Re: [LS] Judas kiss

[Louie Crew <lcrew@ANDROMEDA.RUTGERS.EDU>]

It's fairly standard to demonize the "other."   When I taught at the foreign
language institute in Beijing, I was amused to see posters in the library
warning people not to steal books.   The thieves were always pictured as
very light skinned with huge noses.

I often heard "Daah Bidz Zu" [the big nose] when I boarded buses in Beijing.
Of course they assumed that I did not know what they were saying.  I would
always smile, nod, and say "Saai Bidz Zu" (Small Noses).   Many would turn a
darker yellow.

I also always took along a cheap camera with no film.   When people pushed
and shoved ahead of me to board, I would raise the camera to "take a
picture," and they would scatter to the right and left as if avoiding my red
carpet.

I love Elizabeth Keaton's "quote of the day" yesterday:

   Obama is not a brown-skinned, anti-war socialist who gives away
   free healthcare. You're thinking of Jesus.

    -John Fugelsang (the son of a former nun and Franciscan Brother)

Yet no matter how much I know better, I still am plagued by the racist tape
programmed in me growing up deep behind the Cotton Curtain in Alabama in the
1930s and 40s.  Just this morning when a motorist cut in front of me, the
tape rolled again:  what on earth did the offender's color have to do with
the offense?!     I said nothing aloud even in the privacy of my car, but am
embarrassed even to have heard the tape unbidden in my mind  -- all the more
so as the spouse for 36+ years of the finest husband in the world.

Lord, have mercy.  Christ, have mercy.

Louie

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