"Now I have hate!"

 I don't know why, but lately I have been thinking of Natalie Wood's final scene in the 1961 version of West Side Story. 

Tony, her lover, has just died in Maria's arms.  She stands up, Chino -- the man who's just killed Tony -- hands her the gun. She wants to know, "How do you fire this gun. By pulling this little trigger?" Then, she points the gun towards the group of Jets, then the Sharks, and shouts (paraphrased), "You killed him. All of you. And my brother. And Riff. Not with guns and bullets. But with hate. Well, I can kill too. Because now I have hate!" 

Maria began West Side Story as an innocent young girl, experiencing her "love at first sight", planning to run away with him because he's in danger from killing Maria's brother and he knows the gang will be out for revenge. Somehow, she retains her innocence . . . until that final scene. 

You see the hardness fall on her face first, then hear it in her voice when she wants to know how do you fire this gun? Then you see her grief when she throws herself over Tony's body, screaming, "Don't you touch him!" 

She knows she has to let him go. So she whispers, "Te adoro, Anton."  Then remains kneeling on the concrete while the Jets and the Sharks -- now working together for the first time in their lives, probably -- pick up Tony's body and carry it away. 

A gang member then covers Maria's head with a shawl, a sign of mourning for a woman who has lost a husband.  In Maria's case, she has lost a lover. Then she, in her red dress, with her shawl-covered head, stands up stoically and follows the Jets and the Sharks offstage.

Maria did not, at that moment, give into her hate by firing the gun.

But I wonder how she handled her hate later.

Her line, "I can kill now, because I have hate!" has run through my mind for some reason. 

Don't the majority of murders happen because of hate? 

Doesn't it start with hate?

Hate of a particular person for an actual or perceived wrong?

Hate of a particular group because of a past history of wrongs done to them?  Or hate of a particular group because you feel threatened by them? 

And what other crimes start with hate? 

Come to think of it, what else starts with hate? Or cultivates hate? Believing, "I'm right, you're wrong, and if we don't agree, we can't be friends? And not only can we not be friends, we can't even talk to each other anymore?"

Do I, Tina, have hate? 

I would love to stand up and say, "No, I am not a hater. I don't hate people. I don't allow myself to be consumed with hate."

That wouldn't be true. 

I've hated people, hated groups of people, let hate eat me up and eat me alive. 

Sometimes hate can be good. Hating prejudice and bigotry, didn't that lead to the Civil Rights Movement? Didn't the hate of being mistreated lead to others having compassion because they didn't want to treat others the way they were treated? 

But too often, hate leads to a Tony, dead on a basketball court, and a Maria, first cold and angry, then grief-stricken. 

Did she carry her hate with her? Did she use her hate to promote non-violence? Did she use herself as an example of what gang violence can do to a person? 

Or did she let her hate eat her alive?

That's a good question for me.

Have I, am I, letting my own hate for whatever eat me alive? 

I don't like how we are being eaten alive by hate in this country these days. I don't like how political candidates attack one another so viciously. I don't like how other candidates take advantage of hatred of a particular group and stir it up just so they can gain votes. 

My question is, how do I not allow hate to eat me alive? 

Our pastor has been doing a series about the fruit of the Spirit. He's from a construction background, and not only does he use the term "fruit" to describe love, joy, peace, etc., he also uses the word "tools" to describe using "love, joy, peace," etc. 

I wonder if these "tools" are the way to not allow hate eat me alive. And these tools and fruit are "of the Spirit". I cannot fight hate by simply writing down a "to-do" list of "how not to hate", forcing myself to be nice to someone while gritting my teeth. 

No, I can only fight hate through reaching out for the power of the Spirit. And he is more than willing to give it. 

I do not want to be Maria, saying, "I can kill, too, because now I have hate!"

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Losing hope

This is a depressing post, and for that I'm sorry.

To begin with, my mother has been in and out of the hospital for the last week and a half.  She had a blood clot in the same leg where she's had problems before.  The whole situation has been very stressful on all the people involved.

I've been concerned about North Korea.  But I also think that the little dictator there has a serious case of short-man complex that he compensates for by saber-rattling.

And then came Charlottesville.

I have not been sitting in front of the TV camped out with either CNN or Fox.  But it's impossible to avoid the news of the last few days.

I am fed up, and I have lost hope for this country.

We are so angry.  We are so much at each others' throats.  We've lost common ground.  I'm just waiting for someone to throw the Molotov cocktail that will launch us into World War III.

And at the risk of making people even angrier, I do agree with our President to an extent:  there is hatred on both sides.  I wish he had called out the Nazis and the alt-right immediately.  When you walk around wearing white hoods and carrying a swastika flag, what in the world do you expect is going to happen??  When you identify with the people who perpetrated one of the greatest crimes against humanity in history, you DESERVE to be called out and condemned, pronto!

On the other hand, it seems that the sins of the right are always magnified, while the sins of the left are ignored or minimized.

I truly feel like throwing up my hands and screaming, "Forget it!" along with a lot of other nasty words.  Because it seems like nothing I can do or say is going to do one bit of good.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Manic Monday: The Confederate battle flag, from a Southern white woman's POV . . .

I am a white woman.  I was born in southern Kentucky.  Kentucky, during the Civil War, was a border state.

One of my great-grandfathers was named after Robert E. Lee.  (I've done some pretty extensive genealogical research, and I can't find evidence of any of my ancestors being slaveowners.)

I moved to Florida at the age of four, and I was raised there.  A huge controversy rose in 1971 about the usage of the Confederate battle flag at Dixie Hollins High School in Pinellas County, Florida, where I lived.  That was the same year court-ordered busing for racial integration began.  At least one of my friends transferred to a private Christian school that year.  Several years later, I attended a school in a black neighborhood.  I was bused there due to that same court-ordered busing.

I went to college at FSU.  The Florida Panhandle is still, culturally, more of "the South" than St. Petersburg, FL.  The Kappa Alpha fraternity would hold an annual celebration of "secession" with girls in hoop skirts and boys dressed as "Southern gentlemen".

I spent seven years in Miami, which is both a melting pot and a hotbed of racial and cultural conflict.

Now, I live in the Atlanta area, where the name of William T. Sherman is still taken in vain.

I say all that to say this:

I am opposed to the Confederate battle flag.

I do believe it should be in a museum on display, where people can know what it is and understand its history.  (I believe the same about the Nazi swastika--people need to know what it is and what its significance was and is.)

But I don't believe it should be on display, as it has been in South Carolina; nor do I believe that the previous Georgia state flag--which contained the Confederate battle flag--be reinstated.

Why?  Because no matter how many times people insist that the Confederate battle flag is "heritage, not hate", I'm drawn back to these lines from Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens, made in a speech in Savannah, GA on March 21, 1861:

"The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. [Thomas] Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. (Emphasis mine, TAS.)

. . . look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgement of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws."

The above excerpt is part of what is considered the Cornerstone Speech, also known as the Cornerstone Address, given as an extemporaneous speech.  (I cut and pasted the excerpt from the Wikipedia article on the Cornerstone Speech.  A discussion about the speech can also be found here, at the blog Big Think.)

The Big Think article contends that Stephens' attitude towards African-Americans was more "paternalistic".  Perhaps "paternalistic" can be defined as an attitude of, "we must take care of you because you are inferior."

That (minus the attitude of inferiority) is the attitude I have towards my son.  I do need to care for him . . . but don't I also need to teach him to care for himself?

I'm sorry, but when you put in a sentence like, "the negro is inferior to the white man" . . . THAT is what I hear and what I see when I see the Confederate battle flag.

And saying that a group of people is "inferior" is condescending, patronizing, and hateful.

And that is why the Confederate battle flag needs to be confined to museums and history books.

I admit that, as a Southern white woman, there is no way I can ever "get" a history of slavery or a history of systemic, legalized discrimination.  I don't know what it's like to be afraid that you could be lynched just for looking at someone the wrong way.  And I fear that I can be patronizing and condescending towards others who I may see as "inferior".  Right now, other than doing what John Howard Griffin (author of Black Like Me) did -- dyeing my skin and living as an African-American -- I don't know how to crawl into the skin of African-Americans and truly understand what many of them deal with on a day to day basis.

The Bible does say, in Galatians 3:28, "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (New International Version)  There is no such thing as "inferiority". 

So please, do not give me the line of "heritage, not hate" when you refer to the Confederate battle flag.  Too many people see hate and inferiority when they look at that flag.

Including me, a Southern white woman.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.