Innocent idiots beg forgiveness

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Yin did WHAT?

Based on this criteria, I give it to Yin. That, and I was successfully mugged a little over a month ago.

I'm satisfied being slightly less cool than a guy who ate a Civ 4 box...

...that was a strange thing to type.

[Ecthy]

How many?

[The Emperor Fabulous]

A really large drunk tranny in Bay Village, Boston. Would YOU mess with that?

[Ecthy]

What is tranny? Sounds like running would have helped.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

It might have. But s/he had big hands. Tranny = Transvestite.

This is what you run in to living near the Theatre District.

[Ecthy]

Guess what, I think you're a liar.

[yin26]

LOL! Well, shout out to Ecthy for giving me a thumbs up on doing something really stupid. Shout out to Fabulous for the give and take in this discussion. I'll just end with one last personal note on why I found this topic interesting (other than my tragic story about my aunt):

I'm 1\16th Cherokee Indian (not uncommon, really). Under U.S. law, this entitled me a free ride at any university I chose (universities, of course, are eager to fill their "diversity" goals). The problem, though, is to look at me is to see the whitest of white boys. The Poster for Paleface.

So there I am in high school trying to figure out how to react to this: A free ride at Harvard sounded AWFULLY good. The only problem was that something was nagging me. My family had never talked about the Cherokee Nation. I'd never felt any of the pain of their history in my life. Why, then, would I deserve such a huge sum of money along with the huge opportunity?

Well, I said, maybe it makes sense. I suppose SOMEBODY in my family had a very hard or even tragic time at the hands of the white settlers, and who's to say that, if this hadn't happened, me and my family wouldn't have been much, much better off? We started, after all, in a pretty poor area of Idaho not barely a generation past being subsistence farmers. Maybe, I thought, I could take this money/opportunity, become a high-paid and famous lawyer and/or doctor. That would be some kind of cosmic karma!

The problem with that, though, is I'd feel indebted. Indebted to somehow help the Cherokee Tribe. I not only knew nothing about it, but I also realized I would forever feel like some outsider trying to fake some kind of deep understanding about a suffering that the U.S. government somehow said I have the legal right to be paid back for. This became all the more clear to me when I called the Office of Indian Affairs in Oklahoma and a, what I assumed to be "real" Cherokee, person answered the phone.

You might imagine how awful the conversation felt to me as I began to ask about getting the records I would need to prove my heritage. While the woman technically never spat in my face, she knew -- and I knew-- that I was just another white boy looking for a free ride to college. Whatever my family's association with the Cherokee Nation might have been, we broke that branch and ran under a shadier tree generations ago. So who was I now to come and ask for assistance that really needed to go to those still ruined by a horrible injustice?

I hung up the phone a disgusted but better man. I knew what I had to do: I applied to college as a "white" applicant and no doubt lost a cherry spot at Harvard or Yale. On the bright side, I ended up at UCLA by virtue of a strong GPA (4.3 because of honors classes). I worked full time for the university most weeks --which is illegal in college, but there you go-- and, after the first year, stopped even relying on my parents for help and took on my own loans and debts. I continued at UCLA through grad school (English Major) with a Masters. I accrued tons of the usuaul debt and only recently, 8 years later, did I pay it off (actually, the equity in the house "paid" it off, so I'm still paying it).

This thread made me imagine: What if somebody, whose great, great "white" uncle had killed my great, great Cherokee Indian aunt, walked into my house dressed as a near-dead Indian Chief apologizing for all this. First, my stomach would turn. I'd look at the fake blood (like the chains those guys wore) and think: Wow, who's this freak? I'd then listen to his apology and wonder: Why are you coming to me, to this house? Do you know ME and MY family? What do you know of our personal experience? You simply pulled up some map, some goverment statistics and decided to impose your own need for catharsis in the wrong place (cameras at the ready for your news story and Website). Frankly, I'd tell the guy (with some worry for my family's safety, to be honest) that he should please get up, get a life, and get out. Perhaps he would mean well and would be confused. Then again, perhaps he should have sought to relieve his guilt on his own without taking me and my family away from watching the NBA Finals.

Would I be materially ahead of where I am today had I taken the U.S. Government's apology? That's almost certain. But something else is also certain: I grew up with every opportunity to craft a life of my own making. Sure, I had the usual troubles, but none of them related to a horrible history I imagine somewhere along the line my family chose to bury or forget.

Although the U.S.'s history (and present) is full of mistakes, some of them quite tragic, I could at least say that somehow I was positioned well enough in this country to have the future wide open to me if I was willing to work hard and to make the best of things...to act, in other words, on the American Dream. So I have, and so I am.

[BlackCat]

I guess that Yin26 just have closed this thread.

[Lancer]

yin to you, to me 'Great Grandson of Eagle Claw'.

[Footie Mad]

Great and wise digester of cardboard boxes.

[yin26]

LOL!

[kittenOFchaos]

Originally posted by Japher
and now

for the african slavers to apologize
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oh, wait, they were black. so they aren't at fault.

I forgot

Not to mention that the Africans were into sacrificing people on the orders of witch doctors and doing a whole host of nasty things.

They weren't a continent of model citizens dragged off to slavery. A bunch of nasty, fighting tribes with some horrid beliefs and practices selling each other into slavery to the whiteman and within their own societies.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

You're a little late to be trolling. Everyone's left this thread.

[kittenOFchaos]

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
You're a little late to be trolling. Everyone's left this thread.

Ah, the dangers of not reading past the first post

My point stands

[Kuciwalker]

I think my ancestors at some point a long long time ago probably did something bad. I'm sorry.