Posted by parhad (158.252.219.109) on October 09, 2001 at 07:31:21:
In Reply to: Villawood Detention Centre posted by David Chibo on October 09, 2001 at 03:06:05:
Damn me, that was good to hear. The very idea of Assyrians NOT caving in and snivelling is such a thrill. Bless you both. I'd say skip the Assyrian chuirches and alert the Anglicans or anyone BUT Assyrians. We are still too terrified by our Christian upbringing to fight back aganist anything...I mean our peculiar take on it.
We have been far too contented to get by, to pass for white. The Jews had no such option and it eventually made them fiercely determined...Blacks also had no escape and they finally took up the challenge and best the Man at his own game.
It's our fault that we never made our unique heritage known, that we kept quiet when it was time to speak out...now we're pissed as can be that the Man dares lump us in with A-rabs, when we were happy enouhg for years to be lumped in with Americans.
Don't we wish now that people knew more about us...which is why I asked Dimrod why the hell he'd been blocking the Shumirum for five years. It isn't as MY monument that she was important...it's just the best goddamn way to say something about who we are,,,"brand familiarity" if you prefer. Our people have such poor and wounded egos, and lack real Pride, substituting a hissy and nasty false one in place of it that all they can see is that I am clamoring for more attention than they can hope to get.
I don't mean to keep intruding my sculptures into every discussion, but every complaint we have stems from the fact that no one knows enough or anything about us to know WHAT to do with us, where we fit or belong. When things are okay, we have no identity, chameleonlike we blend into any culture we find refuge in...in times of trouble, when the Man wakes up in fear and paranoia, he recognizes that we are "different" but he still doesn't understand who we are...how could he...and we get treated as if we were the enemy, as if we were the same as those "other" he now finds reason to abuse.
Somebody figure out a better way to reach hundreds of people a week to teach them a little about us...and extrapolate that by years and years and I'll drop monuments and go work on that instead. I keep telling you all, I'm not really any kind of "Atrist", not the usual kind you think of anyway.
David...how about a grass roots...no, forget it...I know what people will think..."those people are being detained, I'm not...if I speak up they might stick me in there with them, instead of put them out here with me." It breaks ones heart...the only hope is OTHER people rescuing us AGAIN...all we seem to be able to do on our own is get into harms way...just like JC.