Bringing me out in a Tourette-ish fit. Oh, when faggot just meant scrap wood, and gay meant light and happy! Oh, when you could make a joke about wops and kikes and no one cared! When you could kill a chink or a nigger with impunity! When women knew their place and kids were happy, happy I tell you, to get smacked in the face!
To me, this is nostalgia. Rosy glasses put on by the privileged to make a Golden Age of their childhoods. When they were innocent, and assumed the world was as well.
There was a locally produced show a decade back, where old Salt Lakers could reminisce about how it used to be. The most vile episode was about a restaurant called, no joke, the Coon Chicken Inn.
And these old white folks admitting, with a sigh, that this would not be politically correct anymore. The whole show filled with idealized memories of being a small, homogeneous place, without a worry in the world. Anyone different probably moved away, and had a different story to tell.
It was that hint of wistfulness for the black waiters that rankled.
I remember my father's casual bigotry, and my mother's thoughtless affront that people got offended at 'ethnic' humor. I remember the Detroit Riots, at least driving through the boarded up aftermath. That didn't look like a minority thought mocking stereotypes were ever funny. I remember the bussing issues, and neighborhoods excluding non-white home buyers and tenants.
I remember when it became legal for a woman to have her own credit card. I remember a time when I had to wear a skirt at school, and much later when we were grudgingly allowed to wear uniform pants as well. And my mother's dismay, remembering wearing pretty dresses - forgetting that she was not allowed anything else. She got nostalgic over a dire childhood poverty and an alcoholic father, high top sneakers from the dole that she hated, but tended to only remember when I wanted sneakers. Back when a woman with a job who got married would have to give up the job. Or drop out of school if pregnant. Automatic.
People assuring me as a child that "these are the best years of your life" dismayed me. If this was as good as it was getting, best jump off a tower right now. I never could fantasize like that. The truth stood out, and my childhood is not anything to return to.
It's not like everything is better now, although it is better in some important ways. Some experiences are lost, gone, of course. Today has it's own problems and nightmares, of course it does. Bigotry is still with us. Us vs Them is built into us.
Everything has a lifetime, everything dies. So, cherish the moment now. The past wasn't better. We were just younger, and didn't understand.
6 comments:
Yes. Excellent post.
There may well be some who can feel the kind of nostalgia for bigotry, abuse and denial that you describe so well. But that is unhealthy, and need not be indulged in. But what of healthy nostalgia that seeks to uplift, the kind that has been described as a call from the future? Is that not worth investigating if it helps us create a better future?
A thoughtful post. Thank you.
Tom,
My point is, if you don't see the larger context, that nothing is as golden as nostalgia paints it, then you are simply ignoring the reality. There was no Golden Age. Every time has good, and bad. Now, then, makes no difference. Nostalgia erases the darkness, and is a lie.
trou! I've missed you, it's been a long time.
One of the first words I learned in Greek was nostos. It means simply "a return home," and I've just now seen in the dictionary that one of the meanings of the word nostalgia - the condition of being homesick - stems from this Greek term. The other meaning, a bittersweet longing for the past, seems to be more recent. After reading your thought-provoking post and Tom's comment, I realize I've always thought of nostalgia as more future-oriented. Fascinating!
My father's mother was racist, but my parents seemed to shed that outright raising my brother and sister and I without any sense of racism.
Your point about every time having both good and bad - I think is very apt. It is easy to see today the good and bad; what is good and bad today is different from what it once was, but still there was both.
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