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Sancho

(9,067 posts)
3. ...there was lots of drama in the 60s and 70s for us..
Mon Jun 17, 2019, 12:48 PM
Jun 2019

Dad was an army Major, GI bill, MD during Korea...Charleston was the Deep South. I went with the family and met Nixon (VP) for Mark Clark's retirement from the Citadel in Charleston. Dad loved Nixon and I thought he was a crook.

As baby-boomers, us kids and parents fought from the mid-60s until well into the mid-70s with Dad (Mom was more sympathetic). I was 1A in the draft (but never got called due to college deferments), I protested against the war, introduced Carter at a rally, and I often declared that I'd leave the US before going to Vietnam.

There were years that I was pretty much disowned - no communication with home - despite being an otherwise "good kid" (college, teacher, married), etc. It was all over my firm belief that the GOP were crooks and war mongers.

My sister is a nurse and still lives in Charleston, and is still part of the anti-black, support-tRump-at-all-costs, anti-immigrant crowd. We rarely talk - in fact, my sister and I have never visited (except family funerals) in 40 years - but we don't fight. My brothers and I get along well, and the boys all left SC. My view is that much of SC is still "Archie Bunker" racist.

The "previous" generation were clearly racists (in my view), scared of communism (or socialism), and paranoid. We had a bomb shelter built in the back yard (really) in the 60s. It's hard for me to rationalize the "greatest generation" with my memories of racism, militarism, sexism, and intolerance.

The strike and "equal wages" for black nurses were part of many changes that resulted in my father leaving the teaching staff of MUSC. He was anti-union, and saw no reason that minorities or women should be paid the same as whites or men. He railed against medicare as the beginning of "socialized medicine" and communism.

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