Indoctrination... I Was Indoctrinated

Indoctrination was and is the mainstay of America. It’s been this way from the beginning. What’s happening today is that our society as a whole, is shifting, kicking and screaming the whole way toward a more perfect union. When TFG and any right winger decries “Wokeness”, Woke Agenda or Woke Indoctrination, I hear a call for a return to a failed system they used when I was a child. That system pitted white workers against black workers, men against women and used ageism to keep the status quo. As a child I saw it as white men were at the top of the heap of humanity and the only way I was going to get anywhere was to please a man enough for him to bequeath things and opportunities to me. By the time I was in my twenties, I was making my own luck and was attempting to break from from my indoctrination. Later I ran into the glass ceiling again, and again and again. When I was young on my first job I was inexperienced and naïve. When I was a mother of a toddler, I was too distracted by family responsibilities. As an empty nester, in my prime earning years, I was considered too set in my ways despite taking on anything new with enthusiasm.

Meanwhile I watched male colleagues fail upward while I was experiencing multiple symptoms of complex PTSD. PTSD promulgated by my indoctrination of being a proper girl in 1960’s small town America. Jason Aldean just had his Try That in a Small Town pulled from CMT circulation. That was a good move on CMT. The Black Community sees this a physical threat of lynching and I concur that is exactly the message of that song (the parody is more clear). Behave the way I want you to behave or else ______. Aldean leaves the listener to fill in the blank of what or else is. What I will add to that criticism of the song is that it is a threat to women, Jews, LGBTQ+ anyone not straight cis-gendered male. This song is a call to vigilante action. A lawless approach to enforce conformity to a world that benefits men who look and act like Jason Aldean to the detriment of the rest of us. I see this song as a threat of violence to me and to a lot of people I love.

Try That in a Small Town

I was indoctrinated into a white male supremacist world.

All of my teachers saw the world with well-defined roles for the separate sexes and the different races. LGBTQ+ was not in the conversation.

Non-cis gendered people and non-straight folks were unmentionable, except when whispered about with a great deal of what I now know as misinformation and bogus BS.

Anyone who stepped out of line with the status quo was shunned, shamed, punished in some way and forced to conform. Domestic Violence was always threatened and sometimes, many times used to get conformity.

I didn’t like that way of life and I don’t want to go back to it.

What I learned in school about the 1600’s slavery and indentured servants were the norm. What I didn’t learn in school was that it was not a happy time for the enslaved. They were used and abused. I was taught women and children were chattel to their designated male heir. What I didn’t learn was that women and children were also used and abused, as their fathers, grandfathers, husbands, brothers and uncles saw fit. I am sure there were happy families that had fathers that were not tyrants. I learned that the Revolutionary War was started mostly over taxation without representation and for the freedom of religion, expression, the ability to express grievances with the government and to pursue happiness.

To have Ron DeSantis puppet Education Committee come out and say that enslavement somehow benefitted the enslaved is is is…. That position leaves me speechless. I’m with Veep Kamala Harris speaking for me on this bone headed concept.

What was never examined in any level of depth was the fact women and black or dark skinned enough to be considered black people were taxed without representation. I figured that out on my own, but when I pointed that out in class; the male teacher and the boys in class along with some of the indoctrinated girls laughed. My male teacher asked me incredulously, “You don’t believe I can represent your interests?” He became angry when I said, “No. You know nothing about what girls and women want and need. The position of men throughout history seems to be that girls and women don’t need anything men don’t want to give. Same goes for slavery. We fought a war over that.” That was a hot button for this male teacher a fervent follower of The Lost Cause. If anyone said the Civil War was over slavery, he would immediately state it was due to five other reasons, starting with state’s rights. Yeah, I know, the Southern states wanted their residents to have the right to own people, which gave them the right to prevent those enslaved people from enjoying their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

My history teachers taught about Christopher Columbus’ discoveries and were silent about the miseries he spread to indigenous peoples. I didn’t know he made 4 voyages to the Americas. I knew there were indentured servants in the 1600’s, but I didn’t know about 1619. The black lash against the 1619 project IMO, is misguided. There is probably a point to be made here and there, but overall getting this new view of our history will only make us stronger. We need to hear our American History from the oppressed peoples. Getting the Black American and Native American perspectives on American history was and is long overdue. Crispus Attucks was mentioned as the first American to be killed for the revolution starting in 1770, but nothing about him being an escaped slave who changed his name or anything else that made him interesting was mentioned. I was never taught  about the cognitive dissonance of our countries founders between wanting freedom for all white men, but it was still ok to own slaves. Harriet Tubman was mentioned but there was nothing about her contributions to the Underground railroad. There was far too little, herstory taught in history class. 

The Emancipation Prolamation on January 1st, 1863 was taught, but the fact that is took two and a half years to put in place on Juneteenth, June 19th, 1865 when Texas was forced to  stop practicing enslavement was not. But the Emancipation Proclamation was only on paper. The North won the war, forced reparations but the North didn’t win the peace and the myth of The Lost Cause was born. The Great Migration of black Southerners going North and West for economic opportunity is well known, but I didn’t learn that in History class in the 1960s or 70s. I also didn’t learn much about Jim Crow laws were other than they existed. I didn’t learn their impact on black communities. I wasn’t taught what white Southerners did to restrict the black work force from leaving their oppressive system to the relative betterment North and West. I was taught The Lost Cause year after year after year. Nothing about the Tulsa, Rosewood the many other race based massacres. The Lost Cause continues today spread by the likes of the Proud Boys, 3 Percenters and the Oath Keepers the result of white Southerners also moving North and West spreading their biases with their migration.

For 15 short years the previously enslaved people did advance, but Jim Crow laws, Sundown towns, lynching and the continuance of racial massacres marginalized POC and their economic opportunities through a structural racist system. White women who supported abolition were not rewarded for supporting the end of slavery. No women got the right to vote after the Civil War. The underreported story here is how white men exploited and manipulated their disappointed mothers, wives and daughters and fomented The Great Schism of where abolitionists and woman’s suffrage split up. There is plenty about how some white women’s elitism and racism was exposed. Ta-nehisi Coates does a great job of explaining how the split occurred, but he doesn’t go over how white men encouraged the split. Black men did get the right to vote, but by 1885, exercising that right could get them dead, fired or run out of town. What is truly underreported is that land owning white men opposed suffrage to any other group. They opposed non-land owning men, then non-white men, then non-white women and former felons, then it was young people between 18-20 years of age. Today is no different. Voter suppression is firmly aimed at people who vote against the rich white man’s agenda. The agenda Jason Aldean romanticizes in his ode to the [scary] small town.

Women during this time frame had all sorts of atrocities visited upon them. A women who spoke her mind could easily find herself confined to an insane asylum, cast out of her home or any of a dozen other things could happen should they anger the men in their life. If you think that is a little hyperbolic, consider Rosemary Kennedy who had a lobotomy by order of her father in 1941. He had it done because she had violent mood swings and she was pretty and attracted a lot of male attention. Joe Kennedy was afraid Rosemary would derail JFK’s and Bobby Kennedy’s careers, so he had her brain mutilated to make her more docile. What happened is she became unable to walk or talk and she was hidden away in convents. Her siblings didn’t see here for over 20 years. I have written before about women who were thrown out of their homes when they became pregnant as short a time ago…  I know for sure it happened to a woman in 1978,

People get doctorates in history by analyzing the part of American History from the end of the Civil War, Restoration, and the Jim Crow era, but that is too focused. On May 24th, 1844 Samuel Morse transmitted the first telegram, “What hath God wrought?” Less than 20 years later the 1862, Pacific Railroad Act passed during the Civil War, which started a corporate race that ended in Promontory, Utah on May 10th, 1869 by joining the East and West rail lines making transport of people and goods affordable promoted an economic boon that largely benefited white people. In 1876 the telephone was invented. In 1880 the incandescent light bulb was invented changing the world forever. Rich white people could travel, keep late hours and communicate with people miles away, further improving their economic opportunities. The middle class could travel and sometimes make use of telephones and telegraph and use lights, but at a more diminished level. Poor White people and POC didn’t get these benefits. Women living on their own didn’t get these benefits. A white woman’s only chance for upward economic advancement was to marry well. That generally meant she had to stuff it in and take it. Black women also had to marry well, but she never knew if and when some white guy would kill her husband. All women still got shit. White men were on top. Black men had to play a deadly game of survival. Black women also had to play a real game of survivor, but white women only got what men thought they should want. If a white woman stepped out of line, then she’d lose her husband, her job, her family, her home, her friends, her church — this type of shunning still happens today. Please see the back lash against Sarah Brady.

I was a child during the turbulent 1960s. The music was great. Big Band, du wop, Rock ‘n Roll and yes, some Country/Western. My Mom dressed up to go grocery shopping. We went to church 2, 3 or 4 times a week. We said grace over our food. Mom had her hair done once a week. She had no chance of keeping a spotless house with 5 kids and our grandmother living in a 6 bedroom house. She settled on keeping the common rooms reasonably clutter free and clean — our rooms were our personal castles and could be as messy as we wanted. She kept a schedule of changing beds every Monday. Laundry was done on Monday and Tuesday. Mending was done on Wednesday. Grocery shopping planning was Thursday when the ads came out. She had project Friday which could be anything. I came home once to find new wallpaper on the kitchen walls — she did that all by herself. Grandma went to the Senior Center every Monday and Wednesday and Friday. Saturday after cartoons I was to clean the living room, dining room and kitchen then go grocery shopping with Mom which could be 4 different grocery stores picking up the items on sale. I was told that I too should look forward to having my own house to run. Definite indoctrination.

Church was more indoctrination. Women preachers were not encouraged. Virtually unheard of at our American Baptist church. Seldom, but present when we joined the Disciples of Christ Church. I was not allowed to talk about playing cards, Rock “N Roll or about going to dances when we visited church near our summer home on Seneca Lake. That church thought cards or dancing was sinful. I always wore a hat for church up until I was in my teens, then for some reason just about all women stopped wearing hats in church. I think the Catholic church stopped requiring women to wear head coverings in church and many denominations followed. We lived in the Catholic part of town in New York and my older sisters and brother were forever being told we were all going to hell for not being Catholic. My sister went to catechism class just to make peace in the neighborhood, but she never took her first communion or was confirmed as Catholic. She was backwards dunked baptized at the American Baptist Church. In Ohio it was the opposite, the Catholic church was dwarfed by all the protestant church membership and they were told they were pagans due to many of the Catholic rituals coming from pagan rituals. The rules were simple lying, stealing and cheating was wrong. Homosexuality was wrong. Being POC was questionable. A common racist/misogynistic phrase in the common usage was, “I’m free, white and 21” and I can _____ put whatever here _____, which firmly implies if you weren’t white then, maybe you couldn’t do the whatever you filled in the blank.

That’s a racist phrase if there ever was one and please forgive me for using it, but I think it illustrates racist indoctrination everyone in the town I grew up in was subject to. It’s the kind of town Aldean adores and I fear. Even picking who was “it” for Hide ‘n Seek or Kick the Can was a racist “Eeny Meeny Miney Moe, catch the Tiger by the Toe. If he hollars, let him go. Eeny Meeny Miney Moe.” is what we say today, but that is not what kids said in the 60s. This is what the anti-woke agenda is all about. A return to prevalent, blatant racism, misogyny and LGBTQ+ intolerance. The GOP isn’t against indoctrination it’s that they want to keep the indoctrination that I received in the 1960s and 1970s which wasn’t much different than my siblings got in the 1950s. What is not generally reported is that white working men don’t feel privileged. In fact they fear diversity as a threat to them.

Shaming women for what they wear, say or do. No matter what her age is, she can’t win unless she makes her own company and then? Maybe not. We’ve come a long way since women could only be a career teacher, a secretary until she got married or a career nurse until she married a doctor. Sometimes, not; but that was the expectation. White women in colonial times had great power over their enslaved black workers. They continued their misuse of power, such as it was, after the Civil War via women’s clubs and the KKK to continue the pecking order of White men, white women and everybody else for decades to come. We are a long way from saying woman who lost custody of her children in a divorce must have been a “bad” woman. Or, are we? Really? No, women still get BS from other women, men, their families, their co-workers, customers or venders, authorities for their appearance, voice tones, ideas, work product, purchases — in fact for everything and anything, relevant or irrelevant. BIPOC still get marginalized and they are still playing the tricky aspects of staying alive in the face of civil or medical authority, or in staying employed in the face of racism and in dealing with the constant threats of racism. The status quo where BIPOC are still exasperated with white women continues. White women are still exasperated with everybody because they are also marginalized and they will be marginalized for life, but to a lesser degree than female POC and the LGBTQ+ community.

So much BS.

How are women conned into going along with misogyny? Easy, cradle to grave verbal and emotional conditioning. If that doesn’t work use scripture. If that doesn’t work try shunning, shaming, manipulation, false competition. If that doesn’t work, then there is/was violence. Anything that preserves the status quo of male supremacy. Not all women fall for this schtick, but enough do to create a stereotype. Then, they get a privilege. They are white, so they can get black people in trouble. The rise of the Karen’s and Ken’s is well documented, I for one, don’t see that as a privilege as much as I see it as a misuse of power and I feel sorry for anyone named Karen or Ken.

True, not all women and girls experienced domestic abuse, but I was threatened with it daily in the 1960s and 1970s. Corporal punishment was allowed in schools in Ohio and New York. The threat of violence was enough to keep children and their Moms in line. That was enough until I had enough of the threats and blew up over the threats and made some threats of my own when I was 16. Until that day, my Dad had no idea just how frightened all of his children were of him. My Dad was stunned and changed his behavior. I knew both the father down the street and the one across the street would have heard my threat and would have casually beaten me with their fists or a belt. My Dad was a church elder and my outburst struck him to his core. I did get a talking to about respect. I was told I was grounded for making back talk, and I blew up again. What was Dad’s punishment for his threat? I went Biblical. Why was he allowed to provoke his children to wrath? The problem was an imbalance of power. He was abusive. He had rules to be obeyed. Why wasn’t it ok for kids to be free from abuse? [but I wouldn’t know how to phrase that until years later]. Lack of respect and respect go two ways. He never laid a hand on me in anger, ever again.

It’s not just Christianity and most of it’s denominations. The Catholic church is the most misogynistic, but less racist some of the time. Go to an evangelical church. Go to a Mormon church/temple. Go to a Kingdom hall. Go to an Conservative or Orthodox Jewish temple. Go to a Mosque. Go to a Bhuddist Temple. Just about all the religions except for the Wiccans call for male supremacy and some call for specific racial supremacy.

How do BIPOC get conned into going along with racism? They don’t! BIPOC have to deal with racism every day, but there are many racial advocates calling out all aspects racism. That said, BIPOC have the same vulnerabilities to cradle to grave verbal and emotional racist conditioning. BIPOC use scripture to find solace in suffering or for an explanation of their situation. White folks use gaslighting, racial scapgoating, shaming and manipulation, false competition to keep the status quo. Then, there’s violence. If there is anything BIPOC know about racism, it’s that it can , oh, so easily fly into violence. Surely, any honest person in the U.S. sees and comprehends the threat of racial violence is way too prevalent today.

The fact is blatant racism is close to being tolerated again. Covert racism and micro-aggressions will be near impossible to stop, but I’m heartened every time I see racial activists call out covert and structural racism. What I want to see in Florida is for the private sector, black churches, black business owners to create a series of American History lectures of all the things struck from our Florida curriculum. Everyone needs to write complaints to the accrediting institutions that the approved Florida curriculum is leaving out too much of our history. There is too much coddling of white fragility.

The status quo is the indoctrination that TFG, DeSantis, MAGA and religious leaders and nihilists want. That is “good” for them. They are afraid of all people sharing the same rights. They see life and economics as a zero sum game. Teaching and giving tolerance, acceptance, openness and diversity means more for the “other” people (which includes all women) and less for them. The concept of The Sum of  Us is not in their lexicon.

I was indoctrinated into normalized racist and misogynistic thinking enforced with violence and the constant threat of violence.

It has been a challenge for many women my age to overcome this indoctrination.

Disposing of the racist part was relatively easy for me, once I left that small town.

Being taken seriously as a woman has been a lot more difficult.

As I continue to deal with complex PTSD, my reading list has expanded to include reading how famous women like JLo dealt with misogyny. I’ll try to find that documentary. Mika Brzezinski’s team up with Forbes Know Your Value and Women Over 50 are very encouraging. EMDR (Eye movement Desensitation ReProcessing) is offering me a new set of coping skills. The Body Keeps the Score is insightful to just how much my indoctrination has cost me.

I identify with Al Sharpton’s take on the Florida’s Dept. of Ed saying the enslaved benefitted by being enslaved will be pivoted toward woman benefitting by being chattel, too. From there, they will turn to saying the holocaust benefitted the Jews. I can just hear some Right Wing pundit and politician telling me I somehow benefitted by being abused, traumatized over and over and over again. This dismissive poppycock drivel is an attempt to rationalize racism, elitism, misogyny and non-conforming gender and sexual orientation intolerance. Trauma and abuse is what indoctrination was for me. 

I don’t want 1950 or 1960 style of indoctrination for anybody.