100 word podcast - Wikipedia Wildcard

This week the weekly challenge at the 100 word story podcast turned out to be the first ever 'Wikipedia Wild card'. The idea is that you go to Wikipedia, click on random essay, and write about what comes up. I had only read the prompt on Saturday, and assumed that you had to write on the first essay you pulled up. I listened to the Podcast on Monday, and found that if you didn't like the prompt, you could keep trying, but you would have to list the ones that you didn't like.

My first try brought up the prompt, "People just like us." I went with this, not just because I didn't know that I could, 'reboot', but because it allowed me to address a thought that I have had for some time.

There is a website called http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/ where they have a hundred postcards of lynchings. I was so disturbed the first time I found the site, (referenced from a psychology podcast I had listened to), that I have often pondered; How would I have acted in the crowd? Would I have stood up in defiance of the mob? Would I have just skulked away? Or would I have moved along with the 'Righteous Wrath'?

In 100 words, I ask these questions. I will post that story here, after I upload it on Friday night.

Here it is:


It looked like the entire town came out for the event. There was a carnival atmosphere in the town square. People just like us gathered to view the lynching. See, here's the postcard. The black man raped a white girl; no one is sure who the girl is, but there were plenty of white witnesses. There was a grim fascination as they hauled him up and some commented and even laughed at how he thrashed about. They mutilated his body afterwards. It didn't seem right, what they did. But they were good people who did it, people just like us.

I changed my intro and bed music for it. I felt like it was too grim of a subject to have 'happyish' sounding blues. I converted it to mp3 and listened before uploading the story, to see if the music was too loud. I learned from my Christmas Haiku that if the music is too loud, you lose the entire story. It was too loud again, so I toned it down for the final upload to the 100 word story podcast.

As a post script I might point out how my attitudes toward people of african descent has changed since my youth. Having been raised in a primarily 'white' neighborhood, I thought that I had healthy racial attitudes. We only had about 5 black people at my high school of about 1200 students. However, I has quick to stereo type minorities, based on the prevailing attitudes of the mid 1970's.

Since that time I have spent 2 years living in South Africa, and then 5 years in the U.S. Army, including 3 years in Hawaii, which is a field experiment in racial stereotyping and prejudices.

I can't argue that I don't still have preconditioned attitudes, but I am not locked into them. If I find that I have an unhealthy attitude about a person or people, I truely, and honestly, try to identify if I am falling on old learned attitudes or if I have founded my own beliefs through personal experience.