"Stranger in the Village"

It's very interesting to hear him talk about the "interracial drama" being acted out in america between blacks and whites. We can no longer deny reality, american whites can no longer hold on to european "innocence" , meaning that we will never have the "luxury" of being in the little forgotten swiss village witnessing a black man for the first time. We have a new and completely original form of identity which can no longer be denied really by either side. We run to our european roots and they hit a wall and form a new identity in having lost their own history.
In a strange way i feel like that too, like coming to america is a way of losing your past, and forgetting our history. I guess that's why so many hispanics work hard to maintain it, and the rest of us pretend to be angry because of "broken borders" but really we feel the anger that someone gets to enjoy and keep their history while for the rest of us it stopped a few generations back when our great grandparents came here seeking new opportunities and new identities. In some ways i'd rather be the poor scottish farmboy without money, than the rich spoiled american with a past that only goes back only to my great grandfather arriving with no money and settling what is now known as Ririe, Id. It's a cool short history but imcomplete.
It's that same feeling i got from baudrillard, somewhat generalizing how americans are except he's right in the same ways that baudrillard was. It's kind of disquieting to read from the perspective of a white american who's proud to be white and american although i'm not even sure what that means anymore. I think i'm just happy to be me and to be alive, but it's weird there does seem to be a strange divide in america but also one filled with more emotion and history than anywhere else (although i'm no expert).
We are not the members of this little Swiss village, naively wanting to touch a black mans hair because it is the first time we've seen it. We are too scared for that. We've bred shame into ourselves out of guilt. We've gone to a point where we feel worse for being better off (some of us at least). This hasn't transferred completely to hispanics because our history with them is completely different. We are ashamed and thus let some politician or beauracracy handle the "problem." The problem with that is that when the government handles anything, it usually makes the problem worse. Half ass projects are put up and welfare poorly (so i've heard) distributed. Low income schools bus poor kids to rich neighborhoods and we wonder why they act up in class. I think that with all our talk of "tolerance" we are really just suppressing something that is deep rooted and now festering. We are adapting to a new world system which is drastically different than how it's been since man first began to think and form tribes; to wage war and enslave. This is more the reality of human nature, since it has what has been right since day yet, and now suddenly we enter a world with a new mentality, where the old mentality is so completely abondoned that it has become taboo to think or speak about, which in turn creates more confusion and more suppressed feelings. We are given a new mentality with the same energy and no where to put it.
I am not advocating things go back to how they were, for it does seem that we needed a new world mentality, but to run to one that chooses rather to not offend than to accept reality seems counterproductive although it seemed much worse twenty years ago when the reigning mentality was men and women were inherently the same except for a artificial external features. This is not truth but a belief that was disproved by science. Men and Women are Fundamentally different. It's biology. We think and act differently. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It's what makes the world interesting and exciting. We don't need to be robots to be equal.
I think Baldwin has some very good points though. I just heard that when performing in Las Vegas, Nat King Cole had to enter the casinos from the back entrance. NAT KING COLE. I was shocked but my grandma goes "that's just how it was. I never really thought about it until afterwards." She seemed genuinely disgusted about it though (although this woman was a mormon when blacks were denied access to the priesthood and didn't seem to care much). That's just how it was. She feels no guilt at anything. She just happened to be in a place that enforced discriminatory laws. they didn't affect her at all and that's how things had always been. I could never fault my grandma for suddenly changing her mind on the issue once it became socially acceptable. That's how millions were, and now she's one of the people complaining about gangs and such with no real solutions. Just floating along in life, taking what is and isn't acceptable for granted. Not really ever thinking, just feeling her way along life until it all ends and the movie camera stops and she gets to shake the great Eye's hand, and say "i did it, take me to the top, i was one of the good ones; i shut my eyes, plugged my ears, and shut off my brain, while keeping my heart open to you at all times; knowing that all good feelings were from you, and all bad from the Eye in the ground. I did it, i lived as i was commanded. I barely questioned, and i only did that because i was commanded. i did everything you asked and now i want to live at the top. I let you be my eyes, my ears, and my brain and now i want my reward."
I feel a little cruel for saying all that about my grandma, but it isn't just her, it's all who give up searching for truth and stray into the land of belief and wishes. i love them all dearly, since they are more like children, but i never really know what to do with them. Some of them are even more intelligent than me in many ways, but i still feel like until they can suspend their belief long enough to see that belief in anything, even nothing, is still an act of leaving the search for truth.

maybe that's ok. maybe i'm making a big deal out of nothing. i know i fall off the path often, but i still sleep ok at night because i know when i fall off and i know what i have to do to get back on even though it can be the most painful thing in the world.
All in all i suppose the message from Baldwin is that realiy is here whether we want it to be or now and it will eventually bite us and refusing to acknowledge it will only make the bite that much worse.