by Room 215 20 Replies latest jw friends
I can attest to the racism too. I used to attend conventions in Pontiac Mich. and as a white guy, I was shocked to see the attitde the black "brothers" and "sisters" showed toward me. There was no feeling of love, or of the existance of a "brotherhood". This may have been one of the first eye-openers for me. I realized that what we were being told in the WT was not really happening in real life.
Dan
One more thing...
If Fred knows about Room 222 than he is not a kid. That show was on in the late sixties. Sorry Fred, but you are dating yourself.
Dan
g'day room215,
Hey Fred you ever serve at Bethel? What room no?
JW best traits:
Personal Honesty. A JW won't steal your car, drug your kids or rape your wife (unless she asks him nicely)
Cleanliness (even thier brains are regularly washed clean in the blood transfusion of the lord)
Bright and happy. The average JW has above average intellect and a good sense of humour. Those smiles might be masking great pain and self delusion but a smile is a smile is a smile. (perhaps our desperation to escape the boredom of meetings and field service made jokes and fun more important to us than people generally, i don't know but the strange folk attracted to the cult gave me some of the deepest genuinely funny experiences i'll ever have.)
JW bad traits:
Judgemental Constantly judge everyone and everything harshly including themselves. (leading to social dislocation, guilt trips and other psychological problems)
Back stabbing Gossop is the collateral and everyone gets caught.
sore feet If I go back to being a JW i'll start a foot massage round for tired sisters ;)
***
The racism thing took me by surprise too. I never witnessed any as a JW. The only time I came close was when I became engaged in conversation with a black couple from South Carolina. It was at the Sydney 1973 international assembly. The peaceful happy chat i was having with this quiet couple was broken by the sudden interuption of a white woman who loudly declared herself the wife of a District Overseer and with a brushing of her hand dismissed the black man as mearly a Circuit Overseer.
Up till she burst in I took him for a fellow pioneer. These were the first Afro-Americans I had ever met and we were really getting along well. Now I stood there astonished at this horrible woman, the black brother gave an embarrassed shrug, we shook hands and parted company. At 16 years of age it was an eyeopener into JW elitism and the pecking order in the society.
cheers, unclebruce
Gotta show my wife this thread. She is Hispanic but "tan enough" to know that the organization definitely is NOT colorblind. Moving from LA to little "Norway" (no offense Kent) in the Northwest just validated what she already believed. I am sure there are other places in the country that are far worse.
April - we can definitely related to what you wrote: " And when I decided to marry a black man, I got the "speech" about what would happen to my kids! And how hard it would be to "live" together in the south. And shouldn't I reconsider??? One brother even asked me why I couldn't find a nice, white brother to marry?"
Sounds just like the lecture I got from my dad (PO at the time) when I got engaged to my wife Sabine. In addition to the above, he also brought out the old rooming forms, and asked Sabine what box she would check. Just so happens that her birth certificate said white, so there went that "valid argument".
Also heard first hand how people of color are treated to their faces at the KH, AND how they are talked about when they are not around. Ugly stuff.
Prejudice goes deep down - just like nationalism. It will take some of the JW's at least 1000 years in the new system to weed that out! LOL
Peace,
Makena
Still trying to think of their best traits - cooking, eating, drinking, sales ability comes to mind. Probably forgetting a few more.
Well Fred has got to be one the ugliest things in the WTS!
ISP
April - almost forgot another stupid remark from another relative when I was dating Sabine. My hair (perhaps like yours) tends toward red / reddish blonde. Another cousin of mine, very red hair, married and divorced two black brothers which was not looked on too highly by the rest of the superior dub family.
Anyway, when my aunt realized that I was seriously going to get married to a non-white sister she asked, "What is it with all of you redheads and blacks?????" I also got the "why don't you marry this white sister who you graduated from high school with?". ARGGHGHGHGH
Makena,
Celebrating diversity always, and free thinking for 2 years.
Best Trait: always got a pen in their pocket/handbag
Worst Trait: always got a pen in their pocket
Rm 215, GA congs,didn't integrate til '72! Still having major problems in cong, though dubs not discussing it.
Room 213,
You said: as “a group they're relatively color-blind (low to no incidence of racism among them ).”
I often used that very point to demonstrate the fact that this was God’s Organization. I really felt that way until a brother in Far Rockaway accused me of being a racist. I had worse problems in Georgia.
In fairness, many rank and file witnesses truly love and respect without respect to race. If Harpo Carr (Harpo?? Freudian slip??) is to be believed, Wallace Ford and Malcome X also saw Witnesses as color blind. This was probably relative to the example of other churches.
Room213, I believe the way you felt about racism in the org was a reflection of the way YOU FELT ABOUT RACE. I didn’t see it because I didn’t feel it. I was ‘relatively color-blind’ as you probably were, so that’s what I saw.
Your comment, ‘relatively color-blind’ which has raised discussion, is not a fault but reflection of a quality. Whether or not it is a quality worthy of commending the WT Society is what is questioned.
I, for one, belief one unique thing about cults is they often minimize the differences in race while emphasizing a more preposterous bases for segregating THEMSELVES from the rest of humanity.
Jst2laws
Now I KNOW that Fred's an old fart! He made mention of "Room 222", a TV show that aired some 30 years ago.
Hey Fred, I still want to meet you. Let me know, and I'll feed and house you for a few days.
Hmmm... best traits...can't think of any. Oh, wait! Very pretty young sisters! There's a JW girl that works at the bank where my account is. What a doll!
Ugliest traits? Well, let's go back through a year's worth of posts on this forum, and throw in Freeminds and WT Observer for starters.
TR
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
—Edmund Burke
