Racism Is A Religion Of Hate Wrapped In A Bubble Of Fear

Racism is a religion and or dogma of hate wrapped in a bubble of fear.

Misogyny is a religion and or dogma of hate wrapped in a bubble of fear. 

Homophobia is a religion and or dogma of hate wrapped in a bubble of fear. 

Etc.

Ran in to two old faces on FB from decades ago, definitely not BFFs today, those two meet with me in past time with me as the connecting factor of the two. They each called me a friend but in the end they were not friends to me because they were more like people that thought I was like them. The only thing we really had in common was my being white. And while they disconnected over the years they look like they have connected again in old age. 

The thing is that they thought I was a fool or stupid to be a good team player in my job at a bank because I was willing to be a good team player where there were blacks on my team. 

Up to that point, I thought they were okay as acquaintances. I have been leery since of anyone since who say they are my friends. etc. 

The thing is that these people raised in an envelope of white privilege and relative middle class northern comfort were so literally rabid when it came to being racist in their what I saw as unfounded fear of all black people without knowing the person but only the race. 

And these people were raised in the North, not the South. Where did their fear of Nat Turner come from? I was aware as a child of my people, family and a distant fear of race, the colored moving in and ruining a neighborhood. I never heard of a fear of the Coloreds stealing jobs. There was plenty of work back then. Which supports my own theory that no family really becomes dysfunctional until the primary bread winner loses a job. etc. 

That parts of North Philly were the first to go bad economically starting in the 1890s when one of the first waves of African-Americans migrated north to get away from the institutionalization of hate in the Jim Crow Laws of the South, followed by another wave in WWI to follow jobs and WWII etc. They were no different than the original Europeans who settled on this continent to escape religious prosecution in Europe. 

That one Christian Church in Philly by the demographic change in neighborhood at the turn of the twentieth century even wrote into the covenant of the church property that it could not be sold to a "colored congregation" when that congregation surrendered the deed to the local mother church authority, so angry at the unfairness of some citizens trying to achieve the American Dream embodied in the phrase "the pursuit of happiness". This when it abandoned its digs in North Philly. 

Cohocksink Church

Another thing I have become aware of in recent studies that the backbone of American Vaudeville Theater for a hundred years from the 1840s to the 1940s was Minstrel Music and Blackface "comedy" by white men in black grease paint was to display African-Americans as stupid, lazy and dishonest. 

Like commercials non-stop in every Vaudeville performance. A hate tax and or hate reinforcement ad nauseam. 

That the bubble surrounding the core hate are always fears. Pick up the likes and dislikes of the crowd and feed on them and sell more snake oil to that crowd. So aptly demonstrated by the Neo-Nazi/GOP party presently. 

That hate is traditionally described as the opposite of love which may be true. Hate too can be misunderstanding. That the fear, the bubble makes us safe in our own little corner of the universe. 

That at the core the hate is within us as well as misunderstanding or understanding and or love. 

So when I think of all this hate thing going around these days in America and the Western world as well, it, the visceral, rabid racism I witnessed in so-called friends decades ago is learned and learned from within the family situation. 

That like Fred and Ethel, my old "friends", finding "luv", more likely companionship in old age, is a feat of birds of a feather flocking together, sharing a combined bubble of fear about fear to the exponential and or hate. So it goes. 

Shrug.  

Happy R those who H8 in the name of 'da Lord.

Happy R those who H8 in the name of 'da Lord.

Trump' s "religious freedon" EO unconstitutional.

Separation church/state. First Amendment.

.

Mount Carmel Jewish Cemetery Vandalized in Philly

I used to have a photo(s) of ourselves, family, in fuzzy unfocused "Baby Brownie" Black and White, of ourselves on Memorial Day or the 4th of July picnics at Wissinoming Park in Philly of over fifty years ago. (Wissinoming - Lenni-Lenape word of "duck creek").

The photos might still exist but are in the hands of my gay brother in Phoenix who refuses to share them with me. Still victimizing his younger sibling after all these years and him pushing 70 - whatever. No love lost there.

Wissinoming Park is a nice little plain stretch of ground with big trees and a dried out impression or small creek bed that runs through the property, all that is left of some 19th century Philly robber baron's country estate. The mansion in the middle of the property is long gone. 

The significance of this park was that my father and his childhood family also picnicked there as a child, his childhood home nearby and now under I-95 across from the old Frankford Arsenal. 

In a small corner of this very tranquil piece of real estate was a tiny crowded cemetery, a Jewish cemetery with grave stones carved in English but mostly Hebrew. I say crowded because the whole scene is also surrounded by Cedar Hill Cemetery, the major secular cemetery that dominates the landscape north of the old town of Frankford. Some of my great-grandparents buried in there I was told by my wasp grandmother. I have yet to look up that Scots/Welsh branch of my family tree.

The town dates back to the Swedes before the Dutch and the English and the cemeteries were built post Civil War out in the farmland and countryside of Philadelphia County before all this was absorbed into a dense urban center full of factories and now a decaying hulk of a place. But the cemeteries escaped the fate of a lot of once country and then urban cemeteries that were condemned,  disemboweled, and moved on mass in boxed bones to other resting places further out into the outer suburban counties of Philly. 

The condemned cemeteries usually ended up as things desperately needed in the urban sprawl as playgrounds or supermarkets or supermarket with parking with other small stores, laundromats in what even in an urban setting is the traditional American Strip Mall.

But surprising there is a hill or higher land setting above the old town of Frankford which now ends as a terminus of the Frankford to downtown to Upper Darby elevated train. The old Frankford Road splits into a fork in the road at the entrance to Cedar Hill Cemetery into Bustleton Pike to the left and on the right old Bristol Pike now Frankford Avenue. - (The road to Bristol Pa. and Trenton N.J. beyond - and the oldest road - originally an Indian footpath in the state.) 

Long intro to the Hebrew Cemetery. and the recent tragic event in the news. I say this because between the decay of the old Frankford town and the fancy row houses that went up from the 20s to the 50s of post WWII Mayfair on farmland beyond is this brief land of cemeteries and a park that gives a welcome and calming shade of trees and green to the urban setting. 

Surprising to hear of the vandalism of the Mount Carmel Jewish Cemetery. There always through the years were acts of terrorism vandalism - some spray paint or the turning over of a gravestone or two in Cedar Hill or Mt. Carmel representing IMO more as act of teenage angst on a Saturday night with a couple of buds from the neighborhood sharing a six pack. 

While there were pockets of anti-Semitism in Philly, it was nothing what I see on TV or read about in Irish Catholic places like South Boston where the sub-culture there is no doubt back bay Brahmin in direct conflict with working class Irish American and somehow the Jews in between.

I have tried in the past few days to talk to some ppl on Twitter who use the desecration of the Mt. Carmel cemetery as part of some great political plot under the current Russian Junta running the White House. 

I am in the middle working with memories of older than forty years from Philly, is the memory that the Quaker subculture was always unique in that tolerance was preached if not always practiced in Philly town square, i.e. the Know Nothing Riots of the 1840s that inspired the RC archdiocese to build a separate and in many ways superior school system for children of that particular belief system. But alas that RCAD only has a few token minority catering high schools left in the inner city to supplement its premiere in the suburb rich white Catholic education business. 

I should say that Mr. Carmel was built on a tiny lot, photo below and a text of sort in comment of the current political situation - daily ten minute 1984-style Fake Hates out of the Trump Whore White House. The tiny plot seemed overcrowded in the number of stones per square inch and always seemed to me to comply with the European concept of "ghetto".

I grew up near one of these forgotten and condemned Jewish Cemeteries in Harrowgate, Harrowgate and or the German Cemetery and or Jewish Cemetery on old urban maps. I grew up not even knowing that it was and or once was there. I in a way am a very minor contributor to not letting forgotten Philly and or Harrowgate history slip away into the nothingness of dumbed-down American nothing recognition of the past. Those who do not know of or understand the past are condemned to relive the worst parts of that past etc.

My sometimes hobby is making up a Find a Grave entry for forgotten Philadelphians. I ran into the fact of the old Harrowgate Jewish Cemetery and resurrected the memory of a rabbi once buried there before being moved elsewhere. At the time I did not know that the Cemetery did not still exist. The spot on the map in a Google satellite image is still green etc. I am not perfect but it bothers me that some ppl in Philly died after their children or never married and people who made major contributions to the history of the area are forgotten to the present.  So below one of my grave entries and that in some cases get adopted and managed by others more enthusiastic than moi on the person and or subject matter. Doing my part as part-time amateur historian.

In a way I am here to be along with real citizens and volunteers especially Muslims in Philly to if only virtually restore overturned Jewish grave makers of once free and equal living Philadelphians, I am here to help not lose our valuable American heritage to the current Russian/Nazi Hate generating out of the White House and descended into the apes Republican KKK Party.

Rabbi Marcus Mordacai Jastrow

And : Sabbath Tales

.

.

President Bannon in Charge - of Big Boy Trump and Executive Hate Orders against Refugees!

New York City took it in the ass on 911 because of bad American foreign policy. 

America expect the same from now on because of the hate filled morons in the White House. 



.

“Religious Liberty/Freedom (coded Segregation Jim Crow/Gays-No)” laws pass in Southern States

Dog Whistle Bills in the inbred South to get out the local vote for the local Kim Davis County level jobs and of course the meal ticket seats in state(H8) Legislatures in the upcoming Trump 2016 GOP Tsunami are in the works.

One passed in North Carolina. Whatever happened to North Carolina? A billionaire named Pope buying up the state legislature for ten cents on the dollar, who has successfully spread his hate dope for a generation to clean up once the old bastard dies and goes to hell.

Now one bill HB757 (sounds like a toxic WMD) in Georgia from the GOP legislature waiting for the Governor’s signature. Bills Labeled as anti-gay but just the standard coded H8 stuff – “Religious Liberty/Freedom (coded Segregation Jim Crow/Gays-No)” laws to protect some "Christian" bakery in rural America, the only bakery in one horse towns, from making wedding cakes for the Blacks or the current easy to H8 flavor of the month target - ‘da Gays - in bible beating A-merica.  

Beat your bishops Religious Libery/Freedom - white guys club.

They can buy a dozen guns and hide in fear of it whatever it is – the women, the blacks, the gays, the future but they can’t come with something better than religion to put a sweet grape jelly covering onto their sticky peanut buttered up hate. 

.

Don't Hate Unions (please)

Culture and Economic War by the white 1% on Minorities (a rising future middle class) Continues.

.