Each day I have to decide if I am an oppressor or a victim. The morning news tells me that, because I'm white, I am an oppressor. The media constantly throws out descriptions that, until recently, were news to me like, systemic racism, and white supremacy and how every white person is guilty, simply by being white. That description still puzzles me. I have to go back into the bathroom to see if anything has changed. The man looking at me in the mirror does not look like an oppressor. He is the same cute little fuzzball that I have been shaving since puberty. The ravages of time have taken their toll on my skin and hairdo, but I still recognize myself and, yes, I am still white. I always was white and will always be white — something I cannot change. If being white makes me an oppressor, I guess I am an oppressor. I just don’t ever recall being an oppressor. After I ponder the color of my hide for awhile, I realize that there is no one in the cabin to oppress besides MK, and that would not end well.
As victims of slavery are lining up to discuss being paid for their ancestors’ suffering, President Biden is talking today about pushing ahead with the reparations pay-out without discussion. Now we’re talking. Let me point out that those black sons-of-slaveowners do not have an exclusive license on oppression, persecution and suffering. Enslavement by tyrants, group persecution and oppression are a part of my history also. I know something of suffering. Why not include me in the reparation pay-out? My ancestors in Ireland and Scotland, hand-picked coal in the Scottish coal mines for centuries as oppressed and enslaved colliers. Given their freedom, they chose to stay on because coal-picking-slavery was all they knew how to do. My people moved to America where, you guessed it, they worked in the coal mines. It wasn’t until they hooked up with the Mormons and started working above ground that the made any real progress. However, they soon found more enemies than friends when they announced that their church leader was a prophet, speaking with God who told him that everyone else was wrong. Persecuting Mormons became a blood sport and wherever they moved, they were soon driven out, whether it was Ohio, Illinois, or Missouri. Government-sanctioned persecution reached its height in Missouri with Governor Boggs who signed a Mormon extermination order, making it legal to shoot them on sight. I felt safer after this law was repealed in 1977 when I was a urology resident in St. Louis.
When my predecessors migrated to Utah, the persecution and oppression did not end. Most of my male ancestors were “called” by church leaders to have more than one wife and had to learn to manage the new problems of plurality. I guess plurality has some benefits, but just imagine those days when your oafish male behavior leads to trouble and you come home to face a whole herd of angry wives -- not to mention forgetting multiple birthdays, anniversaries and plural special occasions. After several decades, it became apparent that plurality was creating more problems and suffering than it was solving. Some of my relatives went to prison for obeying church leaders and enduring polygamy. Yes, you can see some of my relatives above, wearing prison stripes. Eventually some of the same people who had called my male ancestors into polygamy, later “called” them to leave Utah, because they were polygamists, to settle in southeastern Idaho in order for the Utah Territory to become a state. At the time, most of southern Idaho was a high-mountain desert —a too-hot-in-the-summer, too-cold-in-the-winter, wasteland sprinkled with Indians and a mostly-impassable river running down the middle. Dragging that whole herd of grumpy wives out of their comfortable homes in Salt Lake to go to Idaho was like Adam and Eve being kicked out of the Garden of Eden, except that Adam only had one wife to listen to. I actually had a taste of this several years ago when MK's sister became a widow and mostly came to stay with us for a few months. Basically, I was out-voted and had to balance two high maintenance projects. Not exactly every man's dream.
Someone should take up a discussion on reparations for all this suffering. The way I calculate it, my ancestors were oppressed and persecuted by the tyrants of five federal governments — Wales, Scotland, England, Ireland and the United States, at least three state governments, one territory and a global church. MK’s people have a very similar immigration-persecution story, making us both reparation-worthy from multiple culpable institutions.
It’s like Groundhog Day around my place — each day I wake up thinking about my victimhood, counting all of the reparations for all of the suffering of my ancestors, only to be reminded, as the day goes on, that I am not a victim at all — I am an oppressor. But no, I have decided that I am a victim because this suffering goes on every day, over and over. Tell President Biden that I am waiting, here in Idaho, for reparations for being a descendent of enslaved, oppressed and persecuted ancestors. Don’t tell him that I go to the mirror each morning and see a cute, little, white fuzzball.
Ever vigilant,
RT
Comments