BB-80083 Ace of Spades
Ace of Spades
Blueboy
BB-80083
Lon Savage
$2.25
Foreword
The handicapped are everywhere around us.
Perhaps it would not be unreasonable to paraphrase Pogo, and say that, ‘We have met the handicapped, and they are us!’ There are so many types and kinds of handicaps.
Perhaps the least of them are the physical, blindness, inability to hear, incapacity of movement.
Emotional handicaps can be more crippling and debilitating than even the most restrictive physical incapacities. And, it is not unreasonable to state that, in one way or another, nearly all of us are handicapped emotionally, by the society in which we live, by the restrictive mores which dictate our behavior and thinking.
We are limited by the very lives we live, by the people around us, the role models that mold the top layer of our personalities.
The outside world, that big, vast, faceless mass, by which we judge our simplest reactions and responses, makes us aware of our every action, our every thought, our every desire, and from there we find the basis for judgment of ourselves, our guilts, our strengths.
Being black, being gay, being anything outside the boundaries of what that outside world judges to be desirable, affects the way we see ourselves, unless we find inside, in ourselves, the courage, moral, physical and emotional, to establish our own codes of behavior and acceptance.
Perhaps the world is opening up to new ideas and philosophies, becoming more broad-minded, but instances of acceptance are still far outweighed by old prejudices and insecurities.
They tell us often enough that, our skin is black, or brown, or yellow, or red—or anything except white; or tell us often enough that because we desire mates and partners of our own sex; or tell us often enough that because we do not wish to marry and reproduce, for whatever reason, notwithstanding a reluctance to add to an overpopulation which can only devastate the planet; yes, they tell us often enough, and we will believe, and feel guilty and unworthy and thereby become part of the countless army of handicapped and incapacitated.
Rather, it would be more productive, more profitable, in the treasures of human resources, if we were able to accept, to understand—or make the attempt at doing so—and find the valuable, encourage the different, accept other men and ourselves as we are, and therein that value and uniqueness would multiply and become yet more valuable and productive.
Talley A. Spade was black, gay, different, unacceptable in the eyes of society. Perhaps his life would have turned out differently, had the reactions he perceived—direct, subtle, unstated but transmitted—been different, more perceptive and accepting than rejecting and negating.
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