I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes it’s very, vary hard.<\/p>\n
Several years ago a friend from high school posted an anti-Semitic meme on Facebook. I read it several times — maybe I was misreading it, maybe there was a charitable reading — but no, it was, no matter how I looked at it, clearly anti-Semiitic.<\/p>\n
I posted a comment, pointing out the anti-Semitism and why I was reading it this way.<\/p>\n
She said that, no, she wasn’t anti-Semitic. She was a Christian. She loved Israel.<\/p>\n
I’d done what I could, and I let it go.<\/p>\n
Her son went to college. She posted with clear maternal pride a photo of him and other members of the student government flashing a white power hand symbol.<\/p>\n
Because it was a group of kids, I thought it was possible that I was misreading the situation and the gesture. I said nothing. Nonetheless, the thought lingered. I had real doubts that the gesture was all that innocent.<\/p>\n
Yesterday she posted another photo of her son, again with maternal pride, again flashing the same white power hand gesture.<\/p>\n
No, I decided, that earlier photograph wasn’t a mistake. No, the memes and the gestures were not innocent.<\/p>\n
I don’t know her son. I’ve not seen her in thirty-five years; I left West Virginia and never went back, except for one trip in 2006.<\/p>\n
But, I’ve seen enough. When people show you who they are, believe them. And this high school friend has repeatedly shown me who she is — and who her family is.<\/p>\n
And that’s sad. Like I said, I want to think the best of people… only in this case, I can’t. I just can’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but sometimes it’s very, vary hard. Several years ago a friend from high school posted an anti-Semitic meme on Facebook. I read it several times — maybe I was misreading it, maybe there was a charitable reading — but no, it was, no matter howContinue reading “People Showing Who They Are”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[5368,752,5369,730],"class_list":["post-35004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-anti-semitism","tag-facebook","tag-racism","tag-west-virginia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}