My two-cents worth and then some. An online journal by LP Brown.

Browsing Category Opinion

My Opinion on topics

Family Dynamics: What’s Love Got to Do With It?

by on ·Family, Opinion, The Way I See It

My family’s reunion was this past weekend. I wasn’t there. From what I heard on the grapevine and viewing photos, folks seemed to have had a good time, and that’s a good thing. A family affair should be a happy occasion.

I spent the past few days discussing family reunions with some friends and doing an unofficial survey. A few of them told me that their family never had reunions. One said he doesn’t know why they don’t have them. He said he once asked his older sister why the family had never had one, and she said no one wanted to do the work.

As I was jotting down notes from my survey, I remembered discussing the same subject decades ago with another close friend, Carol. She told me that her mother died when she was a child. She had a small extended family, and “We aren’t close at all.” She said. She affirmed what most folks know: a biological connection doesn’t always equal a love connection.

Carol went on to tell me that she and her older brother were very young when their mother died. She was around five; he was three years older. The two of them were separated and sent to live with different families, and as they grew up, they grew apart and eventually became estranged and lost touch. One day, when she was forty-something, as she was walking home from the grocery store, she and her brother happened to be approaching each other from opposite directions. He recognized her and called her name before she saw him. They greeted each other politely but didn’t exchange a so-happy-to-see-you hug. She said she was surprised but wasn’t excited to see him. “I didn’t feel any kind of way,” she said. “In essence, we were strangers.”

After chatting for a few minutes without exchanging phone numbers or other contact information, they said, “See ya’,” and each went along their way. Carol said she didn’t feel a familial relationship existed between them. A year or so later, someone told her that her brother had died and would be buried in two days. She didn’t attend the funeral.

After Carol told me about that encounter, I felt terrible for her and her brother. I couldn’t understand how kinfolk could be so alienated – until years later.

I recently read a humorous, thought-provoking anecdote: “When we are between middle age and almost dead, our perspective on many things tends to change.” That’s true. As I’ve grown older, once puzzling things have become crystal clear; being related to someone doesn’t mean you have to like them.

In an ideal world, family functions are a joyous occasion. It is an opportunity for everyone to mingle, catch up on old times, and have fun. But – REALITY CHECK – we don’t live in an ideal world, and just because folks are related doesn’t mean they have a love fest.

When I discuss the issue of family dynamics with other people, most agree that the family’s elders are the glue that holds the family together. Once the patriarch and especially the matriarch dies, the family ties unravel. Layers of resentment build and minor family feuds sometimes escalate into full-blown warfare. That brings me back to family reunions.

Family reunions are good for rekindling relations with kinfolk. So often, we don’t even get to talk to some family members except at funerals, and sometimes, due to time constraints, not even then.

My friend Gail told me that her family has a reunion every year. On my father’s side, there has been an annual reunion for as long as I can remember. My cousin Velda, who skillfully organizes every reunion on that side of my family, cleverly hosted the family reunion during the pandemic over Zoom, and we had a blast!

On the contrary, my mother’s side has a reunion every few years. Family reunions, in general, are often a mixture of familiar relatives and kinfolk who are so distant that they are practically strangers except for the shared bloodline. Take the last reunion I attended in 2018. Of course, I knew my surviving aunts and uncle, my numerous first cousins, and some of their children. On the other hand, several distant relatives I had never met were there, also. The beauty of a family reunion is that it facilitates the introduction of new or not previously known family members. However, good, bad, and ugly components sometimes surface at family gatherings.

The good – Genial kin. Because of the distance between where we live, I don’t see some of my favorite relatives as often as I’d like to, so when we do get together, we have a joyful time. We are close. They are the kinfolk I love unconditionally. Sadly, some of my faves are deceased aunts and uncles who live only in my memory, but like them, their offspring are kind-hearted, humorous, and genuinely loving folks.

The bad and ugly – Toxic kin. Remember the adage, “If we weren’t related, we wouldn’t even be friends?” Being related to someone doesn’t mean that you have to like them. I don’t know a family that doesn’t have at least one unlikeable drama queen or king (sometimes more than one). Those toxic kin are not physically ugly. It is their behavior. They are ugly because they are devious, insecure, miserable, and dissatisfied with their lives; therefore they thrive on gossiping and bad-mouthing others. Their reputation precedes them, so practically everyone knows who they are. Some folks try to avoid them inconspicuously; others tolerate them because we recognize that they are drowning in their misery.

As children grow up and mature, they form opinions about family members based on their interactions, and other family members occasionally influence them. I keep repeating it, but kinship doesn’t necessarily convert to friendship. Unfortunately, you don’t always love people just because you are related. You don’t even have to like them. What’s genetics got to do with it? Nothing. I treat family like I treat friends and acquaintances. If we get along, we’ll have a genuine relationship, but if our personalities don’t mesh, I avoid them like a plague.

Some folks don’t like to talk about family relationships. It’s like airing dirty laundry. But this subject is as fitting for scrutiny as any other topic. Everyone has a right to their perspective, to call it as we see it, and I just did.

 

6 Comments

Pledging Allegiance

by on ·Opinion, Religion

A man is accepted into a church for what he believes, and he is turned out for what he knows.  – Mark Twain

I was in grade school in the 1950s when many public schools in the U.S. began requiring students to place their hands over their hearts and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Within days after the routine started, my mother began helping me memorize the Pledge, although she expressed her disapproval of the school’s policy. She said that we owe allegiance to God, not a flag. My siblings and I heard our mother repeat that statement numerous times during our early school days.

I don’t think mother was unpatriotic. But being black in America and having grown up under racist Jim Crow laws in a small North Carolina town didn’t inspire patriotism. I wonder if her strict religious upbringing also discouraged saluting the flag. Sometimes, during our chats on the subject, mother would emphasize the point by referencing Bible scriptures like those in Exodus. “Thou shall have no other gods before me.” “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,” “Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them.”

From her perspective, the flag represented a graven image, a god of sorts, and her children reciting what was frequently referred to as the flag salute was disrespecting God.

In the 1970s, when mother began studying with the Jehovah’s Witnesses (I also refer to them as JWs or the group), she must have had a hallelujah moment and done a happy dance after learning that their long-dead leader, Joseph Rutherford, had declared that the flag salute and numerous other social activities and customs violate Biblical commands. (Rutherford, the second president of the incorporated Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, renamed the sect Jehovah’s Witnesses following the death of the founder Charles Taze Russell).

I was a young woman when my mother – one of nine children of a pastor and his wife – rejected her Southern Baptist background and converted, so I escaped being born into a family that worshiped with the group. My dad never became a JW, nor did I.

Maybe I’ve been looking in all the wrong places, but I have yet to find anywhere in the Bible that says a Pledge of Allegiance to a flag or singing a National Anthem is sacrilegious. I didn’t say it wasn’t in there; I said I haven’t found it.

Because of my strong desire to understand what led my mother to convert from her Christian upbringing to join the JWs, I’ve done much research on the group, scouring books, articles, and websites over the years. I learned that Rutherford was disgruntled with the government following what he considered his unjust imprisonment in 1918 after he began promoting Russell’s anti-government book The Finished Mystery.

Following his release, Rutherford proceeded to reorganize the group and issued a blistering condemnation of things of “the world,” including the celebration of holidays and birthdays. He also disapproved of other religions, claiming that theirs is the one true religion.

Decades ago, years before my mother joined the group, I studied with Blanche, a JW whom I had met and befriended when we lived in the same high-rise building. After knowing her briefly, she invited me to “Bible study” with her. That’s when I learned she was a JW, and I suspected I had been targeted to become a baptized JW.

I may not be the brightest bulb on the string, but I have high wattage. It didn’t take long for me to understand that if I were to join the JWs, I’d have to give up my self-autonomy and conform to the group’s doctrine. I had been baptized as a Baptist when I was a young teen. One baptism was enough, thank you.

Soon after I stopped studying with Blanche, I learned that Witnesses are discouraged from mingling with “pagans,” eventually, our friendship dissolved.

JWs are forbidden from questioning “the Word” and must adhere to the group’s rules. They are discouraged from having close relationships with “worldly” people because they (we pagans) are seen as bad influences. In addition to not saluting the flag, JWs avoid military service, singing national anthems, jury duty, and voting. They do not celebrate holidays or birthdays, and they don’t accept blood transfusions because they believe the procedure creates a risk of losing eternal salvation.

In 2018, Derek Miller and a CTV investigative team published some facts about the JW religion that many people might not know.

People can and will worship however and whomever they choose, and for various reasons, I choose to avoid all organized religions.

0 Comments

It Is What It Is or Is It?

by on ·Lifestyle and Culture, Opinion, The Way I See It

“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” – Albert Einstein

Writing about a sensitive subject is challenging. People are touchy, especially when they are in denial. We all tend to see what we want to see and choose to ignore things that make us uncomfortable.

I decided to disclose an event that a friend recently shared with me. As I often do to protect people’s anonymity, I use aliases instead of the names of the persons involved.

Minnie is a neighbor of mine. She and I have a mutual acquaintance, Addie, who also lives in the neighborhood. We have known Addie since her two sons and daughter were young children. A few years ago, her then twenty-something-year-old daughter, Leslie, left home and eventually returned as Lester. Addie would later confide in us what we had already realized, “My daughter is now my son.”

We don’t know if Leslie had GRS (gender reassignment surgery), but we accepted the transition when she returned home sporting a buzz haircut, wearing men’s clothing, and purporting to be a male.

One day, Minnie went out to run an errand. While she was gone, Lester knocked on her door. Getting no answer, Lester left a note that Minnie found stuck in the door jam upon her return. He asked Minnie to phone him concerning an old sofa that Minnie had made known that she was selling.

Minnie was no more familiar with Lester’s telephone voice than I was. She said when she dialed the number and asked to speak to Lester, she was expecting to hear a masculine voice; instead, an androgynous voice answered and said, “This is she.”

Minnie said she was momentarily confused by the response and asked again to speak to Lester. Again, the voice replied, “This is she.” At that point, Minnie said their conversation proceeded.

Minnie asked me what I thought about that episode. “Let me be clear,” I said to her. “When Lester answered the phone, did he say, ‘This is he’ or ‘This is she?” Minnie said, “He distinctly said, ‘This is she.’ There’s nothing wrong with my hearing.”

That led us into a head-scratching discussion. Was “This is she” a Freudian slip, a memory lapse, or something else? What? It seems strange that someone who takes pains to ensure that people like us who knew him when he was her and folks who have only known him since the transition would make such a flub. Yet, he used the inappropriate pronoun twice when referring to himself as she. If trans people are confused about who they are, is it any wonder that some heterosexuals are also confused by them?

Not to be judgmental, I don’t care if someone chooses to change their birth gender. That’s an issue between them and God. Maybe one day in the hereafter, they’ll have to face the consequences of their decision – or perhaps they won’t. But I like to think that if I assume a different persona, I’d remember who I believe I am.

To try and understand transgender people and others like Lester, I recently read a book entitled Trans Life Survivors by Walt Heyer. I am satisfied that it has answered many of my questions.

Before anyone sarcastically asks, “What does he know?” let me give Heyer his props. He is not just someone speculating about transgender people. He is a man who transitioned to a woman. After living for several years as a female, he decided his sexuality was not the root of his unhappiness and detransitioned back to male. He has written numerous books on the subject and his personal experiences. He also has a website.

An article on cnn.com states that The Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery posts cost estimates for different procedures, including estimates of $140,450 to transition from male to female and $124,400 to transition from female to male. The message that Heyer conveys in his book is that cross-sex hormones and surgery will not cure underlying mental conditions. He further details how trans lobbyists and “surgical predators” (money-hungry doctors) take advantage of vulnerable people. Some transpeople become so confused and unhappy after transitioning that they consider or commit suicide. Unfortunately, among the suicides are two well-known personalities, 44-year-old transgender comedian Daphne Dorman, featured in a Netflix special, and transgender activist Kyle Scanlon, who killed himself at age 41.

I suspect some of my relatives, friends, and acquaintances won’t dare read Heyer’s book for whatever reason. Some of us have trans relatives and don’t want to risk offending them. (Since when did educating oneself become offensive?) Educating ourselves about anything does not mean that we are being judgmental. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that we are compliant with groupthink either.

Some data I gleaned from Heyer’s book and already suspected:  No amount of surgery or hormone treatments changes the fact that we are created male and female, and adopting an opposite-sex identity is a futile pursuit. DNA and genetic information are indeligible markers dictating that it is categorically impossible to achieve a sex change biologically, scientifically, or surgically.

0 Comments

Move Your Boat!!!

by on ·Opinion, Race Matters, The Way I See It

Beware when a black woman removes her earrings, but when a brother snatches off his cap, you’d better back your a** up because the brother ain’t backing down.

I made that jovial remark about the riverfront dock brawl that occurred on Saturday, August 5, in Montgomery, Alabama. I posted it in jest as a comment on a few Facebook pages, including my own. Although many folks recognized the humor in my remark and responded with a smiling emoji, at least one of my socially conscious friends didn’t. Instead, he asked me, “Why do you people make everything about race? Why couldn’t it just be two men fighting over a disagreement?

I said, “Did we see the same thing, two men merely disagreeing, or was one man attacking and the other defending himself?”

“Something like that,” he said.

Then, I asked, ” When are you going to wake up and smell the coffee, and what will it take?”

This friend  (I’ll call him Urkel, though Mr. Different Strokes might be more suitable) sometimes agitates me. And although our occasional conversations are usually congenial, discussions about racial issues are a hot potato that we often toss back and forth, disagreeing and sometimes being disagreeable until we abruptly drop the subject.

I’ve known Urkel for a while, and he told me he usually doesn’t discuss racial issues with black people even when asked his opinion because it often leads to a nasty argument. He considers that topic, along with religion and politics, off limits. Frankly, I wonder if he was born with (or sometime during his life developed) a black gene deficiency because, contrary to what some people reading this might think, he is a black man. His deep walnut complexion and vernacular would not allow him to pass for white if he wanted to. Based on our conversations, and though he has never admitted it, I think he wishes he could pass. His self-loathing is apparent, but not to him.

He has a distorted tendency to fault the black man for most of his problems. For instance, we’ve had heated debates over race-related events, including the murders of George Floyd, Philando Castile, and the “alledged” suicide of Sanda Bland. Aside from his warped view of reality, Urkel is kind and level-headed. 

(Sorry about that, Urkel. I couldn’t stifle the laugh.)

Although honest communication is critical to understanding another person’s perspective, sometimes one can’t help but wonder if the person they are conversing with is not only uninformed and misinformed but blind, deaf, and dumb. Or perhaps they live in an alternate universe.

Regarding Urkel’s question about why I read race into everything, I told him it’s not true. However, the past is always present; I call it as I see it. In the riverfront dock incident, this armchair quarter-back saw a white man charging and assaulting a black man because his pride would not let him be seen as subservient by adhering to the directive of a black man.

And at the risk of sounding condescending, I’ll add that I have an amicable relationship with non-racist white friends throughout the country whom I’ve known and cared about for years.

I don’t condone violence, but black people are sick and tired of being disrespected. We are not our ancestors. I think activist groups like Black Lives Matter have clarified that. The men who came to the rescue of the dock captain, including the guy who jumped off the boat and swam to the dock, embody the words of Maya Angelo, “I am the hope and the dream of the slave.”

Despite how often the media, TV programs, and movies portray black people, many of us are not violent. Many friends and acquaintances have told me their parents raised them as I was raised:  you don’t start a fight, but you don’t run away from one. When I was a child, if I ran inside my home after getting into a fist-swinging scuffle with one of the kids in the hood (usually girls, but sometimes boys), my mother would send me right back out there. Her attitude was the only way to stop a bully was to stand up to her (or him), and mother was right. Unfortunately, too many bullies today are cowards. They eschew a fistfight. Instead, they’ll go home, get a gun, and come back and shoot you.

If the dock captain (identified in a CNN article as Damien Pickett) had been white, would the aggressor (Richard Roberts) have reacted the same way toward him? I doubt it. Roberts may have been a new “kid” on the dock, but he refused several times when Pickett asked him to move his pontoon boat. In his rage, Roberts didn’t see red; he saw black and went after Pickett. And then backup came by land and sea to aid Pickett. One man swung a chair. Rapper Gmac Cash even wrote a song about the incident.

To the amusement of Wakanda fans, MSNBC host Joy Reed humorously wrote, “I’m gonna tell my grandkids this was Black Panther and the Avengers.”

I’ll tell mine that when Roberts started the brawl, if he didn’t know then, he knows now that homies don’t play that.

0 Comments

Living in America: An Average Citizen Vents

by on ·Law and Order, Opinion, Politics

The following post was written by a Guest Author, Anonymous

Bear with me while I vent. Several hours ago, while listening to Keith Olbermann’s latest podcast (Countdown with Keith Olbermann), I fully realized the appalling potential danger the 45th president created for this country when he took classified documents from the White House.

If you are like me, you’ll feel stunned and outraged after listening to Olbermann’s take on how one depraved and treacherous moron may have set America on a path to subjugation or eventual destruction.

Consider how enemies of the U.S. have worked long and hard to infiltrate and access this country’s most profound, crucial secrets by hook or crook. And then think about the authoritarian wannabe treating the secrets as nothing less than copyrighted recipes that he could use for profit or to gain influence. Of course, his blatant disregard for democracy and this country is nothing new.

Numerous people who could have done something to prevent this national tragedy but did nothing must shoulder the blame. The list of the guilty is lengthy. If Merrick Garland had been forthcoming, he could have exposed the dilemma early on. Mueller, too was deferential. Even Obama could have brought 45 to court for defaming him with false wiretapping allegations. Anyone of them might have prevented what has become a national tragedy. Being submissive to people you know to operate on an entirely malignant, evil, self-serving path is morally costly and reckless. Perhaps it would have created bedlam if any of those who might have taken steps to prevent the tragic results had stepped up, but it also would have shown 45 that America and Americans of good conscious won’t tolerate his nonsense. So, the perpetrator pursued his mission, and it has come to this.

How many people do you suppose have been hired at Mar-a-Lago since 45 was in office and following his defeat? How many housekeepers? How many gardeners, cooks, cleaners, pool boys, janitors? You don’t think Russia, North Korea, or Saudi Arabia is smart enough to assign someone to infiltrate that place? It doesn’t seem unreasonable when you consider some of the sinister, underhanded stuff some of these countries have done in the past. Does it?

This country may never know the extent of the damage done until it’s too late to do anything about it. That’s what’s so creepy and so unforgivable about this situation. What a betrayal. And what an unforced error for those who may have prevented it.

America’s obeisance and submission to the wealthy, privileged whites, and powerful, especially when they espouse an ideology of supremacy and hierarchy, may become this country’s downfall. If the U.S. survives this trial by fire, the government must redouble efforts to make this country dedicated to equality, truth, and justice for all and stop allowing the wealthy and well-connected to play on a different stage.

0 Comments