ON TOLERANCE AND FREEDOM

I like to think that we live in a country based on Freedoms …but then something happens that reminds me that those who founded this country were looking for freedom for their own beliefs…NOT all beliefs.  Last weekend I went on a trip to WV and one part of the trip included a musical dinner show that I imagined featured some version of country music. I was hoping for fiddles and a banjo…but what we got was a throwback from a darker time when racism and religion were obvious bedfellows.

 

Sure there were a few country tunes (though nary a fiddle or banjo)…but the white guy with the afro doing a parody of Little Richard was just tasteless, racist and bad on many levels…( the background recording of Amos and Andy didn’t help the atmosphere)…and then the band leader (aka bible thumping preacher) told us how they “Love the Lord” there in West-by-God Virginia  and continued on with a set of church songs in which the audience was expected to sing along…

 

By the time they finished up with a heartfelt rendition of God Bless America…honestly I was waiting for the Klan to make an appearance…well, OK…I mean the ones actually wearing their sheets….I was in the back with a friend and a couple we’d met on the trip…the husband was a black man and we just kept looking at each other in shock.  (And no, we couldn't just walk out. We'd arrived by bus - a 'captive' audience. And frankly, watching had that quality of being unable to tear my eyes away from an accident. Every time I thought it couldn't get worse-it did)

 

Now…before you think I’m over-reacting, let me ask you this: What if the band-family had been some OTHER religion, Muslims perhaps…and their performance had powerful racist (anti-white) undertones and their music was filled with a fever of religiosity that demanded audience participation???   Would the audience feel that the sing-along was perfectly dandy? No. Definitely not. The freedom would NOT extend to a different group of people extoling their racist and religious beliefs.  So the ‘freedom’ is really for the white Christians.  Just think about it.

 

Don’t get me wrong…my issue isn’t so much with the reality that this family has created and reinforces their beliefs and position openly- that is freedom of speech, absolutely…

My discomfort, anger and sadness comes from realizing that racism and religious intolerance is clearly and powerfully demonstrated every day in ways that are INVISIBLE to the majority of people.  A handfull of us were dismayed…but the majority of people in the room saw nothing off with what was happening in that room.  THAT is what creeped me out that most.  They were blind to the obvious.

 

Racism and Religion, like Sexism and Religion will continue to be bedfellows, but as thinking evolving human beings who live in a world of diverse beliefs, races and preferences…to survive….we must wake up. We must. We must learn to see what is really in front of us, and to act in a way consistent with the tolerance and freedom we pretend to be all about. Otherwise, there’s nothing left of the ‘American Dream’ but a lie.