our economic structures from “in your face” slavery to a more modified form with which we live today.
The importance of the geographic location where you live and work and have your being increased dramatically and became entrenched and unchangeable during separate and unequal days and today is becoming even more bigoted than it was generations ago. It is now easier to discriminate on such a level without anyone noticing or those who notice and complain being crushed and blamed for their plight after that drastic crushing.
As the world moved forward, that structure moved with it and has been kept in place by realtors, the real estate industry and its cousins. They maintain geographical bigotry in your living accommodations very effectively and much easier than a few generations ago, which in turn maintains racially divided schools which maintains racially divided businesses which occupy the retail spaces in those racially divided neighborhoods with the result that some of such businesses thrive and become very successful and some, in the minority neighborhoods, hang on by their fingernails for a lifetime.
These are some of the areas we will research and write about going forward with actual examples.
We have lots out there in the literature which talks about structural racism and how society separates unequally, but individual examples seem to be the most threatening and the least written about – especially in books used in schools of higher learning where to examine such things might cause a great disruption in this society. It is the area that many will read about and immediately engage in denial and denigration of those doing the writing.
We, at Bettina’s, have lived long enough that such denigration will not deter us. You are encouraged to join us with your stories. After all, we must all experience denial to understand how vicious it is.
In Scripture you will read: “Do you think I come to bring peace on earth. No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other; three against two and two against three”…….Luke 12:51-52.
We talk and sing a lot about “peace”. We knock those who we claim bring “divisiveness’. But when we do that what happens to such passages in Scripture? We think there is nothing wrong with “divisiveness”. We need to look at good and evil and separate those concepts instead of making divisiveness substitute for evil and coming together substitute for good.
