Chapter Eleven

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John St. John
 

I was no hero in the war but I should have gotten at least two Congressional Medals of Honor for my courage in the struggle for civil rights. As in many places of work, when someone got sick the hat was passed for them. Although the Black workers contributed when a White worker was sick . . . no-one passed the hat when a Black worker got sick except . . . guess who? Oddly enough everyone respected me for this. I guess they thought I was crazy. When the Un-American committee came to town it was expected that I would be called to testify. They never subpoenaed me. I think the reason was because I was not good subject material for a committee that was looking for suspicious Russian agents. I was raised in Flint and my father had spent twenty years working in the Chevrolet factory. On top of this I was a combat veteran with an honorable discharge. The afternoon after the headlines in the Flint Journal I was in plant twelve and one of my fellow workers informed me that he heard the General Motors Service people were looking for me. These were private agents of the company who were in charge of rough stuff during strikes. I shrugged my shoulders and asked "what can I do . . .what would you do? The old worker answered: "Man . . . I would jump right out that window". At quitting time I lined up to go through the time clock. In front of me were about twenty Black workers, and in back of me about twenty more. I asked the guy behind me what was the celebration. He said,"Man . . . nothing is going to happen to you!

This was the kind of reward you do not expect. It still gives me a spiritual rush when I think about it. When the idea of affirmative action came up at a party meeting I was very skeptical that anything so revolutionary would ever come about. Today I believe that there is no necessity to put school children in racial and national categories. This result of affirmative action is divisive. Although affirmative action has brought a lot of Black leaders into the national life and is a good thing. It has had some results that are not healthy. When a Black moves out of the Ghetto he or she learns to accommodate themselves to racism. Sometimes we get a Clarence Thomas or a Black mayor who burned a Black neighborhood to eliminate a cult of militant extremists. Moving isolated individuals out of the ghetto still leaves the ghetto intact. There is no point in turning Blacks into honorary Whites. When I get my children's school entrance papers I am supposed to indicate whether they are Black, White, Asian, or Hispanic. My kids qualify as Hispanics but I always write in "This is jim crow racism!" on these impertinent questions. We do not need to use the Nazi techniques and categories that have been historically condemned. If the category "Jew" had been added to the lists they gave me it would rouse a storm of indignation that would swamp them.

The reasons are different but the end result is the same. Today's schools are polluted with racist attitudes among the students. They have been educated against it, but any divisions among them acerbate the insidious Totem gene. The protests of the multi-ethnic AMEA the Association for multi-ethnic, cross cultural, and interracial heritage, based in San Francisco, and other similar groups are demanding another category . . .
"multiracial."

April 4, 1994, San Diego Union by Sharon F. Griffin . . . "Convincing government officials, let alone individual members of society, to accept the reality that America is truly diverse, with hundreds of thousands of people of mixed heritage, is no simple matter.

Racial statistics are used to measure the effectiveness of a range of public policies, especially those affecting affirmative action, fair housing, voting rights and employment discrimination, not to mention school desegregation.

Any statistical changes that could affect equal opportunity goals would not be favorably viewed by groups like the National Urban League.

"The current racial classification scheme has served both the nation and disadvantaged minorities well," said Billy Tidwell, director of research for the national Urban League.

"Because it has worked so well we believe that any proposals to change it must be very carefully and deliberately considered. We can't simply make decisions based upon the intuitive appeal of an idea."

AMEA's Fernandez takes another view . . . "This is not a ploy to upset civil rights programs, "he said, "It has to do with getting the truth out and respecting people's identities as they are and not as they pretend to be."

Furthermore, Fernandez believes that blurring the lines that divide racial groups could help ease the interracial strife that tears at the country.

"I think we can offer a counter point to those ethnocentric and separatist and segregationist tendencies," he said.

It comes down to the old philosophical debate about whether it is alright to use an evil means to achieve a good end. The ultimate end of an evil means is an evil end. I have four children and had to provide the schools with their ethnic classification (Hispanic) because their mother is Mexican. "Why aren't they white? Their skin is and I am. The results in my case is that when my children refer to "Anglo's" they call them "White People." The totem gene is to come between a father and his children. Perhaps this is like the biblical story of how Solomon in his wisdom solved the riddle of which mother was the mother of a child. He offered to cut the child down the middle and present one part to each mother. Of course the true mother denied her maternity to keep this from happening. I do not like this choice and although I would probably react the same as the real mother, I do not like severing my children to make some bureaucrat happy.

Even when I was a child and Fascism had not yet shown itself to the world for the horror it was, it was considered un-american for a government to identify anyone by race . . . except maybe for Mississippi. In those days American leadership was noted for its common-sense. Still . . . it took a world war against fascism to lay the groundwork for the civil rights struggles of the sixties. This battle is not over yet but it is not going to be won by using methods perfected by Adolph Hitler. The horror at "the holocaust" has insured that no American would be identified a Jew in order to register for school. In the light of the swirling racism that typifies an American community today . . . no one should undergo the ordeal of being put in any category.

Serious civil rights leaders today like Andrew Young affirm that our problem is not so much a racism problem as it is a poverty problem. More Blacks and Hispanics are in this condition than Whites but a very large section of the White population is living below the poverty level. I believe that the possibility of unity of these populations is a nightmare to "those whom would keep things as they are." It is certain that they rely heavily on their "liberal" theorists to keep this from happening. I also believe that their hypocritical "war on narcotics" is an attempt to keep this billion dollar business operating. The present president of Panama, (who is going to be given the Panama Canal before long.) is a well known dope king-pin. Noriegas crime was that he was too friendly with Castro. I always knew in my heart that Timothy O'Leary's advice to "turn on and turn off" was a deliberate scheme of the C.I.A. to derail the vociferous youth of the sixties.

Young computer people are even now fighting the "liberal" Clinton administrations plan to provide everyone with a "smart card" an identification with a computer chip containing voluminous information about the carrier. These "liberal"s are also interested in seeing that the "electronic superhighway" can be bugged at any time. I leave it to your imagination whether this "evil means" will arrive at any "good" ends. I do not doubt that the sinister "Dr. Strangelove" is still working for the National Security Agency. I am apprehensively waiting for his gloved hand to finally raise up with a resounding "Heil Hitler".

In spite of my many shortcomings I was never a traitor to my country. I was mistaken in believing in communism but compared to the MCarthyite Fascists who crapped on every Americans right to speak out . . . I was a gentleman. When I was in Massachusetts and negotiating for the Papermaker's Union it was December and I was building a house for my small family. The house burned to the ground. Benny Perkins, owner of American Tissue Mills, called on me. He said, "John . . . I heard about your misfortune . . . You are too smart to be working in the mill. I have a home down in Florida that is occupied only by the servants. Take your family down there for the winter and when you come back I will have a job for you selling paper". I looked him in the eyes and said, "Benny . . . I can't do that".

Many times in the future I regretted my Quixotic integrity but now when I am looking the grim reaper in the eye. I am grateful for it. The only regrets I have are the pretty girls I should have loved and let slip through my fingers. The books and poems that I did not write, the fish that I did not catch, and the time I got "buck fever" and missed a shot at a deer. I regret a lot of time wasted on self-pity and alcohol. There are books I should have read and friends I should have seen, pictures I did not paint, and places I have not been. At times these regrets prey on my mind but all and all it's been a mighty good time.

As a young man I remember worrying about my masculinity. I was a reader and a drawer of pictures, and loved the opera, symphony, and ballet although like Bob Hope I could never have "passed the physical", I had long delicate fingers and dreamt of playing Hungarian music on the violin. This was in a time and place where "country music" and football were de rigeur. When I expressed my worry to an old wise man that I trusted. He asked me simply, "Do you like to go to bed with boys or girls". At the time I was servicing three different young ladies and I told him . . . girls! He said don't worry about it then. Most of the homosexuals I have seen were hairy and masculine except for the female impersonators at Finochios in San Francisco. Homosexuality is nothing but a preference". I still kept my cultural identity a secret. I became a closet aesthete. The old man was right . . . I have never met a lesbian who was not a girl nor an effeminate male who wasn't hung like a horse. I think one's sexuality depends on the conditions that introduce him or her to sex as a child. I was taught by Ruby Chapel at the ripe old age of eight.

She too was eight and she took me into the basement and said "I'm going to teach you how to fuck!" I replied "what's that?" When she showed me her little pubis she said, "haven't you ever seen a mucket before? I said what's a mucket? she said it's a bald-headed pussy you fool! "One of the best painters I had working for me when I was jack-legging in L.A. was Charlie. I made a point of not drinking with Charlie because he was a mean bar-fighter. Six two and a yard and a half across the shoulders, he was hairy and ugly. I noticed that Charlie did not have any eyebrows. One time when he did not show up for work I went to his apartment. The door was open and I walked in. There was this apparition dressed in woman's clothes, drunk, and made up like a Tiajuana whore. He was sitting in front of a dresser mirror and crying. He did not have any eyebrows because he painted where they should be. Mascara was running down his face. The story was that he was a transvestite homosexual whose mother had dressed him in girls clothes until he was fourteen years old. About ten years after I left L.A. I went back and saw Charlie at the old Pathfinders club on Western. he was dressed like Liberace and surrounded with gays. He thanked me for bringing him to the program;. he had come out of the closet and was happy and sober. That's what counts. I always liked Charlie but if I were in the Navy I sure as hell wouldn't want to have him for a bunk-mate.

I do not think that anyone has the right to put any one else in a category.
The only reason an alcoholic is an alcoholic is because he says he is. It has to be a self-diagnosed disease. If anyone but he himself puts him in the category, alcoholic, it won't mean a thing. If a two-beer a day man says he is an alcoholic . . . he is. If a wino laying on his face in his own vomit says he is not . . . I will go along. Similarly, capitalists, ditch-diggers, and writers are all folks to me. In spite of following the class-struggle theory of a lost cause I never was comfortable with the idea of classes. In the party I had the son of a Park Avenue dentist call me a bourgeois element and  a guy I gave a room to and supported   call me a lumpen-proletarian. I don’t think there was ever any class base for my tendency to question everything. It led me to the final conclusion that the invention of the corporation was a bad idea. It turned most decision making over to accountants.

Essentially: what is wrong with an ideology is that it is a static thing that is unprepared for change. It becomes a dogma that the true-believer will die for.  It is an excuse for not thinking. The idealogue feels that he has all the answers and that any one with different answers is a heretic or worse. Everyone and every thing has to fit in slots. Life just aint like that.

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