Roger Hines : If Healing is Needed, Whose Medicine Shall We Use? Because I’m tired of being called a racist, I offer the following three scenarios from my childhood and young adulthood. I doubt seriously that Trump-haters will believe them, particularly Wolfe Blitzer, Don Lemon, George Stephanopoulos, Joe Scarborough, and local commentator Oliver Halle. I’ve never been called a racist directly. Indirectly I have, because all of the Trump-haters, who pillory the President hourly, are automatically attacking those who support him. Their bile is spewed as much toward Trump’s 63 million voters as toward Trump himself. Think about it: 63 million Americans elected this “vile,” “deranged,” “unprepared,” “racist,” “mentally challenged” man. Smart people, those Trump-haters. With hateful words, they accuse others of hatred. The presidential election’s popular vote was almost evenly split. Consequently, close to half of America’s voters last November are charged with racism by sore losers. How self-righteous is that? And Trump-haters think they have the healing message and medicine we need? Anyhow, scenario one. While waiting for the school bus at age ten, I saw them coming. The black kids, I mean. Five days a week, ten to twelve black children and teenagers walked two miles from the edge of town out to a “separate but equal” shack down the road from our house. The shack was their school. It was absolutely separate, but not equal to the school in town to which I was bused. The town school had indoor bathrooms. The year was 1954. Things were going on that even a ten-year-old could discern. The black kids never looked at us. We didn’t look at them. Everybody looked down. Such was segregation. Tradition is strong. My father called himself a segregationist, but he wasn’t one. One isn’t a segregationist (or a racist) if he’s white, labors with blacks in cotton fields, invites them to his front porch and to his table and tells them he’ll try to do something about “that excuse for a school.” It was the sadness of scenario one and its racial divide that led to scenario two, thirteen years later. I was teaching at an all black school in Meridian, Mississippi, having responded to the superintendent’s request for teachers to teach at a school of a different race from their own. On the day of Martin Luther King’s funeral, we all gathered in the library and the gym to watch the funeral on television. I was the only white person in the school. When the white superintendent walked in to see how we were doing, one of my sweetest seventh grade girls turned and asked, “Mr. Hines, what’s a white man doing in our school?” Other faculty members laughed. “Mr. Hines, you’ve arrived. She sees you as one of us and Dr. Todd as the white man,” chuckled science teacher Ernestine Ross. I was 23. I knew for sure that the need of the hour was to promote integration every way we could – through interracial friendships and interracial professional relationships, particularly. Last scenario. After viewing the movie, “The Help,” my wife and I walked to our car where I began to weep and say, “That’s exactly how it was!” I have done all I can to oppose the racism I have seen, and I voted for Donald Trump. I cannot buy what his enemies are saying about him. Trump’s detractors are merely using the race issue to bring him down. As long as Trump opponents refuse to denounce leftist black violence (Ferguson, Baltimore, Black Lives Matter, Black Panthers, Antifa, etc.), they are totally without credibility. I say the president’s estimation of the media is accurate. The media and the Democratic medicine is to pull down and besmirch Robert E. Lee. What kind of healing measure is that? Even Grant respected General Lee. And just where was this fervor during eight years of Obama? Nowhere. Proof enough that the whole business is all about Donald Trump and the need to pin on him anything critics can find. Every week of my life I see good race relations everywhere I go. Yet, the media and Democrats are fanning the flames of race by reviving the Civil War. Television media stars wallow hourly in the very hatred they accuse me of. I do take it personally because I know my heart. The state where the black kids walked two miles to school now has more black elected officials than any other state. But that doesn’t matter to anti-Trampers. Their goal is to bring down a President any way they must. I predict they will fail. Their hypocrisy is too apparent. Roger Hines 8/23/17

Saturday, August 26, 2017

If Healing is Needed, Whose Medicine Shall We Use? Because I’m tired of being called a racist, I offer the following three scenarios from my childhood and young adulthood. I doubt seriously that Trump-haters will believe them, particularly Wolfe Blitzer, Don Lemon, George Stephanopoulos, Joe Scarborough, and local commentator Oliver Halle. I’ve never been called a racist directly. Indirectly I have, because all of the Trump-haters, who pillory the President hourly, are automatically attacking those who support him. Their bile is spewed as much toward Trump’s 63 million voters as toward Trump himself. Think about it: 63 million Americans elected this “vile,” “deranged,” “unprepared,” “racist,” “mentally challenged” man. Smart people, those Trump-haters. With hateful words, they accuse others of hatred. The presidential election’s popular vote was almost evenly split. Consequently, close to half of America’s voters last November are charged with racism by sore losers. How self-righteous is that? And Trump-haters think they have the healing message and medicine we need? Anyhow, scenario one. While waiting for the school bus at age ten, I saw them coming. The black kids, I mean. Five days a week, ten to twelve black children and teenagers walked two miles from the edge of town out to a “separate but equal” shack down the road from our house. The shack was their school. It was absolutely separate, but not equal to the school in town to which I was bused. The town school had indoor bathrooms. The year was 1954. Things were going on that even a ten-year-old could discern. The black kids never looked at us. We didn’t look at them. Everybody looked down. Such was segregation. Tradition is strong. My father called himself a segregationist, but he wasn’t one. One isn’t a segregationist (or a racist) if he’s white, labors with blacks in cotton fields, invites them to his front porch and to his table and tells them he’ll try to do something about “that excuse for a school.” It was the sadness of scenario one and its racial divide that led to scenario two, thirteen years later. I was teaching at an all black school in Meridian, Mississippi, having responded to the superintendent’s request for teachers to teach at a school of a different race from their own. On the day of Martin Luther King’s funeral, we all gathered in the library and the gym to watch the funeral on television. I was the only white person in the school. When the white superintendent walked in to see how we were doing, one of my sweetest seventh grade girls turned and asked, “Mr. Hines, what’s a white man doing in our school?” Other faculty members laughed. “Mr. Hines, you’ve arrived. She sees you as one of us and Dr. Todd as the white man,” chuckled science teacher Ernestine Ross. I was 23. I knew for sure that the need of the hour was to promote integration every way we could – through interracial friendships and interracial professional relationships, particularly. Last scenario. After viewing the movie, “The Help,” my wife and I walked to our car where I began to weep and say, “That’s exactly how it was!” I have done all I can to oppose the racism I have seen, and I voted for Donald Trump. I cannot buy what his enemies are saying about him. Trump’s detractors are merely using the race issue to bring him down. As long as Trump opponents refuse to denounce leftist black violence (Ferguson, Baltimore, Black Lives Matter, Black Panthers, Antifa, etc.), they are totally without credibility. I say the president’s estimation of the media is accurate. The media and the Democratic medicine is to pull down and besmirch Robert E. Lee. What kind of healing measure is that? Even Grant respected General Lee. And just where was this fervor during eight years of Obama? Nowhere. Proof enough that the whole business is all about Donald Trump and the need to pin on him anything critics can find. Every week of my life I see good race relations everywhere I go. Yet, the media and Democrats are fanning the flames of race by reviving the Civil War. Television media stars wallow hourly in the very hatred they accuse me of. I do take it personally because I know my heart. The state where the black kids walked two miles to school now has more black elected officials than any other state. But that doesn’t matter to anti-Trampers. Their goal is to bring down a President any way they must. I predict they will fail. Their hypocrisy is too apparent. Roger Hines 8/23/17

If Healing is Needed, Whose Medicine Shall We Use?

Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 8/27/17

Because I’m tired of being called a racist, I offer the following three scenarios from my childhood and young adulthood. I doubt seriously that Trump-haters will believe them, particularly Wolfe Blitzer, Don Lemon, George Stephanopoulos, Joe Scarborough, and local commentator Oliver Halle.

I’ve never been called a racist directly. Indirectly I have, because all of the Trump-haters, who pillory the President hourly, are automatically attacking those who support him. Their bile is spewed as much toward Trump’s 63 million voters as toward Trump himself. Think about it: 63 million Americans elected this “vile,” “deranged,” “unprepared,” “racist,” “mentally challenged” man. Smart people, those Trump-haters. With hateful words, they accuse others of hatred.

The presidential election’s popular vote was almost evenly split. Consequently, close to half of America’s voters last November are charged with racism by sore losers. How self-righteous is that? And Trump-haters think they have the healing message and medicine we need?

Anyhow, scenario one. While waiting for the school bus at age ten, I saw them coming. The black kids, I mean. Five days a week, ten to twelve black children and teenagers walked two miles from the edge of town out to a “separate but equal” shack down the road from our house.

The shack was their school. It was absolutely separate, but not equal to the school in town to which I was bused. The town school had indoor bathrooms. The year was 1954. Things were going on that even a ten-year-old could discern. The black kids never looked at us. We didn’t look at them. Everybody looked down. Such was segregation.

Tradition is strong. My father called himself a segregationist, but he wasn’t one. One isn’t a segregationist (or a racist) if he’s white, labors with blacks in cotton fields, invites them to his front porch and to his table and tells them he’ll try to do something about “that excuse for a school.”

It was the sadness of scenario one and its racial divide that led to scenario two, thirteen years later. I was teaching at an all black school in Meridian, Mississippi, having responded to the superintendent’s request for teachers to teach at a school of a different race from their own.

On the day of Martin Luther King’s funeral, we all gathered in the library and the gym to watch the funeral on television. I was the only white person in the school. When the white superintendent walked in to see how we were doing, one of my sweetest seventh grade girls turned and asked, “Mr. Hines, what’s a white man doing in our school?”

Other faculty members laughed. “Mr. Hines, you’ve arrived. She sees you as one of us and Dr. Todd as the white man,” chuckled science teacher Ernestine Ross. I was 23. I knew for sure that the need of the hour was to promote integration every way we could – through interracial friendships and interracial professional relationships, particularly.

Last scenario. After viewing the movie, “The Help,” my wife and I walked to our car where I began to weep and say, “That’s exactly how it was!”

I have done all I can to oppose the racism I have seen, and I voted for Donald Trump. I cannot buy what his enemies are saying about him. Trump’s detractors are merely using the race issue to bring him down. As long as Trump opponents refuse to denounce leftist black violence (Ferguson, Baltimore, Black Lives Matter, Black Panthers, Antifa, etc.), they are totally without credibility. I say the president’s estimation of the media is accurate.

The media and the Democratic medicine is to pull down and besmirch Robert E. Lee. What kind of healing measure is that? Even Grant respected General Lee. And just where was this fervor during eight years of Obama? Nowhere. Proof enough that the whole business is all about Donald Trump and the need to pin on him anything critics can find.

Every week of my life I see good race relations everywhere I go. Yet, the media and Democrats are fanning the flames of race by reviving the Civil War. Television media stars wallow hourly in the very hatred they accuse me of. I do take it personally because I know my heart.

The state where the black kids walked two miles to school now has more black elected officials than any other state. But that doesn’t matter to anti-Trampers. Their goal is to bring down a President any way they must. I predict they will fail. Their hypocrisy is too apparent.

Roger Hines

8/23/17

Roger Hines

Saturday, August 26, 2017

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