Hi Cocoa -

You reminded me... When I was growing up, I got this message: "Never let anyone know you're Jewish." They never explained why, though. It was puzzling.

In the early 1900's, parts of my father's family came to America from Poland. Others didn't. Same for my mother's side from Ukraine.

Neither side of my family ever mentioned who had died, but they knew, of course. To this day, I don't even know, but when I see a documentary on the death camps, I look for faces that resemble mine.

When I was growing up in Little Rock in the '50's and '60's, racism against Black People was so ingrained that people didn't even acknowledge it existed. Today, as we expose all the lies about racism not being there, the truth about our society's use of casual violence against Black Americans is starting to be exposed, and that is so good.

Racism against LatinX Americans is not all that different, but I am so glad that younger people, more and more, are refusing to go along with all this old crap. And that is so good.

I just want to mention one more, the people in America who are truly forgotten, Native Americans. I've driven across the Navajo Nation, listening to radio announcers broadcasting in Dine, stood with tears in my eyes speaking with Hopi kachina carvers in Flagstaff, feeling the beauty that came from their hands, and spellbound with the laughter in their smiles.

When we take beautiful people of whatever color or background and dehumanize them, what the utterly stupid fuck are we doing?