From blacks in 1960 to gays today, discrimination is all about a desperate need to feel superior

[kpete]

From blacks in 1960 to gays today, discrimination is all about a desperate need to feel superior by holding someone else down.

LUNCH COUNTER

This was passed around the internet for the past few days. It's a picture of a 1960 lunch counter sit-in at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, NC.


When I first saw this picture and learned about this period in our history (or more accurately, learned it formally and from someone who wasn't using the N-word regularly) I thought that racism was about believing that another race is inferior. Like most people I got (slightly) wiser with age and eventually figured out that racism is about keeping someone else beneath you on the social ladder. You know, that Gene Hackman line from Mississippi Burning ("If you ain't better than a nigger, son, who are you better than?&quot If you actually thought black people were dirty savages you wouldn't eat anything they handed you. But of course it has nothing to do with that. You're fine being served food because servility implies social inferiority. And you don't want to sit next to them simply because it implies equality.

http://www.ginandtacos.com/2014/02/26/lunch-counter/

[Bluenorthwest]

1. I loved this piece.

And others at Gin and Tacos. Good writer. Thanks for sharing!

[upaloopa]

2. I was a teenager then in the sixties.

My dad was a factory worker. For him to be accepted by his peers he had to act racist whether he was or not,

[treestar]

3. Really true, especially in the US

We have a lot of people obsessed by competition. It is a cultural thing, though it is fading. Still I think of people of my mother's generation. They don't have "friends." Their friends are just people they meet with to compare notes and try to claim to have something more than the other. It can get really petty.

It goes down to younger generations a bit. It was bad in my mother's family. The women can't get along at all, all they can do is compare. One of my cousins was worrying the question of whether her house was bigger than another cousin's house.

And this is within the same friggin' family and class, so one can imagine the "relief" these people feel that there are entire groups of people they can at least feel superior to without much thought - and why they resist "losing" that.

[jwirr]

4. Exactly. Hatred is only the result of a feeling of inferior deep down. Many think this is all about

hatred but this OP hits the nail on the head. The feeling of superiority is the main problem here and when they start seeing others claiming equality they then begin to feel the hatred. Because of the changing world we are in many who have felt so superior up until now are just beginning to realize they are losing the fight to keep their foot on our necks. So out comes the hatred.

This is why they (including the idiots in congress) are exhibiting so much hate for President Obama.

Very good advice to the gay community.