Bible Belts and Square Pegs

The "Bible Belt" knows no boundaries. It's a global thing. And as far as the US goes, there is bigotry in the Midwest, the West, the South, and the North.

I guess the South, sometimes called the Bible Belt, got the reputation during the Civil Rights movement when racial discrimination led to non-violent protests, and civil disobedience. It went back to Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, Rosa Parks, desegregating Little Rock (AR),

Greensboro (NC) Sit-In, and more. Had these events happened anyplace else I suspect we would have had the same friction and resistance from while folks, don't you think?

It was in 1960 that the black men took a stand in Greensboro, NC, at a lunch counter in Woolworth's. I was just eight years old and I still remember watching it on television to this day. I was mad at the unfairness of it all and curious to see the opinions of my family and friends.

Most all my family lived in Georgia and they thought segregation was a fine idea. Up until then my family had always been united and supportive on every front. I lived in a place where there were so few black people that segregation seldom came up.

When my uncles spoke their opinions loud and clear at a family gathering my father, the oldest child and respected family patriarch, told them just how wrong they were. It was the first time I felt the family fracturing. It was the first time I realized that there was an "us" and a "them" and I was happy to be on the side of standing up for civil rights and fighting for what was only fair. I may have been one of "them" but that was all right with me.

Square peg in a round hole. That's always been me. Growing up no one else was like me. The older I got I searched them out. I found a few in high school and found tons when I got to college.

I can slide back and forth and mingle with the aliens as one of them but am always glad to get back to my utopian home land where other progressives thrive. People that think like me and act like me and care about the least of us like me.

It can be a lonely place to live at times but when you find someone else who is also like you you will also call it utopia, too.

Bible Belts and Square Pegs