7/23/23

 Sunday, July 23, 2023

In bed at 9:45,  up at 6:35, many pss, let Lilly out.  63℉, high of 79℉, mostly sunny day ahead, AQI=30, Good.  Wind W at 6 mph, 3-6/14.  got 1/4 in of rain yesterday.  Sun rose at 5:32 and sets at 8:23, 14+50.

'Slaves developed skills . . . useful in later life.'  That is what Florida's board of education wants Florida schoolchildren to be taught as part of their education about chattel slavery.  DeSantis pooh-poohs the fury and disgust being expressed by those who are opposed to this effort to soften the horror of slavery.  We Whites in America have never been exposed to the real horrors of the slave labor camps euphemistically called "plantations."  We old folks grew up in a world of Gone With the Wind, of the beautiful Miss Scarlett, getting her corset tightened by the loving and lovable Mammy, being served by the indolent flibbertigibbet Prissy, and the ever-faithful field foreman Big Sam, who seemed to just love being enslaved by Miss Scarlett's benevolent Dad, played by the benevolent and then pitiable Thomas Mitchell. who played the lovable Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life.  The credits listed Hattie McDaniels, Butterfly McQueen, and Oscar Polk as "house servants," not as slaves.

Just as wars are never "over" but rather change form and circumstances, so it is with America's experience with racialized chattel slavery.  Even Blacks who have "made it" in American society because of great talent and/or great effort or even because of getting a leg up from an affirmative action program, they aren't genuinely free  because they lack White Privilege.  Barack Obama was followed watchfully while shopping in stores.  They may be rich as Croesus but they are not White.  1619 to 2023, 404 years and still counting.  'Slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.'

What we can be sure of not being taught in Florida's classrooms?  The story of slave revolts and the fear of slave uprisings, especially after the successful Haitian Revolution against the French, 1791 - 1804.  They won't be taught about "maroons" like those described in the article in the current New Yorker section Annals of Inquiry, "Searching for a Fortress Built by People Who Escaped Slavery:  Its ruins are somewhere in the swamps of Georgia. What will it take to find them?"  by Matthew Hutson,  July 21.

Lest we forget, limousine liberals.  In the current The Atlantic, "How Rich Blue Suburbs Keep the Poor Away:" "Wealthy conservative areas also erect barriers to new housing, but liberal areas are typically worse. Writing in 2022, the Brookings Institution researcher Jenny Schuetz observed that “decades of painstaking research of zoning by economists and urban planners have produced a high degree of consensus on which places in the United States have tight land use regulations, regardless of the method used to measure zoning.” She argues that “overly restrictive zoning is most prevalent and problematic along the West Coast and the Northeast corridor from Washington D.C. to Boston.” These areas “lean heavily Democratic in national, state and local elections.” And studies that examine the stringency of zoning within states—for example, California—find that the most restrictive zoning is found in the more politically liberal communities."  More complicity.

Semi-crappy mood.  I'm out of sorts today, irritable and irritating, unappreciative of life.  Not depressed, not anxious, not angry, but not enjoying life, a crabby, unappreciative old man.  Not good.  An insolent rebuke to the life my mother worked so hard to give me.  Snap out of it, Buster!