He said it was like a dart. Like being hit by a dart. He was talking about being on the receiving end of a racial epithet or being the recipient of prejudice when someone speaks. I concur. I find dart to be a perfect metaphor because it probably won't kill you to be hit by one, but it stings, it's sharp, and you've become a target.
When Trump uses terms like "poisoning the blood," and "vermin," he's throwing darts. Today we call them "dog whistles" but darts is a better term because they stick, they cause pain, and they are meant for specific targets.
Ever been hit by a dart like this? If so, you know the sting never leaves. I recall a few very specific darts thrown my way during childhood. Once, while walking home from Elementary school, a girl in my neighborhood announced she had a $10 bill. To a 9-year-old, in the 1950s that was a small fortune. Apparently her parents were getting divorced and her father had recently explained to her that he would no longer be living in the family home. He gave her $10 before he said good-bye. After we got over the shock of seeing a real $10 bill, this girl, Donna Dye, was her name, then announced that she was going to spend it all on candy.
On our way home was a small drug store with a large candy counter. In those days it was still possible to buy candy for a few pennies. Some were two for a penny, or 3 cents a piece. Major candy bars were a nickel and deluxe candy bars were a dime. The nickel and dime bars were usually out of our reach.
So, gonna Dye goes in the store and talks to Bonnie, the clerk there. We all knew her because she lived on my sweet and her son was just a year older than me. Bonnie asks Donna if she really wants to spend the ten bucks on candy? She does.
Donna exits the store with a brown paper bag full of candy. Given the prices then, she has about 150 pieces of candy. She offers candy to the three of us waiting for her. The first kid takes a tootsie roll, a tootsie pop, and some Smarties. The bag is then pointed my way. I peer inside and see the gold foil of the one candy item I never had, I never afford. The Rolo. The roll of caramel filled chocolate pieces had always eluded me, so I took it. Then came the dart.
"Only a Jew would take that candy." The dart was thrown by Dennis Miller. A classic bully type, Dennis making a remark like that was hardly a surprise. Now, I did not come from a particularly religious family and never identified as Jewish, nor did I deny my ethnicity. No matter, Dennis threw the dart based in some internal need to reinforce a stereotype. The day that happened, I knew little of anti-semitism or its roots. I only knew I was instantly made the "other." In the years that followed, through Jr. High and High School I would learn more, experience more too.
Jr. High was particularly cruel. Aside from hazing rituals and general fear mongering and violence, some kids at my Jr. High had a habit of throwing pennies at kids they deemed Jews. These "others" were thought to be miserly and money grubbing, hence the penny-dart. Once I heard one kid ask another if he knew why Jews had such big noses. "It's where they put all the pennies," he replied. They enjoyed a good laugh. The kind of laugh whereby they don't know the laugh is on them.
I survived all that and more, hearing myself labeled a "Jew" on various occasions. The darts still flew, but now through my teen years and early adulthood they were thrown by people who assumed I had no problem with their racist views. Hearing the N word used casually in conversation can have the same impact. It might even be worse because we know we should not just listen. We should say something. There are times when I'm still not sure how to react. Case in point. A few years ago I was having a conversation with a woman in her nineties. She was describing something she bought at a garage sale and how much she had to pay for it. "I tried to Jew "em down," she said matter of factly. I could only smile and figure she wasn't long for this world anyway.
Sticks and stones will break bones but words can pierce the psyche like darts.
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