ALWAYS KEEP GRINNING,By Louise Annarino,June 16,2012
So many memories of Dad crowd in that the doors of my memory cannot close long enough for this train of thought to leave the station. So, I shall eject many in order to move on to a place where I can share a few with you.
My Dad was ornery. This was the first comment made by his childhood friends,his mother, brothers, cousins, aunts or uncles as each described him to me in answer to my request: “Tell me about my Dad when he was young.”
“He could never stop grinning,” said Grandma, “He went to the Bishop’s school in Cincinnati you,know, next to the cathedral? Well, one day the bishop came to class to speak to the children, and as the bishop spoke your dad’s silly grin got bigger and bigger. The bishop thought he was mocking him and said to your dad, ‘Wipe that silly grin off your face!’,which only made your dad grin more. After a couple of reminders to stop grinning the bishop told your dad to go home and ‘Don’t come back until you mother brings you back to school!’ Your dad never said a word to me. So, for the rest of the week, your dad left home every morning for school,but spent the day in the movie theatre. He did this day after day,until the day I got a home visit from Sister wondering why I was keeping Angelo home,and had not returned with him to the school as the bishop directed. When your dad came home that day,as usual grinning like a banshee, I tried to give him a whupping,but I just couldn’t do it. He grinned and laughed the whole time. I just sent him back to school. Nothing and no one can stop Angelo’s grin!”
“Your dad was always getting us into trouble,” said my Uncle Joe, “but, he has a hard head.” We used to have to fight our way to school every day as we left the Italian neighborhood. We carried ball bats to fight our way through the Irish,Polish and Black neighborhoods. Your dad suggested we walk above the streets on construction beams of the many buildings going up on our route to school. He was fooling around as usual,making everyone laugh at his antics,grinning like a fool when he fell off and was knocked out. We wrapped handkerchiefs around his bleeding head,picked him up and carried him home. Grandma,Mom,and Aunt Annie were so mad at us for failing to take care of our sweet baby brother that we all got whuppings.When Ange woke up,he woke up grinning like a fool at all the women in our house making such a big deal out of it. “He could start more trouble! But, that grin always got him out of it.”
My grandfather and his brothers were boot-leggers during the prohibition. Great Uncle Wes told me that one day Dad and his cousin Frank were to transport a case of beer to the secret room at Great Aunt Angie’s house. Dad was only 12 so Frankie drove. Dad was keeping Frankie in stitches,and keeping him from paying attention to the speedometer. Soon, they heard police sirens.Realizing they could not be found with beer in the truck,Frankie told Dad to throw it out the window as he drove around a curve. “Your dad threw the whole d… case out the window, instead of one bottle at a time as he should have,” said Uncle Wes,laughing. “It was so heavy that it stuck right in the berm where the cops cops could see it.” The police took his cousin off to jail and asked Dad if he could drive the truck. He was told to follow them to the police station. He did, for awhile, then fell back bit by bit. He parked the truck in front of the bar of a rival Italian fruit vendor, and went…you can guess by now…to the movies…for the rest of the day. I asked Dad about this story,and he said it was all true and that it would have been fine if he’d thrown out one bottle at a time.But, he was too scared to think straight. The police let Frankie go, found the truck and questioned the bar owners,no one was arrested. I asked “Why not?” It seems that a bottle of whiskey was left in each police call box around town every week. The police were content to look the other way,so long as no other laws,even speed limits,were not broken. Few people agreed with prohibition. People simply worked there way around it,and kept grinning. “The policeman who found his weekly whiskey in his box always had a big grin on his face,”said Dad.”Always keep ’em smilin’.”
These stories became a lesson from Dad – no matter what happens never stop grinning! You might be able to avoid a good whupping.
Zimmerman Not Guilty of Murder of Trayvon Martin? Take Off the Hoods,Americans, By Louise Annarino,July 15,2013
Zimmerman Not Guilty of Murder of Trayvon Martin? Take Off The Hoods,Americans! By Louise Annarino,July 15
Used to be the Ku Klux Klan, men…even women… of every education level and background including law enforcement, donned white robes and hoods to protect their identity and hide their shame. Their stated purpose was to meet out justice to African-Americans who had crossed over a boundary; and,in some way failed to acknowledge the superiority and power of the white community. Perhaps, a 14 year old African-American boy smiled at a white married woman as he entered her small grocery http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/ . Perhaps a 37 year old African-American father of three children spent his days registering voters and seeking the end of Jim Crow laws as a N.A.A.C.P field organizer http://www.history.com/news/7-things-you-should-know-about-medgar-evers.
The murders of Emmet Till and Medgar Evers are well known, but every African-American, boys and men in particular, endure retaliatory acts based on racial bias and racial animus every day. They are familiar with expressions of bigotry and punishment justified by white fear. The white robes are gone now,replaced by an unreasonable white fear instututionalized in the law, and unquestioned by the white media.
Attorneys on each side of the George Zimmerman murder trial scrupulously avoided the racial motivation for the murder. The judge ordered the phrase “racial profiling” not be used. White “legal experts” on every channel affirmed this approach, as that required by a unbiased court. They are all wrong. The only way the court could have been free of bias would have been to acknowledge the racial bias underlying the case. Lady Justice is blindfolded but she is not stupid. She must not pretend race is not a motivation to kill. Our history clearly tells us otherwise. She need not play the fool; unless, she fears her power and authority can be used to empower scary African-American boys and men.
I expected the defense team to provide a strong defense woven into a story of why it was reasonable for a fully-grown man,trained in martial arts and armed with a gun, to fear a 17 year old African-American boy on his way home from a “munchies-run”. I expected the defense team to discount the boy’s right to defend himself from the attack his cultural history and his phone friend warned him to expect from his silent stalker. And,I expected the defense team to turn Trayvon’s self-defense into the justification of Zimmerman’s fear.
I naively did not expect the prosecution team to ignore racial bias. Special Prosecutor Angela Corey stated “This case has never been about race or the right to bear arms. We believe this case all along was about boundaries, and George Zimmerman exceeded those boundaries.” http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2013/0714/Zimmerman-not-guilty-Victory-for-new-kind-of-civil-rights-era The prosecution was eager to talk about boundaries,a euphemism for racial animus. But of course, we refuse to admit the existence of racial bigotry. We refuse even when we are charged to seek justice for the murder of an African-American teenager who did NOTHING wrong;certainly,nothing to explain the irrational or unreasonable fear proclaimed by Zimmerman’s attorneys. The prosecution failed to admit race drove motivation until the last minutes of the trial. It allowed the defense to hide race under the hood,as many of us do when we face racial animus. What we fear is not African-Americans.What we fear is our own racism.
Now, the “legal experts” are proclaiming it is impossible to prove racial animus led to Trayvon’s death. The only reason they make this claim is beacuse they cannot comprehend, or refuse to acknowledge, the continuing and historical irrationality of white fear. No one who is willing to admit this “fear turned to hate” is hogwash believes the DOJ cannot find such a connection. On THE VIEW today,the “legal expert” Dan Abrams responded to factually-based questions and comments by Whoopi Goldberg and Sherri Shepherd by dismissing their comments as “emotional’. While they clearly felt emotional, their comments were no less rational this his own. In fact, they were more so http://abc.go.com/shows/the-view/blogs/hot-topics/george-zimmerman-verdict.
The lack of racial intelligence among our legal experts, prosecutors,defense attorneys,judges, media pundits and manyof us white Americans is institutionalized. This must change. twe must do all we can to raise our racial I.Q. We no longer wear physical hoods over our heads to hide our identity and our shame. We wear figurative hoods of ignorance over our heads to pretend we have no reason to feel shame. Take off the hoods,America! We cannot change what we refuse to face…our selves.
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Tagged as African-American, civil rights, courts, Dan Abrams, george Zimmerman, hate crimes.department of Justice, juries, justice, law, racial profiling, racism, self defense, Sherri Shepherd, The View, Trayvon AMrtin, Whoopi Goldberg