Tag: Okie

B is for Baha’i

The Okie and I saw Seals and Crofts perform in NYC on November 12, 1971 – Bahá’u’lláh’s birthday!

bahaiA few months after I married my college sweetheart, the Okie, in 1972, she decided to become a Baha’i. She said that I ought not to have been surprised, since she had been thinking about it for seven years. This I did know.

In Persia, modern-day Iran, there was a guy named The Báb (1819-1850), who was a John the Baptist-like herald of the faith. “In the middle of the 19th century, He announced that He was the bearer of a message destined to transform humanity’s spiritual life.” That second messenger was Bahá’u’lláh (1817-1892), the “Glory of God”, “the Promised One foretold by the Báb and all of the Divine Messengers of the past. Bahá’u’lláh delivered a new Revelation from God to humanity.”

Indeed, I was intrigued with the notion of “progressive revelation,” among them Abraham, Krishna, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, the Báb, and Bahá’u’lláh, who were Manifestations of God” for different times.

“In His will, Bahá’u’lláh appointed His oldest son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (1844-1921), as the authorized interpreter of His teachings and Head of the Faith. Throughout the East and West, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá became known as an ambassador of peace, an exemplary human being, and the leading exponent of a new Faith.

“Appointed Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, His eldest grandson, Shoghi Effendi (1897-1957), spent 36 years systematically nurturing the development, deepening the understanding, and strengthening the unity of the Bahá’í community, as it increasingly grew to reflect the diversity of the entire human race.”

The most famous Baha’is you might have heard of was the singing duo Seals and Crofts, who the Okie and I saw perform on November 12, 1971 – Bahá’u’lláh’s birthday! – in New York City, with the then-unknown group Boz Scaggs opening for them.

Seals & Crofts put out several albums, with many of their songs – notably Year of Sunday [LISTEN] mentioning the Baha’i teachings. Interestingly, proselytizing was antithetical to Baha’i beliefs, but the duo had found a way to both make popular music and share their faith.

Well, until they released the song Unborn Child, which was both commercially toxic and, though the faith discouraged abortion, was chastened by some Baha’i body – the Universal House of Justice, perhaps – since this song was too preachy; the faith allows for abortion in VERY limited circumstances.

Ultimately, I never became a Baha’i, primarily because the Okie was proselytizing to ME. As an isolated member of the faith, she’d missed that lesson. I MIGHT have spent more time looking at this iteration of faith. Instead, I moved to an even more agnostic state of mind.

abc18
ABC Wednesday – Round 18

Uncle Ben Carson as Uncle Tom?

Version B is the ambitious black person who subordinates himself in order to achieve a more favorable status within the dominant society.

UncleBenThe Okie asks:

Some folks are saying this (picture) is racist. I think it’s perversely genius. It takes a still existing trademark with a very questionable past (Uncle Ben is now Chairman of the Board, it seems) and uses it for political satire. I went looking around the net for more information and found this article which I found interesting. Roger Green, I’d be interested in your take on it.

I read the comment on one string. Some felt it was a fine parody, appropriate about Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, someone who has said such outlandish things as that Jews having guns could have mitigated or even prevented the Holocaust. He’s not only been shown to be ignorant of history but, surprisingly for a neurosurgeon, profoundly wrongheaded about science.

Others felt the intent is irrelevant.”Stereotypes like ‘Uncle Ben’ and ‘Aunt Jemima’ are offensive to many African Americans in much the same way the pejorative ‘Uncle Tom’ is. They are used to perpetuate the myth of happy, subservient black people. that it is still being used to sell food products is as bad as a football team being called ‘Redskins’. And one added if it would have been OK if Barack and Michelle Obama had been so characterized.

This is a tricky nut to crack. I’m less concerned about evoking Uncle Ben as I am about the implicit suggestion of Uncle Tom. Though, as you’ll see, they are related.

I wrote about Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the term Uncle Tom quite a while back, so I thought I’d take a look at the article the Okie mentioned, located on the website of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. The piece made sense to me until, in its portrayal of the movie roles of Sidney Poitier, the writer declared all the roles listed to “approximate… the Tom stereotype, even though his characters were never one dimensional. Poitier did not play characters that were submissive, cheerful servants, but many of his characters were white-identified.” Notably missing was In the Heat of the Night, where Poitier returns the slap of the racist.

Next is the “Commercial Toms” section, which notes Uncle Ben’s “using the image of a smiling, elderly black man on its package.” (This begs the question what WOULD have been an appropriate black character?) “Arguably the most enduring commercial Tom is ‘Rastus,’ the Cream of Wheat Cook. While the guy on the package seems benign to me, the patois that he was stuck saying in earlier days was clearly racist: “Maybe Cream of Wheat aint got no vitamines. I dont know what them things is….” Too bad, because he always reminded me of some ancestors of my father.

The real crux of this matter is in the section “Uncle Tom as Opprobrium”:

In many African American communities “Uncle Tom” is a slur used to disparage a black person who is humiliatingly subservient or deferential to white people. Derived from Stowe’s character, the modern use is a perversion of her original portrayal. The contemporary use of the slur has two variations. Version A is the black person who is a docile, loyal, religious, contented servant who accommodates himself to a lowly status. Version B is the ambitious black person who subordinates himself in order to achieve a more favorable status within the dominant society. In both instances, the person is believed to overly identify with whites, in Version A because of fear, in Version B because of opportunism. This latter use is more common today.

“Uncle Tom,” unlike most anti-black slurs, is primarily used by blacks against blacks. Its synonyms include “oreo,” “sell-out,” “uncle,” “race-traitor,” and “white man’s negro.” It is an in-group term used as a social control mechanism.

I have discovered that some white people also feel the need to ascertain whether a black person is “black enough.” In column A, the moderate civil rights leaders of the 1960s (King, Whitney Young, et al.) had been called Toms by those more militant. But the Version B have included Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and pretty much any black Republican.

This is an extremely long way to say, no, I don’t think the picture is specifically racist; it surely did not offend me. Mentioning race, or Uncle Tom, or Uncle Ben, is not perforce inappropriate. But there is an element of what Nelson Mandela used to refer to as racialism, a conversation that has race as a core element.

That convenient trope that all black conservatives aren’t “REALLY black” I find frustrating. Their philosophy certainly doesn’t represent MY POV at all, but to drum them out of the ethnic grouping as “inauthentic” by those who act “blacker than thou” really bugs me. Even when it applies to Ben Carson, who, if I were inclined, I might mock as foolish or crazy, but not as an Uncle Tom, which, I believe, the drawing is, at least partially, designed to do. Perhaps he was targeted as a result of his total lack of understanding of Black Lives Matter.

Still, I found the graphic mildly clever. The Wife grimaced when she saw it, but the tween daughter, who’s pretty political savvy for her age, found it hilarious.

40 Years Ago: August 26, 1972 – Ceremony

At some point, we broached the subject of getting married. My parents thought it was a terrible idea.

After my arrest at IBM in May 1972, and her parents’ ultimatum about me, my girlfriend the Okie, inexplicably in retrospect, ended up living at my parents’ home. Sometime during my freshman year in college, my parents and sisters had moved from the tiny house on Gaines Street in Binghamton to the much more roomy house on Ackley Avenue in Johnson City, the next municipality over. She stayed in my sister Leslie’s room while Leslie spent six weeks with our great aunt Charlotte and some of Charlotte’s siblings. (Leslie should write about those adventures; I would post them here.)

From the money I had made working the year before, I had lent my parents some cash for the down payment on the house, the first one they ever owned. The house where I grew up was owned by my maternal grandmother, a source of tremendous ego irritation for my father, I’m sure. (My loaning my parents money became some odd big deal to my sisters when they found out only a year or two ago, and I’m still puzzled by it.)

The Okie and I were young (19) and very much in love. At some point, we broached the subject of getting married. My parents thought it was a terrible idea.

So the Okie and I went to Pennsylvania, just across the border from Binghamton, got a blood test, and got a marriage license in Susquehanna, PA. Baby sister Marcia made the cake, and with sister Leslie, and my friends Carol and Jon present, we got married by a justice of the peace.

Yes, we WERE too young, and fights over money and religion meant that, a little over two years later, the Okie moved to Philadelphia by herself. To this day, I’m still not 100% sure why.

The failure of this marriage put me into a major funk for the next three years, longer than we were together. One of the worst days, shortly after our divorce became final, was when she let me know she was getting married again.

40 Years Ago – June 14, 1972: Purgatory

For several seconds, I believe that I have died, and that the people around me are part of the Judgment.

After I was arrested and convicted of trespassing at the IBM Poughkeepsie (NY) plant, one or both of the Okie’s parents decided that it was either them or me; the fact was that the Okie’s dad worked at the nearby IBM Kingston plant. The particulars are now fuzzy, but somehow, my parents agreed to have my girlfriend stay at their house in Johnson City, NY that summer, where they had just moved from neighboring Binghamton. she was staying in the room of one of my sisters. (More on that eventually.)

The thing was that the only job I could find was at IBM Endicott, and while I don’t believe it was involved in the same war program as IBM Poughkeepsie, it was the same multinational. Nagged by one of my father’s friends, and perhaps the Okie, I went to work there about June 5. Unlike the previous summer, where I had three different tasks to do, I had this one job ALL night involving putting clips on circuit boards – boring doesn’t begin to describe it.

I don’t recall how I got to work every day, but at least on Wednesday, June 14, I hitchhiked. I got picked up by a guy named Charlie. I didn’t know him but he knew my father and recognized me in him. He drops me off at a corner, and I open the door then…

As I learned later, this woman who had some arthritic condition in her leg, and had high-risk insurance, as a result, plowed into the rear of Charlie’s car at 35 mph because her leg could not reach the brake. Charlie’s car was pushed forward into the car in front of his, but since the car in front was much heavier than Charlie’s, it threw us back. Charlie was of course in the driver’s seat, but I was halfway out of the car and was knocked unconscious.

Some period later, I am lying on the sidewalk and there are a bunch of people standing around me in a circle. For several seconds, I believe that I have died and that the people around me are part of the Judgment. But is it heaven or hell? Then I hear an ambulance in the background, and I realize that I am still in Endicott, which is more like purgatory.

We get transported to a nearby hospital. At some point, one or both of my parents arrive, as does the Okie, who burst into tears. She’s crying because she is glad I’m OK. I THINK she’s crying because my face was a ghastly, swollen mess, which, IMO, it was.

I was in the hospital a day and a half. I remember one night, my pillow fell off the bed, and I had to ring a nurse because my shoulder was too sore to pick it up.

Friday, my father picked me up and took us home. What I remember most was the Union-Endicott High School football field filling up because of all the rain we had received from Hurricane Agnes. I spent a week home, and then a week at work.

Friday, June 30, my mom, the Okie, and my sisters picked me up from work. Usually, I worked from 5:12 p.m. until 4 a.m. – 10 hour-days were the norm – but we were getting a long weekend, so I got out at 2 a.m. We went grocery shopping. I was carrying a fairly light bag with my left arm when suddenly, it just gave out. Fortunately, I was able to catch it with my right arm.

For the next six weeks, I ended up doing physical therapy and probably worked a couple more weeks in the end.

The thing is: it was wrong, FOR ME, to have worked at IBM that summer. I don’t want to say I was punished by God in the accident, but metaphysically/spiritually/whatever, it was just bad karma. And it only would get worse.

40 Years Ago: March 5, 1972 – did not see that coming

It was a surprise birthday party for me!

In the Scudder Hall dorm, at the State University College of New Paltz, my room was B-2. I had a roommate named Ron, who was a graduate student; an odd pairing, a freshman and someone doing post-graduate work. But he was a pretty easy-going guy, and I guess I didn’t drive him too crazy.

It was surprising, though, that one day, Ron decided that we really needed to thoroughly clean the room. I didn’t think it looked that bad, but surely I would not have been the gold standard for that kind of thing.

A couple of days later, which was a Sunday, my friend Uthaclena was over at one of the dining halls playing billiards. I must admit here that 1) I love playing pool, but in spite of that, 2) I’ve never gotten very good at it.

After a time, he and I went back to my dorm room. If you have had glasses, you know how it was when it’s a bit cool out, then you walk into a room that’s a bit warmer? Right – the glasses steam up. So I walk into my room, and there are my girlfriend, the Okie (I think – I’m having trouble seeing), and our friend Alice, Ron of course, but wait? Is that my father, mother, and sisters? And who is THAT guy? (It turned out to be the quasi-boyfriend of one of my sisters.) And possibly others, though it was a small room.

It was a surprise birthday party for me! My birthday wasn’t for a couple of days, and so it caught me unawares. But it was great. I was feeling a bit melancholy, my first birthday away from home. And, more than that, they brought a lot of Kentucky Fried Chicken ((back when they called it that), and there was enough left over for me to have for a couple more meals.

The event had a profound impact on me. I have subsequently helped pull off a number of surprise birthday parties over the years. Of course, I can still be surprised myself; the very next year, my parents, coordinating with the Okie, puled off another event; I think we went out to dinner. And much more recently, Uthaclena and his wife plotted with my wife to surprise me.

One last thing about the plan two score ago: my father called our dorm room one morning at 7 a.m. Ron answered the phone, and my father revealed the plan. But even as I lay on my bed half-awake, Ron never let on who he was talking to. But it DID lead to a clean dorm room.

Ramblin' with Roger
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