Real skinheads are not racists. Many of the original skinheads back in the late 1960's were in fact black Jamaican dockworkers who hung out with white working class kids and enjoyed the same music. So fuck the BNP, fuck Aryan Nations, fuck the National Socialists, fuck the KKK and the Hitler obsessed media. Fuck the Hammerskins, fuck the National Front, fuck Ian Stuart (and bless the tree he ran into), fuck Skrewdriver, fuck white power and fuck those who only believe what the media scoops out for them. There is no racial hatred with real skinheads but never let it be said there isn't a complete loathing and hatred for bull shit and racists.
What skinhead really means is being working class and not taking shit from middle management, being proud of your work ethic, having a sense of honor and decency, as well as the family you have. Whether your job is flipping burgers or working in a factory, you take pride in that and do the very best job you can. You work hard, play harder. You live the right way and take shit from no one. You give it all you got and never let the bastards grind you down.
As for me, I have been a skinhead for nearly a decade now. It was the next logical progressive step in maturity after growing bored with much of the nihilistic rebellion that is punk rock. I don't tell most people I deal with that I am a skinhead until I get to know them well enough. It really takes a person with an open mind to first accept the true story and then comprehend the thought of a Jew who is also a skin. Those people are few and far between but I am proud to call them my friends.
One of the hardest things I ever had to do was sway my dad from the school of thought that skins were Nazis, racist or any of the other tags that MSM puts on my friends. The fearmongers always need to make people afraid of everyone and everything around them. When it's not skinheads, it's high school students or fanatical tea partiers. They feed fear to Americans and Americans choke on it in their hurry to swallow it whole.
ReplyDeleteMy mother accepted it relatively easy, especially when I explained the reggae and Jamaican roots because she spent a lot of her childhood in the Caribbean. My dad lost family members in the Holocaust so it has taken him years to at least grasp it although I don't think he has quite accepted it and other family members haven't either.
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