Thinking redirected sideways
an old article i found at Amy's friend Hydriotaphia's, a collection of Americans' ^blasphemous^ impressions from Nine_Eleven. i was particularly amused by „I frantically called a friend's cellphone in lower Manhattan. An elementary school teacher, he was evacuating students when I rang. He was in sight of the just fallen towers. He said, "When the radio played 'It's Raining Men' this morning, I didn't realize they were serious." When I reminded him of this charming comment some months later, he didn't remember making it.”, while others provided some quite insightful observations.
„
I watched from my window, not on television, as the twin towers fell. As shocked as I was, I felt that this was not my problem as a black person. The people who worked at the World Trade Center were mostly white men, and so they had nothing to do with me as a black woman.
When there was an outpouring of grief and donations from every corner of the United States, I said to myself, If those planes had flown into a housing project and the victims were poor blacks and Latinos, people in Missouri wouldn't give a damn. When I heard that there had been over $1 billion in private donations, I asked myself where was this money before? Why hadn't it been donated to help the homeless, children who do not have access to an education, people who do not have access to healthcare? Here we have people rushing to write checks to people whose families will be taken care of by insurance or their employers.
To me, 9/11 was just another example of the American paradigm of deservedness and white entitlement. We are not all Americans; the white investment banker, the white fireman, the white police officer, the white EMT, they are Americans.
-- Name withheld
”;„
During the whole awful day, I was kind of excited that something had finally happened for MY generation so I didn't have to listen to my grandparents bitch about Pearl Harbor endlessly and ask why doesn't my generation get some direction.
-- Todd VanDerWerff
”.
i probably should be working now.
„
I watched from my window, not on television, as the twin towers fell. As shocked as I was, I felt that this was not my problem as a black person. The people who worked at the World Trade Center were mostly white men, and so they had nothing to do with me as a black woman.
When there was an outpouring of grief and donations from every corner of the United States, I said to myself, If those planes had flown into a housing project and the victims were poor blacks and Latinos, people in Missouri wouldn't give a damn. When I heard that there had been over $1 billion in private donations, I asked myself where was this money before? Why hadn't it been donated to help the homeless, children who do not have access to an education, people who do not have access to healthcare? Here we have people rushing to write checks to people whose families will be taken care of by insurance or their employers.
To me, 9/11 was just another example of the American paradigm of deservedness and white entitlement. We are not all Americans; the white investment banker, the white fireman, the white police officer, the white EMT, they are Americans.
-- Name withheld
”;„
During the whole awful day, I was kind of excited that something had finally happened for MY generation so I didn't have to listen to my grandparents bitch about Pearl Harbor endlessly and ask why doesn't my generation get some direction.
-- Todd VanDerWerff
”.
i probably should be working now.