Your white privilege blinded you to what was going on around you. Like it does for most white people.....just because you personally didn’t see it doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening. Just be grateful for the cocoon your parents wrapped you in growing up......or maybe you just weren’t paying attention in an era where racism was almost impossible to miss.....
I remember jokes about Michelle and Barrack looking like apes. Wouldn't that count as something disgusting?
Yes. That is disgusting. Not as disgusting as posting gas chamber jokes on a public forum but pretty disgusting.
An interesting idea but not very practical and wildly unpopular with most voters. This has doomed Mr. Yang.
Couldn't find any posts about Obama like you remember but they could have been edited. I did search the forum for the word you used in your holocaust joke and was surprised to see you weren't the first one to use that word. The only difference was that the guy who used it first just made a typo.
When I first heard the joke, and I remember is being told on the grounds of Forest Hills grade school as we were headed home for the day, I remember thinking, where's the humor and I as somewhere around 10 or 11 at the time. I used it as an example of the racism that existed in Oswego at the time. I apologize if anyone thought I was being a racist when I used that example. I take particular pride in being a non racist, and now days an extreme non racist, these days. If that doesn't satisfy you than there's probably nothing I can say or do to change your skewed view of me. For crying out loud, I married a minority. Again I want to apologize directly to you for raising your anger at me in the first place when I goaded you until you exploded. I was wrong then and I still feel bad about it now. It's one of those mistakes that good people learn from. Here's what's truly mystifying to me, I've always liked you and yet you cannot seem to accept my apology even though offeered at the bottom of my heart. What have I done to make you perpetually angry at me?
First of all, please stop calling me white. It's a racial slur and completely inaccurate besides. It's an attempt to mock and or diminish my unique identity. If you need to label me for your racist diatribe, a more accurate slur would be "mutt", as I have at least 8 different lines of ancestry that I know of. The only actual white people in existence are albinos, and they appear across all racial divisions. As all intelligent people are aware, race isn't really anything. It doesn't exist. It's not factual in any scientific or anthropological sense, and it literally serves the same purpose any other slur does and nothing more. It's what hypocrites use to disguise their fear of people who "aren't like them", put them in a box, and control their existence. 2nd, the phrase white privilege is a false construct that attempts to deceive by describing something that has never existed in any form anywhere on Earth. People get ahead in life and attain their dreams through determination, hard work, ingenuity, daring, and a belief in themselves. I am fortunate that I was raised by parents who imparted those facts to me from birth, and made damn sure they re-emphasized them on a daily basis by the examples they set. 3rd, I certainly did not grow up in a cocoon of any sort. I was raised in a lower middle class community populated almost entirely by working class Americans, with a smattering of wealthy people who had nice lakeside homes. Our family members were all quite active participants in political issues, and regular activists around town. My father was a Fire Battallion Chief and union rep. My mother had all of us kids reading, writing and doing math before we went to kindergarten. I got my LO Library card when I was 4 or 5, and it was my after-school haunt where I would fact-check anything I was told at school that didn't ring true in my mind. Our doors were never locked and my parents often took in troubled kids from broken homes and even a few adults who needed a place until they got back on their feet. We were taught to always stick up for the little guy, to call out dishonesty wherever it appeared, and to confront hate and abuse of others in a firm and unbending manner. Nearly half of my friends were from broken homes or single-mother homes. Looking back, I'm not sure why there were so many. My parents were revered by my friends as much as by me. Some of my friends had wealthy parents, most did not. It didn't matter to anyone and people from all walks of life were treated the same by everyone. Racists generally keep to themselves because they live every day in fear of being insufficient or impotent, but if there were any serious group of them in LO they were very well hidden. Had they reared their empty heads it would not have gone well for them in the community. I know people who've failed in life in many ways. Become criminals, addicts, or just succumbed to laziness and depression. I know people who've reached the pinnacle of success through admirable focus and determination. I know people who were born with a silver spoon and through it all away. I know people with debilitating handicaps who never complain and strive to succeed every single day. I know people who were horribly abused as children, but have nothing but love and empathy for others. And then there's losers who blame their personal failure on abstracts such as ancient history, politics, gene-pools, religion, successful people, and people who are different from them.
Hey Lanny, I know you're a little older than I and we lived in the same neighborhoods as kids. Wondering exactly when were you born? I have an older sister you may have known at Forest Hills. Always interesting to hear someone else's experiences and memories of LO. I believe you once posted you lived across from Lakeridge but did your family move back to LO from Portland to there? Was the school built then? I also attended Forest Hills, LOJHS, Sophmore year at LO and Junior year at Lakeridge.
I accept your apology. Maybe my confusion is because of the mods using ban when a normal person would say suspension? I remember reading sly say he would ban for posting the N word and that joke and other slurs are just as horrific to me (white gentile male I guess) as the N word. You didn't even get suspended though so that still doesn't seem fair.
I shouldn't have sent you that PM by the way. It was horrible and if I was related to you I'd hunt ME down and whoop my ass. I apologize. I've said worse to people I actually love so that's just a personal problem of mine. I did take anger management after that PM but not because of that PM...I said some horrific things to my wife out of anger. I don't hit my wife...growing up if I got angry there were four options. Hit something. Hit someone. Say something mean. Cry. In the present.... Hit something doesn't help because I bought it and I'll have to fix it. Hit someone doesn't work because I know better now. Say something mean is easy as fuck. I'm an expert, it comes naturally. Cry is embarassing.
I remember you mentioning something about this a couple years ago and people going rounds with you on it. Glad that you changed. As I said back then, I was taught much like you. Crying is a sign of weakness and therefore if you cry you should be embarrassed. But as I start to get older I realize it takes more masculinity to be okay with yourself for crying, than it does to do anything else. I'm still not all the way there yet, dunno if I ever will be. We'll see
I cry in front of my wife. I got angry in high school and tried to keep my cool and the kid I was wanting to fight started making fun of me because I started tearing up and I almost killed him. I was choking him out in the gym. I cry like a baby when animals are involved. I cried with joy when the guy saved that little dog from an elevator death the other day. If you make fun of me when I cry....run. I can't help myself. Well, I couldn't before..I am getting old.
I now live across the street from Lakeridge. My driveway is directly in line with the West most goal line of the football field. We moved to Oswego in 1948 shortly after my birth in Atlanta where my father was serving in the brand new Air Force. I remember stopping at my grandparents' home near Huntsville Alabama on the way. We briefly lived in a tiny cracker box of a house just off Boones Ferry near Terwilger's endpoing. Terwiiliger did not extend to State street at that time. Then we moved into my grandmother's house. This was the grandma who was the mother of my mother. The Alabama grandmother was the mother of my father. My father remodeled grandma's upstairs and made an apartment out of it. That was on second street near C avenue. My memory's a little faded but somewhere in there we lived on eighth street and B then living in Garden Home and tenth and E around the same time. I remember going to the first grade while living on tenth. My mother, unbeknownst to my father, invited the high school band to practice at our house. My father would come home from work as a brick layer and imediately start taking off his clothes as he he entered the front door. One day he did that while the band was there practicing and he didn't immediately notice them and started disrobing. The band sounded like random sounds to me and terribly loud. I was always hoping they would soon go home. Anyhow, I don't know who was more surprised, the band or my father. It was hilarious. Then, we lived on fifth near C. That was when the Rillettes lives next door and their smallest boy, would make more random noises while he practiced his drumming. That boy became the fire chief for Washington county. Next in about 1956 we moved to second street across from grandma. We lived across the alley from the Bacon's. They had three sons, one was my age, Jerry, and one was about five maybe six years younger. I believe Jerry is now living somewhere West of Salem. Their youngest, Randy maybe you heard of. Then when I was about to enter Oswego's one year old Junior High, we moved to Portland where I went to a grade school for another two years. Ugh. I remember going to Halvorsen's island on an invite to the class of my classmate, Karent Halverson's mother. I remember my mother helping to found the civic theater in Oswego with their first production, Harvey. I remember my mother helping to start the annual Water Festival. I also remember my mother and a girlfriend who owned a small plane beginning a business venture by a feat called Pennies from Heaven which weighted down small parachutes with a penny with a local business coupon attached. Us kids would find them and take the penny while throwing the parachute and coupon away. I remember going to the Lake theater and listening to all the Glenn Miller tunes during the time before the movie started and the intermission. I remember the father of a friend of mine owning both the Pinafore restaurant and the Dairy Maid. That father was also the mayor of Oswego at one point. I remember the Chief of Police, who was a well known alcoholic, had a son who went to school with me and played Gray Y football with me. They had a huge Great Dane that shared the city with our dog, an equally massive German Shepard. They were the Solsos. My younger cousin went to Lake Oswego High. Her name is Devanna. Her older brother went to the same Junior High and Senior High. My wife and I got married in the Lutheran church on 10th and C if memory serves me, by pastor Nash. I rmember old man Weiser when he ran the produce department of the old Food Center which he eventually bought and renamed Weiser's. At that time they were on the NW corner of A avenue and 1st. street. When we first moved to Oswego, we didn't have a pot to pee in. Old man Weiser reached in his wallet and gave my mom a fifty dollar bill and said, no hurry, just pay it back when you can. Ah, I almost forgot, the library, then located on the SE corner of 1st street and A avenue, had a contest for kids. You started with a colored rocketship which they placed with your name on it high along the wall. It started at planet Earth and progressed to the Moon and all the planets beginning with Mercury and ending with Pluto (Pluto was a planet at that time).You advanced every time you read a certain number of books. I was an avid reader and won the contest. I remember that my favorite book at the librrary of Forest Hills grade school was a biography of Babe Ruth. I loved baseball heroes of the day. I remember my favorite haunt was 24 Flavors ice cream store. And there was a soda shop on State street nearby where I could get a phosphate soda for 3 cents. I remember going by the Five and Dime store on 1st. street between A and B where I would stare at this gas engine model plane that I coveted known as the Fire Baby. It was ten dollars and far far far out of my reach. But my absolute favorite acitivity, even better than going to 24 Flavors for a five cent ice cream cone, was swimminng at the public pool on the lake. I* would go there every single summer day beginning when I came home from my strawberry picking in Gresham until it started to get dark. I also loved fishing in the lake. At that time I could always catch a few perch still my favorite eating fish today. Use to fish and play in what is now known as Tryon Creek state park. I remember one time seeing a huge beautiful fish rising to the top of the water and then turning sideways and going to the bottom of the pond. I had never seen such a large nor such a beautiful fish. I spent a week trying to catch it but couldn't get a nibble. One day my mom and my aunt and my little brother, older cousin who was my age and my grandmother decided to go on a fishing trip and take a picnic lunch with us. We parked grandma at the little pond with a makeshift pole, no real and a little like tied to the tip of the pole with on tackle other than a worm hook and a worm, with not even any leader or swivel. Then we all scattered with dreams of hooking on to some trophy trout. Then we heard this long scream from grandma, I figured she was getting attacked by a grizzly, a mountain lion or a pack of hungry wolves. I ran to her aid and so did everyone else. When we got there it turned out that grandma had cought my fish. I had mixed feelings. It was my grandmother and I loved her dearly but dammit, she caught MY fish. My cousin and I once built a fire on the banks of Tryon Creek and cooked a couple of crawdads and ate their tails. As I said previously I sold newspapers. I hawked them mostly in front of the Piggly Wiggly on State street. I replenished the news stands and sold in and out of restaurants and bars. I rode my bicycle all over town and most would have known me by sight. When I got out of college I rented the old house I use to live in on second street. Then I got married and bought a new house in Aloha. I always wanted to return to Lake Oswego and that dream came true a little over four years ago. I now live in an area that was once in Oswego. I always wanted to live on the Lake and I could have done that if not for the progression of this disability that happened while serving in combat. Anyhow, the house I live in now is pretty nice. The only thing that I dislike is that we don't get many trick or treaters. In my childhood neighborhood there were always a ton of trick or treaters and a ton of candy to be had. The sad part is that my wife and I both love children. I would tutor kids in math and science if I could but I'm seriously disabled and am pretty much unable to do that.. We moved to Portland just a month or two before Oswego merged with Lake Grove to become Lake Oswego. There's my life story.
Something else I'm attempting to be okay with. Only the people who are scared of you, would think less of you for crying.
