From: Andrew Phelps <dis_course@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [PsySR-humanrights] FW: Nqt reply to Xyz
To: psysr-humanrights@googlegroups.com
Date: Friday, August 20, 2010, 3:28 PM
Ttt:
Thank you for this remarkable rendition based on your own direct knowledge. I too had an experience from the 60s regarding the politics of lynching.
I was in a "personal growth" group organized through Esalen Institute and an Afro-American woman there spoke up. She said she was from WV and she talked about a "KKK experience" from her own background.
It seems her Dad who was a community leader got on the "wrong side" of the KKK. So the "usual gathering" of people in white hoods developed and started focusing on her home. By appearance, a lynching was imminent.
Her father, however, assessed the situation, opened the door, and walked out. He walked straight up to the [lead] hooded person at a measured pace. He then reached up and took the hood off that person. It was his friend, the banker! What we might call a "shame dynamic" set in, and the crowd of hooded persons slowly dispersed.
In that "group" setting this talk was determined to be a 'good boundary definition'. In the terms I'm using today, that represents "lived experience" of the civil rights struggle - and my experience of hearing about it first-hand. In this instance, fortunately, the event didn't have the terrible outcome you describe.
Andrew
On Wed, 8/18/10, Ttt wrote:
Mqt, Xyz, and all:
I did not intend to get into this discussion because I have such strong feelings about these and so many other inhuman acts by both older and newer cultures. Although I abhor the practice of stoning, I have to ask myself if it is really any worse than what I remember from my early life as an American.