(no subject)
Many years ago when I was young and foolish I rescued my MASH books from my sister's attempt to make money out of my and my parent's books (she was brought to task over this eventually and stopped trying to sell mine) and gave them to a friend to mind for a while until I got things sorted. I lost contact with that person. A few years ago I bought the re-print of the first MASH book but yesterday while in the Oxfam in Parliament Street I came across an old edition in near perfect condition (perfect except for age) and I found the sequence I'd been seeking for ages.
MASH - Richard Hooker P139-140 (0722146558, Sphere, 1976)
"How come you and the Hawk here got to be such big buddies down in Taegu?"
"Well," said Jones, "I got assgned there and there weren't any other colored and they didn't have a room for me all by myself. Hawkeye went to the C.O.and said: 'Tell that big animal he can live with me if he wants to'."
"That was nice," Trapper said, "but let's not give him the Legion of Merit."
"Nobody's handing out any medals," Spearchucker said, "but there are so goddam many phonies around. The worst are the types who knock themselves out to show you that your color doesn't make any difference, and if it wasn't for your color they wouldn't pay any attention to you. They're part of the black man's burden, too."
"Understood," Trapper said.
"Anyway," Spearchucker said, "there are a lot of colored boys over here, and I know quite a few. Every now and again some of them would drop in to visit me. Now and thenHawkeye would stay around but most often he'd cut out. One day I said: "Hawkeye, how come you don't care for some of my friends?""
"So this guy," Spearchucker said, nodding toward Hawkeye, "says to me: 'Do you like all the white boys around here?' I said: 'No, Hawkeye, and thank you.' That's what I mean."
That sequence has stuck with me for a long time. And it made me, as a teenager at the time, face up to the fact that as long as I stuck with the same principles for liking or disliking everyone on the same criteria I wasn't being racist or sexist or anything, I was just being honest to me. That you can dislike a person who belongs to a subgroup so long as you don't lump everybody of that subgroup into the same blanket dislike. Anyone who tries to make you like everyone is deluding themselves. I don't like all pagan, Irish, librarian, short, tree huggers and I don't expect them all to like me, why should I always have to like the "other"?
Now there are exceptions to that rule, most of them are lawbreakers.
MASH - Richard Hooker P139-140 (0722146558, Sphere, 1976)
"How come you and the Hawk here got to be such big buddies down in Taegu?"
"Well," said Jones, "I got assgned there and there weren't any other colored and they didn't have a room for me all by myself. Hawkeye went to the C.O.and said: 'Tell that big animal he can live with me if he wants to'."
"That was nice," Trapper said, "but let's not give him the Legion of Merit."
"Nobody's handing out any medals," Spearchucker said, "but there are so goddam many phonies around. The worst are the types who knock themselves out to show you that your color doesn't make any difference, and if it wasn't for your color they wouldn't pay any attention to you. They're part of the black man's burden, too."
"Understood," Trapper said.
"Anyway," Spearchucker said, "there are a lot of colored boys over here, and I know quite a few. Every now and again some of them would drop in to visit me. Now and thenHawkeye would stay around but most often he'd cut out. One day I said: "Hawkeye, how come you don't care for some of my friends?""
"So this guy," Spearchucker said, nodding toward Hawkeye, "says to me: 'Do you like all the white boys around here?' I said: 'No, Hawkeye, and thank you.' That's what I mean."
That sequence has stuck with me for a long time. And it made me, as a teenager at the time, face up to the fact that as long as I stuck with the same principles for liking or disliking everyone on the same criteria I wasn't being racist or sexist or anything, I was just being honest to me. That you can dislike a person who belongs to a subgroup so long as you don't lump everybody of that subgroup into the same blanket dislike. Anyone who tries to make you like everyone is deluding themselves. I don't like all pagan, Irish, librarian, short, tree huggers and I don't expect them all to like me, why should I always have to like the "other"?
Now there are exceptions to that rule, most of them are lawbreakers.