And Then This Came Up in the News
And then, just as I had lost faith in humanity for good. As yet again, I girded myself to read about yet another white nationalist attack that had killed more; as Trump had manipulated public opinion always with hate, with fear that people of color will come get you, that immigrants are all rapists and murders (some are ok?? Trump’s words)…and then there was this!
Just as I am about ready to forsake the human race in reaction to the venality of Trump and his fascist followers, this pops up as from nowhere in the news..
You know the news from a newspaper! You know a real newspaper, not the news digests we all are using too much.
In the San Jose Mercury News, you can read it below, the Story of Takashi Tanemori is told. www.hiroshima-forgiveness-tanemori.com
Takashi survived Hiroshima. He was eight years old. In fact he was almost at ground zero when the mankind ending bomb exploded. All of his family were killed, The article speaks of at least a few of the unspeakable things he saw and lived through. You can read it if you follow the link above.
And he was angry. His family was Samurai. He was born to revenge.
He emigrated to America when he was 19. Most of Americans, especially the white nationalist types, would have gone into terrorism.
Takashi did not.
He tried to survive. He reinvented himself countless times, became a father, raised a family and then…and then as he lost his sight to the bomb, he turned to Christ, he turned to helping others.
And this man of color, did what so many white privileged types cannot do, he forgave.
White supremacists claim that the diversification of the United States means a reckoning against whites; that people of color if “they” get control, will take revenge.
So far, this has not happened. So far, these set upon people, these parents of lynched sons, these part Cherokee who were told that their great great grandfather was lynched for being married to a white woman (my great great grandmother), have done nothing in revenge.
Takashi is an extreme example of living in the country that killed his family and maimed him, he forgave; he contributed to the society that had been his mortal enemy.
But, this is an isolated case right, white nationalists make a living of scaring whites who are guilty and just know a reckoning is coming!
The Reckoning has not come!
Let’s go to South Africa. Apartheid was one of the worst examples of racism and prejudice of a white minority in world history; even eclipsing the United States for its tyranny.
Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for over twenty five years, kept in solitary confinement, for his Civil Rights protests. He was accused of being a terrorist, but there never was any truth to it.
He was jailed because he was an “organizer” or a “protestor”, terms that southern segregationists used to use to jail anyone who stood against their racism. Often these protestors, “outside agitators” were not just jailed, they were lynched.
And so, when Nelson Mandela’s cause was finally triumphant, the world held its breath, waiting for news of a “payback” that never came.
In spite of “fake news” from white supremacists in the United States, there have been no reprisals, no murders, nothing….nothing but forgiveness for the unforgivable.
I have told by white racists that a payback was started in South Africa..I go to the news, nothing…because they are lying…they do a lot of that…lie!
Barrack Obama was suspected of becoming vengeful when he became President. He could have “cracked down” on privilege, he could have been like Trump, using executive orders to pay back for hundreds of years of racism.
He didn’t. He said when they go low, we go high…and he practiced it.
The false narrative that the white nationalists propagate, that Trump warns about all the time, indirectly and directly; “They are murderers and rapists”…never happens.
Why?
One reason might be the spiritualism of indigenous peoples is stronger than the fake Christianity that white bigots practice; the spiritualism of the Japanese is obviously stronger in the forgiveness area than America.
There have been countless times Japan could have “paid America back” for dropping humanity ending bombs on them, when they were practically defenseless at the time. They didn’t!
It’s called honor!
Trump uses the specter of people of color “pay back” to scare the devil into his followers. He gets them to stop thinking of the many people of color we all know, who simply forgive us….who pray for us….who say, it is not mine to judge you….forgiveness is between you and your God.
And by doing that, the forgiving, allows us to think, and to break the cycle that the banality of evil causes; of reprisals, of pay back….to think and forgive!