(no subject)

[chess]

More ramblings from my Psion:

What normal people do when they're slightly ill and slightly tired is not eat pecans and thank God for them. I'm so glad I'm not normal, sometimes. Aren't pecans beautiful things? Smooth, but otherwise unpromesing on the outside, being a neutral kind of brown and rather hard. But they almost all have decent faults down the middle, one way, so they break easily with nutcrackers. And inside, the creamy yellow-white flesh is sweet and filling. They come from so far away, and I am priviliged enough to eat them, without having to go pick them from the tree, compete with the others in the forest for them, with a handy metal device (which I couldn't make myself) to easily open them.
But anyway, enough about pecans, however delicious and wonderful they are.

My shampoo has sugar in it - fructose and glucose. but that's not what I came here to talk about either. - here = melis at 10:38pm.

What I did come to talk about was metaphors, a subject dredged by the pecans from my memory. Specifically, bridges. And racism. Stop laughing at the back there - yes, that includes purple monkeys. Anyway.
The phrase that started the bridge metaphor was 'it's easier to build a bridge if people are working from both sides'. I was trying to justify my feeling that I expected black people to work towards combating prejudice just as much as whites should. This progressed to wondering just how much more difficult it was building a bridge from just one side. But then I thought, how much more difficult than that is it to be trying to build a bridge when the other side keeps burning any part they can reach down, and throwing stuff at you, and generally doesn't want the bridge? Wouldn't you give up building after a while, afraid that even if the other side start one, all they want to do is come over and hit you harder?

So much for my bridge metaphor as justification, then. As with all good bridges, it can be used by both sides. Not that I'm claiming my random thoughts are organised enough to constitute a side to be taken, of course :).

I guess I'll LJ-post this in the morning. Meanwhile, sleepytime. (10:45)

Comments

[passage.livejournal.com]

Do you think that black people don't work to combatting racism, where as white people do?

In what fashion?

Is there something you expect them to be doing that they aren't?

For my part I hate racism, whichever way. In some matters I feel attempts to overcome racism go to far (positive discrimination anyone?), and there are I think cases of people who are oversentive and see racism where their isn't any.

But there is racism, today, in this country. I find that tragic. I don't presume to lay blame at the feet exclusively of those of one race or another.

Where there's no bridge I think both sides are to blame. The failings of another are no excuse for your failings.

Neil