Pilgrim Jim’s Justice Jottings

I have a troubled relationship with the 4th of July.  Perhaps this is because I was born on  August 6, 1945, the day when my country used the first atomic bomb to annihilate the population of Hiroshima, to be followed only three days later by a similar slaughter of innocent civilians in Nagasaki. As the first-born of the Atomic Age “Bombs bursting in air” ever calls to mind that racist attack on Asians — not that the fire-bombing of Dresden was any more humane or less indelibly etched on the minds of the knowledgeable.   I remember with some embarrassment my first overseas stay as a college junior  in Marburg, Germany (1965-1966) when I tried to explain to German fellow students (in German, of course) that the holiday “4. Juli " (4th of July) was soon upon us. It had not occurred to me that non-US folk would not find the 4th of July more remarkable than the 3rd or the 5th — and perhaps less so than that 14th (“Bastille Day”).  I had never before re...

“Appreciating Tolerance!” — also published in Pilgrim Place NEWS,  July-August 2018 A recent article I wrote for the NEWS elicited much response. Most of it was what I had hoped for — appreciation of definitions of terms that sometimes haunt and trouble us in our efforts to be tolerant of one another and welcoming of diversity and inclusion. Some reactions were unexpectedly strong and may indicate that our discussion has only just begun. Here I would like to connect racial tolerance and acceptance with other “intersectional” aspects which come into play in all of our self-images, our prejudices, and our distancing ourselves from people who seem “other” to us or threaten to make us appear as “other” in our larger social context. The multi-layered conversation enabled by the Pilgrim Place Diversity Study Group and its “Circle of Chairs” in conjunction with NAACP and NCNW has helped me bring my thoughts to expression. Many of us have irrational fears of ostracism or mortal emba...