The Great Black Hope

I've been a bit tearful over the last few days. I've been reading "The Secret Life of Bees" by Sue Monk Kidd, it's set in the 1960's in the deep south of America. It's a very poignant read and is filled with elegantly effortless prose. It makes me despair that I sully blogland with my crap.

It's very thought provoking especially around this time and I keep bursting into tears. I was trying to explain why to EBD as my children get overly anxious when I'm upset. I was trying to articulate how we shouldn't forget, just because America has come a long way, from Obama's fathers experiences to him becoming the first black president. I feel it's really important to remember how people have struggled and suffered and what a soul destroying insidious poison prejudice is.

I'm a white and Scottish and I cried at his speech, God only knows how I would feel if I was a black American. I encouraged her to watch it with me again on youtube. I was attempting to articulate my thought processes to EBD and as usual she brings me down to earth by laughing at me, I gently remind her that we all turn into our mothers and her parting shot...

" Christ, what a thing to look forward to, being forty odd in a fleece and crying at youtube"

As others see us

Last Friday I was teaching my year 11's about stereotypes and prejudice. I turned up for the lesson dressed in Eldest Beautiful Daughters black emo/gothy type clothes, very short black funny looking sticky out skirt (over my black trousers) and a vans black t shirt with a huge pink skull on the front. Resplendant in lashings of black eye liner , skull and cross bones belt and the piece de resistance of her prized coffin necklace ( complete with skeleton inside) I began to teach in my normal way.

We had a really good discussion about how unsettled they were to see me looking different. We then discussed how en masse others who are not like us can scare us and how we like to belong to groups, that old saying of birds of a feather flock together type stuff. We really do like to belong, don't we ? most of us like to fit in.

Then at the weekend I read about The Scottish Tourist Board spending millions of pounds to raise awareness in America so all the lovely American tourists can come and spend their dollars over here. I will say now that I love America, the American people that I personally know are charming and well educated people. When I have been on holiday there I met very polite and helpful citizens all over, I know that I am extremely nasty about Italian people and that is irrational prejudice on my behalf based on a few unpleasant experiences I have had. This prejudice does not extend to Americans. I know I have some readers from the States, I sincerely hope that you will still read on, I still love you guys.

In this survey, many Americans could not name a single Scottish city, they didn't know where we were in relation to other European counties. Some students were unsure if Scotland had the internet and others didn't think we as a country had computers or microwaves. The person who most typified the Scots for them was Willie, the Scottish gamekeeper from the cartoon series The Simpsons.

I wonder does that say more about the Americans than it does about us ?