If anyone still needed proof that racism against blacks isn’t just a Southern thing, this week offered plenty.
First, there was the video of Michael Richards, whose Seinfeld character, Kramer, was the personification of New York City quirky. It’s hard not to get queasy watching the video, and harder still to come up with any reasonable explanation for the outburst other than…racism.
This was brought home to me the other night. I work at UPS part-time and a group of us — all white — were discussing the incident when an African-American supervisor walked up. Catching the tail-end of the discussion before silence descended, he asked us to elaborate. “He used the n-word,” someone said. “Oh, well,” the supervisor said, as if to say, “What’s new about that?” “But it wasn’t like a white person trying to be all cool rap,” someone added. “How was it different?” he asked. As everyone looked at their feet, I answered, “Because he said, ‘If this were fifty years ago, you, James, would be hanging from a tree with a fork up your ass.’”
Yeah, we’re talking way beyond tossing out the n-word for street cred.
The report that poor downtrodden white frat boys in Boston are fighting back frosted it.
Joe Mroszczyk, president of the College Republicans at Boston University, admits he set out to stir up a hornet’s nest when he came up with the idea of offering a whites-only scholarship at the school…
All the media attention is focused on a $250 Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship offered by Mroszczyk and the BU chapter of the College Republicans…
According to Mroszczyk, his group is offering the scholarship to point out “how ridiculous it is to have any sort of racially based scholarship.”
Well how very — pardon the expression — white of him to point out this particular sentiment in this unique way. Actually, Mroszczyk admitted he didn’t think it all up himself. He was inspired by a similar scholarship offered a couple of years ago at Roger Williams University in, not Montgomery, Alabama but Bristol, Rhode Island.
My “said it until people are ready to put a bullet in my head to get me to shut up about it” position continues to be that as long as America uses the South as a scapegoat for the racism rampant across the land — to neatly compartmentalize it and refuse to own it — we will never get any closer to solving our national dilemma. To me, it begins with admitting we are all sinners and going forth from there. But as long as the Michael Richardses and Joe Mroszczyks of the world can feel themselves superior to our backwards Southern asses, nobody’s getting anywhere.
Bigotry in all forms recognizes no definitive boundaries either in the physical universe nor in the world of “ethics/morality”
Any form of bigotry is “LEARNED BEHAVIOR” and is acquired from the “monkey see/monkey do” learning processes of the very young from whatever “role models” happen to be present. Sadly, once entrenched in the individual “psyche” the “attitude” is usually almost impossible to shed, particularly if it is attached to the “herd instinct” inherent in a religious dogma of some sort, or in a “peer group” social structure as a “street gang” of the “KKK”, or any of the countless “secret societies” formed to protect the “US” as opposed to the “THEMS” for whatever reasons.
It is this dynamic “ganging up” which demands subservience to the “ruling dogma” of whichever sort that has put real progress in achieving “the brotherhood of man” on the merry-go-round of non achievement since before the dawn of recorded history!
THE GREATEST ROADBLOCK TO “PEACE ON EARTH, GOOD WILL TOWARDS ALL MEN” IS THE ATTITUDE OF THOSE WHO CLAIM TO BE THE CHOSEN OF GOD, ABOVE ALL OTHER PEOPLES….NO MATTER WHAT “ISM” OR “-OLOGY” WHICH PROPOUNDS SUCH A DOCTRINE OF “FAITH”…..
It does not bode well for the planet that these simple truths seem to be quite beyond the grasp of the parochial minds of our “ruling elitists” IN EVERY COUNTRY ON THE FACE OF THE EARTHY…..Whoopee, ain’t we got FUN???????
I was shocked to see that on another self-proclaimed “liberal” superblog (no, they are not actually liberal at all) when this topic came up – THE OVERWHELMING NUMBER OF COMMENTATORS SAID THAT THIS WAS NO BIG DEAL and that anyone was upset was “faking” their outrage.
I was extremely disappointed, but then, the “advertise liberally” set of blogs is not at all liberal and they really just promote themselves and cross promote each other (that is how they got to be superblogs).
Still, the idea that a self-proclaimed “liberal” would make little of richard’s ranch still disturbs me.
Again, not one person would address the lynching remark – using the ol’ tried-and-true propaganda technique of framing the issue as something else – the “N” word and then changing the topic all together (”But blacks use that word too”).
It was so disgusting to read and I deleted my bookmark to that site.
Does anyone want to guess what would happen if a African American comedian went on a hostile rant and proclaimed “Fifty years ago, we’d be roasting marshmallows over your ass while it burned in hilter’s creamtorium – now hitler, that’s a guy that knew how to take care of you kykes!)
Of course we know that the outrage would never stop and anyone that would make this type of statement would find their career immediately ended.
In this case – both the right and the fake left want to say, “get over it” while totally ignoring the lynching reference.
Reminds me of what Malcolm X quipped: anything below the Canadian border is The South.
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