READER COMMENTS ON

"Poll: Education, Not Race, Drove Prop 8 Votes"

(7 Responses so far...)





COMMENT #1 [Permalink]

... John S said on 12/8/2008 @ 7:52 pm PT...



COMMENT #2 [Permalink]

... Flex said on 12/8/2008 @ 8:42 pm PT...



COMMENT #3 [Permalink]

... fern said on 12/8/2008 @ 11:03 pm PT...



Just yesterday in a forum I wrote about uneducated and poor people and their attitude toward prop 8.

The reason I came to my reasoning is my life experience, so here is a short resume:

Born 1948 in Brussels, Belgium and in one of the "bad areas", my parents were poor, I went to school and at 13 started with "reform school", at 14 I was a construction worker. I was some kind of a street fighter. At 16 some professor Higgins thought I was Eliza Doolittle and taught me English and it changed my life or what would have been my life without him and the English language.

So when you're poor your language and accent is different than the other people, so they notice right away where you're from and may eventually shun you, just like Blacks or Hispanics. As a street fighter the worst insult was calling someone a Fa***t and had I been one, no one would ever have known and I would have beaten the life out of this guy. In this area where poor people live there are gay people and they (still today) will never come out and the reason is simple come out and you'll be shunned, laughed at, insulted to your face and don't try a smart answer as this is your ticket to the hospital. What move out of the bad area? That near impossible because of the rent and the low paid job you have, a better paid job? you lack the education and your speech will give you away. So who is coming out of the closet?

To us poor, Black or Hispanics it's those rich kids who can afford it. Do we like those rich bastards born with a silver spoon? They just land the best paid jobs because papa is helping, sure the liberal are helping but at the end of a demonstration they go back to their nice homes and we go back to our hovels, to an overworked wife, with kids they have no control on and the alternative is pray, pray God, go to church and hope for the best. Can anyone give me a good reason why the poor people should vote no on prop 8?, favor the oppressor?

Due to my "special" life I stayed in South side Chicago for 3 or 4 days with a black family my buddy and his wife took me to their local to watch a basket ball game and introduced me to the boss, I was the only white in there but I felt OK, as these were the real people, like me, hard working, with low pay (this happened in '75). The next day I went back to the bar alone, the owner was acting nervous he bought me a beer, told me to sit at the corner of the bar, 10 minutes later my buddy was back, and I was told that as a white man I should never go alone in a bar in this area as this was playing with my life...

What of me? I am socially unadapted as I am rejected by my lower class environment as being the "intellectual", and cannot have the kind of conversation I'd like to have with them, and still not really accepted by the old enemy but with whom I can converse with.

I never went back to school seeking a diploma, the reason is why should I lower myself in working hard to get a sheet of worthless paper showing that I have accepted the rule of the oppressor? I went and studied political science for a year in University I paid for it myself and could never receive a diploma, but I needed the knowledge. So as you can see old hatred die hard with the Black and the poor.

With the recession/depression coming, more and more poor and uneducated people are joining the military and that's also no surprise to me as this is the reason why the government needs poor and uneducated people and needs the church to steer them in the "right" direction.