Culture Wars: You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

[from 9/23/09]

Last March that I noted that racism no longer exists in America because we have a black president. I got one angry letter about that, which made me laugh, so I'm writing it again. I'm not saying racism is gone forever, just that to find it you have to go outside our borders to countries that don't have black presidents.

It might help clear up this issue if we were all on the same base when it came to knowing what racism is. Racism is the belief that having race makes you inferior. People who are white skinned, excluding albinos, have no race. Albinos are annoying, as they must be dealt with on a case by case basis. Anyway, all others have races. Racism is gone from America because our president is half race-burdened. In the place of racism we now have racial bigotry.

Racial bigotry is different from racism because it doesn't have anything to do with what you believe. You can believe that all people are equally likely to be good and capable, but still go ahead and make up lies about them.

In fact, let's be clear. The more capable a race-afflicted person in power is, and the more likely he/she could be effective in carrying out his/her agenda, the more racial bigotry will be directed at him/her by the un-raced, and hence more lies and character attacks will be directed at that person. Because it's all about the power, and he who has had it wants it back.

White formerly-racist America is saying, "OK, OK! UNCLE! We GET it! You people are capable of doing anything! Alright, now, celebration's over; run along."

Racial bigotry isn't about what you believe, it's about who you tear down. It's about using unfair tactics, including lies, to undermine legitimate gains, not because you think they're illegitimate (though you might say so in specific cases as part of your tactics) but because you know they are legitimate, and that just plain pisses you off.

I also want to talk about other kinds. I mean, other kinds of bigotry. Obviously "other kinds of bigotries" is a huge subject and I can only scratch the surface of it in my remaining 290 words. So I will confine myself to a big one, cultural bigotry.

The thing that I want you all to know about cultural bigotry is, LOOK OUT! I mean, really, this is not sufficiently talked about.

I'll illustrate with examples from my own life. In 1972, a white friend took me to overnight at the house of a mutual black friend, whom I will call Wilbur. I pick that name because you never met a less Black black man than Wilbur. He was so not Black he was studying Tagalog at the U and planning to join the diplomatic service. I was sure that I would be safe sleeping overnight in his house, even though he had race, and he shared his house with 7 siblings of all ages, who also all had race.

Yet, within half an hour after we white guys arrived at Wilbur's house, one of his sisters put on a record of Sammy Davis Jr. singing Candy Man, and all 8 of them leaped out of their chairs singing and dancing around the living room like the revolution was starting. I was, of course, terrified.

Not many years later I was taken by some other friends to overnight in Upstate New York with a white family about the same size. Believe it or not, no one put on any Sammy Davis Jr., and when the Dad in the family played guitar no one danced. Instead, all his whiter than white kids sat around like adoring cherubs. I was sickened, even though there was no race anywhere.

I'm over those experiences. I have learned since to live with these and many other alien American cultures. But it has taken me over 35 years! Can America take that long to accept Michelle?

Our Sorry-ness

 [from 6/24/09]

It's three hours to deadline and all I have is a note to myself that says, "write about how sorry we are." OK, um, we're very very sorry we didn't start thinking about this column a whole lot earlier.

The note concerned two or three oppressed minorities that I don't belong to. The "we" in the note refers to me and the other nonmembers of the minorities in question, AKA "the Sorry."

Of course, one of the things we all aren't good at talking about is that you can be an oppressed minority for the purpose of one discussion and one of We the Sorry or We the Should-be Sorry for the next. Complicating matters, there are oppressed majorities. For example, Christians are severely oppressed, as passages from the Bible may be engraved in stone and propped up almost anywhere EXCEPT public property. Demand reparations!

But I digress. I was talking about oppressed minorities, having in mind African-Americans, specifically those descendent of slaves, and the LGBTQ crowd, and maybe one other.

One of the points I always want to get across is that we oppressors and/or former oppressors are the real experts on oppressions, and the "go to" people for information about them. I mean, if you just want to know what it's like to be an oppressed person, go ahead and ask one of them, they have that down. But if you want to know how someone can be oppressive asked an oppressor. It's just common sense.

For example, the recently passed Senate version of an apology for slavery contains a clause that would disallow its use as a basis for claims of financial reparations. If you ask an African-American descendant of slaves about this you can expect to find out how they feel about it, but don't expect any useful information as to why that clause is in there. For that you have to ask racist white Senators.

While not a Senator, I HAVE been white and racist, so I can guess for a fact what it's about. White people are doing this calculation: "There's so many of us, and so many of them. If we give all that money to them, that takes away so much of our money. Damn, that's no good. OK, let's just say we're sorry and hope they're satisfied with that."

It's really all about the money. Frankly, guys, it was all about the money when our ancestors enslaved you. It was all about the money when they set up segregation. The idea was to use you to make money, and then when that didn't work, to keep you from getting a share of what money was left over. It was all about the money then, and it still is.

It's all about the money. It's not about hate. Racial hate was just something that was invented by rich whites to bring poor whites on board with the money thing, to get them to go along with whatever it took to hang onto the money.

With the Japanese it was the same. Make reparations just for that generation, drag your heels until most of them are dead, make the amount as paltry as possible, and you can shelve the hatred.

Sunday will be the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, as good a time as any to ask why it happened. More to the point of this column, we need an oppressor to step up and explain how that oppression comes about. I'm at a total loss when it comes to the general issue of oppression of LBGTQ people, but I have a guess about the opposition to same-sex marriage.

It's all about the money! The whole idea that it's about preserving the sanctity of marriage is a load of crap used to string the poor people along. The real issue is, marriage benefits cost money, and the majority is calculating "more for them means less for us."

It's all about greed, never about justice. That's how sorry we are.