ADS-L Digest - 22 Sep 2008 to 23 Sep 2008 (#2008-268)

[JAMES A. LANDAU Netscape. Just the Net You Need.]

On  Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:19:58 Zulu minus 0400 Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM> wrote an interesting post:

>No, I wasn't kidding. I grew up in the bad old days of Jim Crow, remember? I'm >now a "snowball," as used  to(?) be said by whites, a grey-haired old black man.
>As I've mentioned before, >segregation, the model for apartheid,

Was the Apartheid of South Africa modelled on the Segregation of the US South?  I tend to doubt it.  The disease of racism is endemic throughout the world.  There is no need for anyone to import the US version; the homegrown is sufficient.  Also there was a significant difference between South Africa and the US.  In the US, whites are a majority (in the 60's, if I remember correctly, only Mississippi was over 50% black), whereas in South Africa whites were a fairly small minority.

>*really worked!* You have to keep that in mind when you read my posts. There was
> a time in my life when I, in my wildest dreams, never imagined that I would
> ever interact with a white person on any level except as "bossman" and "boy."
> Being black made any black person essentially the servant of every white
> person, unless he had a "white boss" who outranked other white people. Ex-GI's
> are familiar with this situation. Any one random person who outranks you can
> put you on a work detail, unless you're already carrying out an assignment for
>someone else of higher rank. E.g. an NCO who needs
>random warm bodies (FWIW, I first heard this expression in the Army, though I
> doubt that "late 'Fifties" is any kind >of antedating)

     The expression "if you're warm, you're in" was common in World War II, so it would be surprising if "warm body" did not also date back at least that far.

>to unload a delivery of ammo - that shit, being lead and high explosive, is a >bitch to deal with - can't put you to work for him, if you're already in the
>course of carrying paperwork from your company commander to higher
>headquarters. I was in my middle thirties, ca.1971, before I had a white person
> as a friend in the same sense that I have black people as friends. I've been
>aware of the existence of the ADS for dekkids, but, because I had
>the (no doubt erroneous, but once unavoidable) impression that no organization
> headquartered in Alabama or Georgia would accept any colored people as members,

     An interesting question.  If anyone has an answer, please post it on this list.

>I never tried to become a member. Of course, nowadays, I know better. Or maybe
> it's merely that times have changed. Apropos possibly of nothing, I was once -
>rightly - physically afraid of random white people with whom I had no social
>relationship. As a consequence, I fail to appreciate any irony in the fact that
> white folks nowadays claim to be physically afraid of colored people with whom
> they're not acquainted. Either emotional response allows white folk to kick
>black ass, if they feel that the situation calls for it. Things still aren't
>what they should be, but I thank God that they're not what they used to be!


           James A. Landau
           test engineer
           Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
           8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
           West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA
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