Can We Stop With the Illegals Shit?

Tags

Hispanics, immigration, racism

Ben Carson says we are drowning in a sea of “political correctness.” Which seems to mean nothing more than that being POLITE and RESPECTFUL interferes with his ability to appeal to the racist, nativist needs of his constituency.

No doubt, some will see my appeal to stop using the terms “illegal” or “illegal aliens” as an attempt to “pretty up” a bad situation by alluding to people’s sense of decency.

Well I am in some ways doing just that. I’m trying to appeal to your sense of decency, if such a thing is still to be found in the body politic of twenty-first century America.

I come by this opinion honestly, meaning that it is not something that I have suddenly acquired, but rather it is the product of a lifelong interest and pursuit of what it means to be an immigrant in America. It starts out in one of those silly situations of life that appear meaningless–being a teen.

We hung out with a bunch of boys from another high school, one more racially diverse than our own, which boasted no African-Americans and as far as I can remember, no notable members of any other ethnic group either. We were all pretty much white folk of one variety or another. Anyway, with my other friends, I was from time to time exposed to “others”. One of them was a kid named Valentine Rodriguez. I can’t remember a thing about him, nor what he looked like, (other than CUTE), but his name I never forgot. I found him as exotic as his name.

Being a resident of Michigan it was not unusual at certain times of the year to see trucks full of brown-skins moving from farm to farm, picking crops. As a lawyer, I also came in contact with migrant workers from time to time as they fell victim as do we all, to various driving infractions that required a court appearance.

When I was in serious  examination as to whether I should continue with my entry into the Dominican Order, I contemplated and talked with people from various organizations in D.C. and locally about possible ministries I might engage in once I had reached that point in the convent. I wrote on the topic of Hispanic issues and thrilled to one of the more enticing of theologies–liberation theology, which had developed in the Medellin Conference in the 50’s led  by such notable theologians as Gutierrez, Sobrino, and Boff. I devoured their books.

Ultimately I ended up retiring with my husband to Las Cruces, New Mexico, I small city on the southern border of New Mexico, one where the population is fairly evenly split between Anglos and Hispanics.

From all such experiences I have learned a great deal, and my passion, respect, and enjoyment of Hispanic culture in all its multiplicities continues to delight me. My neighbors are so diverse that it truly is a place of no majorities. My life, as you might expect is so thoroughly entwined in the native cultures I live in, that there is a true blending and it would be hard to separate one cultural experience from another, as we adopt bits and pieces from each other and construct a new paradigm that is “New Mexican” in nature.

The need for immigration reform is apparent to all yet the manner of that reform divides white American into deep chasmic chaos. For growling in the depths of the American scene is a harshness and anger that recurs as the continuing call, by a small segment, for the draconian answer to it all being deportation.

While most everyone but the hateful few, know this is both immoral and impractical, it doesn’t stop the arguments. And it doesn’t stop the hurt that is inflicted both upon the undocumented worker him/herself, but also those of us who know them intimately and feel their pain.

It HURTS to hear this sort of talk.

These people first of all, possessed this land long before we did. We here in New Mexico, as well as parts of Texas and Arizona and California, were once Mexico’s lands, and were peopled by them and other natives in the region. That changed when Anglos discovered value in these lands (New Mexico was something of an exception. The land is not so valuable, and so it developed with less of the usual American swagger and power. Today we are a constitutionally bilingual state, and we guard our cultural richness carefully.)

Beyond that historical fact, we must turn to the horrific record of American involvement in South America per se. We have continuously through multiple administrations supported vicious dictatorships who willingly allowed American business interests to rape the country financially (as long as they shared in the stealing) while their populations suffered in poverty. (Thus the rise of Liberation theology to offset the Church’s real past assistance to the dictators in maintaining order.)

So in some real ways the situations in many Latin countries today is one created by Americans, who now it seems are upset that these populations often flee their native lands in search of some hope of a future for their families. They cross the border because we in part are responsible for the fact that their native countries are a wasteland of poverty and crime.

Look, people from South America are no different from you. If they come here destitute, unskilled, and with nowhere to turn, it is no fault of their own. If they send their children across hundreds of miles of lands to reach America, they do it because it is far safer for them this way than to remain in their countries. They love their kids, and want the best life possible for them. They are no different from you.

And when they come here, the vast majority find friends or relatives who have come before. They seek employment. They work hard jobs that you probably don’t want, at wages you would not tolerate.

Yet, there is an ugliness that surrounds the issue as people like Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Bobby Jindal and others demand that more severe alternatives be considered other than what most see as humane and fair–a process that will lead to citizenship for people who have lived here for decades.

And it results in awful statements by folks with little actual data suggesting that they are taking stuff that belongs to “us”. The facts are otherwise.

Much is made about the supposed “fact” that undocumented people “get government freebies”. This is not true. They don’t. They are not eligible for welfare, food stamps or Medicaid. They pay into the SS through their taxes and do not become eligible to receive any of the benefits. They do this to the tune of $100 billion in the last decade alone.

They do not take American jobs. As pointed out, most Americans won’t do the jobs they will. Any number of studies show this to be true. Ask Alabama what happened when it became illegal to hire anyone who was undocumented. Their crops rotted in the field as white workers found the work “too hard” or “boring” and walked off the job after a few hours.

Current estimates are that they pay in between 10-11 BILLION more taxes than they receive through any source. They thus add a positive to the economy that is numbered at about 10 billion annually. The is above and beyond what they send back to their home countries to help remaining relatives.

They are told to get to the “end of the line.” The “line” is now 4.4 million people long, and there is no real hope that any of them could enter legally for years. In 2013, nearly 73,000 parents were deported from their so-called anchor babies. They will not be allowed to return until their child is 21 and can petition for their return.

Worse yet, in a climate that claims that they are a strong criminal element in the country, the studies and numbers show otherwise. In the ten-year period between 96-06, statistics show that crime was lower in the states with the highest illegal immigration rates.

Those are facts.

Just for fun ask yourself this: Do you think the Canadians referred to Americans who fled to their country to avoid the draft as “illegal aliens”? The answer is no. They were referred to as “immigrants” and processed accordingly.

What must be admitted or realized is that all the scary stuff is designed to make you afraid. And fear motivates people to vote. And they want you to vote for them, not because their words are true, but simply because fear of ANYTHING works for them.

We, down here in the borderlands (yes, that’s the term we actually use), find your hysteria silly and amusing and sad and disgusting all at once.

It needs to stop. These are real people, just like you and I. And it’s time we give them the help and compassion they deserve. They pull their weight and then some. It’s time to recognize your misdirection and seek the real source of your misery–the sleight-of-hand-artists who depend on your acquiescence in their desire for power and money.

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The Gangs of Baltimore

Tags

Baltimore, police, racism

Watching the events play out in Baltimore is an education to some, to others, it’s a why question. Why didn’t this happen sooner? The fact is whether you like it or not, life in the inner city is purely shit for the average African-American citizen.

Every deck is stacked against the individual trying to survive. Poor schools, no jobs are just the beginning. We see nothing less than a systematic attempt to herd “unwelcomes” into small enclaves and then devote all our money and energies to “other interests.”

We not only condone racism in this country but we grow it.

We demean people even when we give them the pittances we do, by making them take drug tests, and defining what food stamps can be used for, and attaching so many rules and regulation to any sort of assistance that you end up in the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario.

And when people rise up out of anger and frustration and disgust at the injustices they endure, we blame it all back on them and their “fatherless” homes, where unfortunate black youths learn no morals or sense of obedience to authority. Above all that, they have no respect for their betters.

One young man fairly told Geraldo Rivera to take his white ass and get out of town. They recognize Fox for what it is, purveyors of hate upon their heads. Geraldo, the youth said, you are only interested in filming what you call “thugs” rioting. You and Fox haven’t been interested in coming here to report on the daily injustice that we face.

To those of us who have engaged in the criminal justice system in this country in large metropolitan cities, we know all too well of what the young man speaks. As Alan Dershowitz explained in his Rules of the Justice Game, “almost all police officers lie about whether they violated the constitution in order to convict guilty defendants”, (rule IV) and all prosecutors, judges and defense attorneys are aware of rule IV. Worse, they look the other way. Like it or not, it’s true.

The recent public exposure of these cases of police overreach, abuse and lying comes as no surprise to us. I recall a dear friend of mine, a street cop from Detroit, whom I had argued with good-naturedly about whether police could do their job and still tell the truth. He was called to testify on an arrest and to make his point to me, told the truth. The case was dismissed for lack of “probable cause”. He grinned at me, as he walked from the courtroom. “See what you get when you tell the truth?”

We understood it, and we accepted it as a the way life was. We knew that in most cases the officers were at least sure they had the right guy.

But there is a segment of police officers within each department who do not care. They figure one black body is as good as any other, and they have ambitions, and a host of emotionally based reasons for throwing their authority around and not caring who gets caught up in their game.

Therein lies the problem.

And a solution comes from an unlikely source:

The gangs of Baltimore.

The major gangs have declared a truce, and apparently are devoting their time and efforts to helping their community respond in a politically helpful way to the recurrent injustice visited upon them in general and in the Freddie Gray case in particular.

It boggles the mind. Young men hell-bent on killing each other, and unfortunately any innocents that get in the way, have come together and agreed that for now at least, they will stop the violence against each other, and help organize their community to stop police violence against them all.

This is no small thing. Thinking, educated, above middle-class men and women only a few miles away, encased in a glorious white facade of sandstone and marble, are unable to agree upon even the most basic of things because screwing the black guy in the White House seems paramount.

Yet these young men have agreed to set aside their differences and work together for the common good of their community.

And the gang has a good deal to offer should it choose to actually follow through. Long the center of loyalty, and business acumen (albeit illegal) it mirrors many good traits that the young can well adopt. Strong Black men, helping their community? What’s not to like here. They teach loyalty, respect, and how purpose can bring about change. Somehow in their matriarchal upbringing, they have managed to become quite savvy at things they aren’t supposed to understand at all.

They in a real sense complement their environment, reflecting an honest if not legal response to the tremendous burdens and disadvantages heaped upon them since birth. They have the ability to encourage the younger kids coming up at least in the character requirements of making their way in a racist world while still standing firm for dignity.

No one argues that gangs are stellar examples to our youth. They have not been since the days of the Irish gangs, the Puerto Rican ones or any of the others. But all ethnic groups plagued with the criminal element within have always managed to take those good attributes and bettered themselves and their communities. And the Black community is no different. It too learns the right lessons along with the less savory.

Larry Wilmore, on his show The Nightly Show, did a most important thing on Thursday. He sat down with gang bangers in a diner and just talked. And they were articulate, and politically aware, and sincere. And that matters and should matter, and should make us hang our heads in shame when we cannot expect better from our paid politicians, and we cannot seem to expect more of ourselves in insisting on our own justice from the tyranny of big money and big K Street influence.

Perhaps it will be the gangs of Baltimore that will lead the way in helping us to see that we are not without recourse in our own struggles to retake command of our government. We need merely to stop focusing on our differences and agree that we are not being heard. None of us, for anything. And it’s time to change that. And if it takes a gang to explain that to us, well, more power to them.

And that’s a compliment in case you didn’t realize it.

We participate in SoCS.

 

The Conversation We Need to Have on Race

Like the post on war, this is a post I don’t write with joy. I write because sadly, it still needs to be said. But here I do not write in the anguish that I might hurt people I care about. I frankly don’t give a damn. For if you are hurt by what I say, then you damn well need to hurt because this shit has gone on quite long enough.

I don’t speak from some high mountain of arrogance, for I was raised in a racist environment where such things were taken for granted. I cast racial slurs as a child, mimicking the adults around me. No black face walked the halls of my high school or walked my neighborhoods let alone lived within it.

I was a child of the Civil Rights Movement, but surely not old enough to realize its importance at the time. Common sense, much touted as of late by a number of uneducated and thus defensive people I know, was not enough to show me or my friends and family that separating people by something so silly as skin color was stupid. It was not until I moved into the world and interacted with people of color that I realized the insanity of discrimination.

Later, I spent better than twenty years, living among, working with, loving, and befriending hundreds of people of color and  I saw all the more clearly how warped we become when we use such elements as divisions rather than celebrations of diversity.

We, in our days of college, when we sipped of the vine of how the world ought to be, and would be under our tutelage,  sincerely believed that all this would be behind us in the next generation, long gone by the 80’s, or at least by the 90’s.

There are a variety of reasons why this did not happen. Those who remained unexposed to integration through much of their adulthood did not move on to that better place. Much of it can be put at the feet of a misunderstanding of the role of truth and how it plays across the spectrum of the human psyche.

Those of us who are rational beings, driven by facts and rational conclusions think evidence, facts, and reasoned argument will carry the day. Truth changes mind we surmise.

But alas, it truly does not for a great portion of individuals. Study after study today shows that people in general, but most especially the conservative mind refuses to accept “facts” once their minds are made up. In fact, they become even more set in their error the more you present them with facts. They come up with all sorts of irrational reasons why they need not accept your data.  It is flawed (without explaining how), usually by being the product of “the liberal press”, a thing that in reality is hard to define, and harder to actually find.

When attacked for their intransigence, the bigot gets predictably defensive. Liberals are accused of “always playing the race card”. Worse, they attempt to adopt MLK as one of their own (he was a Republican they shout), but the ONLY phrase they know of all the things he said was the hope that someday little children would be “judged by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin.” This they fervently insist is what they do. It’s not their fault that most of “those black people” whether they be young black men in low-hanging jeans, or incarcerated young black men, or poor women paying with food-stamps just “happen” to have no good character.

They are blind to the racism they exhibit even honestly, to the degree that they now accuse liberals of being the racists. This comes from the usual cesspool of right-wing media efforts used to gin up their fear while at the same time sanctifying their hate. Suddenly the Democratic Party “uses” blacks for votes while keeping them enslaved. Presumably Democrats and liberals in general aren’t versed in the “tough love” that conservatives know needs be employed to force “these people” to stand up for themselves and take charge of their lives in the white American” way. There are always the black Toms willing to dance to the conservative tune in return for a pretence of acceptance and a moment in the spotlight.

Nobody, it is true, wishes to face their own irrational hatred. Conservatives can be forgiven in some sense for their failures, but that does not mean that we can stop pushing back against the insidious evil of their defenses.

America is still racist. And it may be that it will remain so for a good long time to come, until at least every vestige of “that’s the way those people are” is eradicated from the family conversation. When aunt Carole and grandpa George have finally died and their anecdotes have finally vanished from family memory, maybe we can get beyond this ugly impasse.

The nativism which strangles us today in the guise of a vocal and ugly minority who can’t stop railing against “illegals” will, with the turn of time and the grace of God, be stamped down once again and relegated to the dust bin as it should be. Immigrants, ALL illegals at one time, built this country into what it is today. We cannot escape ourselves no matter how much we run. Meanwhile, millions suffer from the ubiquitous “other” leveled at them in the guise of “illegal” and cantaloupe calves”.

Ferguson shows us white folks what black folks have always known. We are deeply racist, unconsciously and consciously so. We make jokes at the expense of people based solely on their color, though we quickly give excuses as to why it’s about something else. That in itself should alert us that we still are diseased.

The abuses of Ferguson are appalling. They “shock the conscience” as the Supreme Court once announced. Yet they are not news to African-Americans ANYWHERE in America. It is not shocking to many of us whites either, at least those of us who have close ties to minority groups and have experienced first hands the uneven-handedness of law enforcement vis-a-vis black and brown communities.

This racism which is still so rampant has lain dormant in the public mind for decades. In some real sense Obama’s presidency has brought these things to the forefront. The incessant clamor by some members of the hardest of Right wing apologists that Obama is not a “real” American, not like us, not American at all, but Kenyan, not a Christian, thereby raising a religious test the opposite of that which faced John F. Kennedy regarding concerns about his Catholicism, has ironically brought forth exactly what they did not want. People are talking about the elephant in the room again.

So in some sense, the ugly racism expressed by the Tea Party at their rallies with their placards, and the “jokes” discovered in emails of elected Republicans, has served to bring the issue back to the fore. People who from some insane sick place in their minds refer to the President of the United States as the “anti-Christ” and a “monkey” have reaped their own whirlwind.

They have done the fine job of reminding us who have become complacent, that indeed this is not a post-racial world at all.

When I hear people become indignant that this official or that one fails to tout American exceptionalism, I cringe. With a history such as ours, starting with the near genocide of our Native Peoples, where do we get this notion of being exceptional? America started out an amazing dream, yet we had already begun our destruction of Native Peoples before we  began. And we continued it and racism long after, flouting in some real sense the flowery language of Jefferson’s Declaration.  We may forgive Jefferson as a man of his time, for the “all men are created equal” not meaning either women or men of color, but we cannot forgive that that failure proceeded to this very day.

People who have to “blame” some “others” for their own failures in life, must get up the courage to face themselves and their racism. They must admit that they have and do judge people based on a physical reaction to the color of their skin. Judgements are made immediately about their value, their likely occupation, and a whole host of attributes which are then barriers that must be overcome before they consider them in any way, “equal.” And in most cases this equality doesn’t extend to welcoming “them” into their families as relatives, or close friends.

There is no scientific evidence that color has anything to do with intelligence. Racial distinctions are not scientific by any standard, but are political constructions made for reasons of discrimination. 

As much as it may pain you to alter your thinking, you must do it. Justice demands it. And decency demands it. God demands it. Stop the madness. HONOR SELMA!

DC Teaparty rally

 

Conservative Comedy Show: Is That Some Sort of Oxymoron?

Tags

political satire, teabagger humor, the GOP

It is said (or at least it should have been said) that the human brain is pretty much capable of coming up with anything. I mean we humans have invented the most amazing ways of torturing people and killing them off bit by bit.

Go into any supermarket and stroll down the soda pop aisle or cereal aisle and you can see that we can invent several dozen variations on a theme, making each appear fresh and new.

But I swear I cannot come up with a viable version of comedy that stresses conservative themes and is funny at the same time. It would be a bit like pushing matter and anti-matter too closely together. It just implodes.

What on earth is funny about all the things that the GOP is for? They are for cutting taxes for the rich. That’s gotten to the point that nowadays we are sending money to them since they “pay” taxes in the negative.

They are for trying to offset their growing state deficits by adding “luxury” taxes to food and other necessities, taxes that cruelly attach more to the poor than any other group.

They are for the life of the fetus, which is surely laudable if it were coexistent with care for pregnant mothers, babies, health care, and a host of services to support that fetus as it grows to old age. But they are not.

They are against government intervening in the lives of ordinary people unnecessarily. They call this regulation. But the forms they wish to dismiss are those that protect people from dirty water, dirty air, shoddy manufacturing practices, unfair labor practices that endanger and diminish people.  They figure kids, rather than get a free lunch should sweep the school for their dinner.

But when it comes to regulating behavior, they can’t get enough of regulations. They want to and do, try to regulate every aspect of women’s bodies when it comes to reproduction and girls bodies too. They seek to regulate what women wear. They seek to protect the rights of others to treat fellow human beings badly based upon personal ideologies that they call a “religion.”

They seek to express American exceptionalism by meddling around the world, upping the ante everywhere, bloating defense budgets to accommodate their need to puff out their chests and “prove” America is better. At the same time, they protect themselves and their offspring from standing on any battlefield they create.

They seek to pretend that race and ethnicity no longer are of any concern in their America. They turn the page by flipping the equation such that anyone who brings up the issue is dubbed a “racist”. They employ a few dark faces, who for the price of personal fame, are willing to nod genteelly in agreement. They twist and cherrypick the words of great civil rights leaders and try to claim them as their own.

They live every day using every convenience devised by modern technology. They tweet and fly, pick up their fancy lattes, take their youth-enhancing shots at spas, drive computer directed cars, yet when it comes to any science that impinges on their gravy train of K Street lobbyists and the free-flowing money that is funneled their way, science becomes pure bunk.

They prefer stupid, cute-talking bobble heads to thoughtful men and women.

They prefer “common-sense” to education, except when they visit the doctor or the dentist or the accountant or the lawyer, or the airport pilot. Education is for elitists, who are people who want to be better than the average person, meaning they get embarrassed when they haven’t a damn clue what is being said.

They are all for individuality, and they mean that they will say that everyone is equal, and you can just do the best you can. If it don’t work out, why that poor house thing back in the twenties wasn’t so bad, and we got a lot of free road work done. See don’t you feel better knowing you are paying for your own gruel?

They want to, therefore, end social security, cuz individuals properly prepare for their own old age. John-Boy is remembered fondly and surely was going to care for his ma and pa. You don’t need medicare either since health care is no right but a privilege reserved for those who have managed to acquire sufficient funds to pay for it.

There is no need either for unemployment benefits because it’s your job to foresee that free markets might end your job. Worse, if you are so down and out as that, you probably are not of sufficient moral character to withstand the urge to just sit on your ass and suck off the rest of us anyway, and we can’t have that.

Food stamps? Hunger builds character. See the above regarding unemployment benefits regarding your unfitness for food.

Housing? Ditches are quite comfortable in summer I hear.

And let’s not forget the churches. Our fine Christian houses of worships are dedicated to helping the “truly” poor, whatever the hell that means. Not so much non-Christian houses of worship which are really just oxymorons, cuz that’s what my Jezus said, after all, somewhere; at least he implied it.

I mean two thousand years of working on that issue, is a good start!

Immigrants were us two hundred or so years ago, and that was fine. Everyone knows white trash from Europe beats red skins any day. And immigrants are really good at cleaning houses and mowing lawns and picking fruit. They don’t want hardly anything for the privilege. But too many? Oh now, that makes you an ALIEN and an ILLEGAL.

Those words are words of fear, because damn, I’m following all the good rules set up by my betters, and fuck, life is still not any better, so somebody is to blame, and my betters say it’s THEM.

So, we can hate us some Mexicans and, hell all of South America pretty much just cuz. But we will not hate the Cubans, at least the rich ones who escaped Fidel. They are not aliens or illegals, but good people who lost their wealthy land holdings and much to be commiserated with.

We can hate us some Arabs, as many as we want and wherever we want, because we just want their oil, them that got it at least. The rest? Who cares?

We can ignore all our history and all of the worlds for that matter just because it interferes with the narrative we have to tell ourselves today to get to sleep. I mean the past is the past, why dwell on uncomfortable things like slavery and partitioning and supporting dictators and crummy stuff like that. It just makes me feel bad, and, after all, we have to deal with TODAY right?

Let’s make history a quest to make our kids good Americans! And we know what will do that. Put God back in school! In fact, let’s turn over education our youth to private enterprise, cuz they will do the job better and cheaper! And they will never have an ulterior motive to teach our kids anything that was wrong, or quietly made themselves look like the best thing since sliced bread, will they?

Let’s continue to push for not letting those who think against us vote. Let’s continue to make judges do what we want them too.

Let’s put a gun in every graduate’s hand. And I ain’t talkin’ about graduating from college, or even high school. Grade school is old enough to understand proper gun usage. Carry it proudly son. It’s what the Founding Fathers wanted for sure.

This is what the Grand Overly Dead Party thinks. Now, if you can come up with how to make this funny, do tell. I can’t come up with anything. Not a damn thing. A wake? I can come up with that, but not comedy.

 

 

 

I’m Not Nice, and I Don’t Intend to Change

When I read this article, it kind of all became clear. What article? This one.

It’s another of those that I have read recently that redirects the finger back at the liberal establishment for the perpetuation of racism.

Not in the way you damn real racists believe. Not in your stupid, we are post-racial and I’m not a racist, and if you play the race card, you, damn libtard, are. No, not in that way.

Some one suggested to me a week or so ago that liberals are the real racists, and she meant it. I admitted that that was a possibility in some sense, but in reality that would be an oxymoron of sorts. Liberal by definition excludes judging whole classes of people on the basis of some preconceived and wrong notion. Find me an overtly racist liberal and I’ll tell you to try again to go find me a liberal, cuz honey you ain’t got one.

I no more think all Republicans are scum-sucking whack jobs than I think all Democrats are destined for ambrosia and petal-laden avenues in heaven. I come closer to the “all” epitaph when it comes to white men, but I can rattle off several dozen to whom it doesn’t apply starting with my own husband to really mean that either.

Liberals, according to the psychological and sociological testing done by a myriad of smart people in a variety of institutions of higher learning, are people who are more adventurous when it comes to the great unknown, would rather try something new than use something old, see a symbiotic relationship that extends to all peoples of all places and includes animals and the environment. Our tribe is humanity, so we naturally don’t group people into cells of otherness. We like facts and logic. We have values but we know that facts and truth trump our parochial notions, and values can and should change as we accumulate more knowledge about ourselves and the world.

I’d be the first to tell you I didn’t start out that way. My parents weren’t particularly political, in fact my mother could not have told you a single fact about any important issue before the body politic. My father had opinions, but they were such a mishmash of conflicting direction, that I gained little insight into the world of conservative vs. liberal from him either. What he was was a racist, and he made no bones about it, though in his later years he learned the correct “words”, no longer using the “N” word and substituting “black” uttered with an guttural blah at the beginning that left little to the imagination about his true feelings.

He learned that a distant cousin’s child had married an NFL player who happened to be African-American and he took great delight in announcing “that’ my cousin” as the player ran down the field. It was not meant as praise nor as puffery. It amused him to be considered “family” with a person of color. It was a joke you see.

It took me getting to college and beyond, and later working and living in close proximity to people of color before I began to see the light of reason. At first it was a bit of a surprise to realize that all people pretty much are the same. African-Americans became my friends, my best friends in some cases, and lovers in a few too. They became mentors and people I came to admire for their values and principles and accomplishments. The point was, African-Americans were just like me, just like you, possessed of all the grandness and foibles that are the lot of humans.

I’ve always been good at seeing the bigger picture. I soon realized that Asians and Hispanics, and all the Pakistanis, and Arabs were all the same too. That happened a very long time ago, and I’ve learned a good deal since then. I’ve been, to a small degree, a part of the continuing struggle to bring justice and equality to this country.  I’ve learned the ins and outs of strategy and the uses of the NAACP versus SNCC, versus the Panthers, and others as the means to the equality that we all see as necessary and inevitable.

What I have learned in my dotage is that being “nice” doesn’t work. I have talked to a lot of racists who tell me how they are not. They tell me about their black friends. They tell me that their black friends are like them. Bullshit. When you tell me how wonderful Ben Carson, Herm Cain, Alan West, Alan Keyes, and people like that are, and in the same breathe tell me that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are racists, well, you need say no more. You have no black friends. You may have African-Americans whom you work beside, but trust me, they think you’re a racist and probably call you a cracker behind your back. If you are trying to impress them by telling them that you would sure vote for that Ben Carson fellow, then they surely know what you really are.

There is no nice about this ugliness in America. And those of us who are white, well we have to stop the “please don’t riot, be nice like Dr. King taught you.” We don’t run this show. We only have a right to offer ourselves as “hands” to do whatever tasks need tasking. We must encourage other white folks to speak up and be loud too, but our task is not to lead but to confront racists and poke them continuously with the stick of recognition.

The fact of the matter is that a travesty is occurring in this country and has been going on for EVER. Young black men die because police and others can get away with it. And they know this. We cannot fall for the explanations and excuses and the sanctimonious “advice” offered by people who don’t live this experience, and don’t deal with people who do.

It is NOT enough to agree that people shouldn’t destroy property, and sympathizing about what drives people to extremes. That is bait, set out to deflect the conversation away from injustice to excuses for why the police can’t be blamed for the poor upbringing of black boys. Keep focused on the reality of black men being abused daily on our streets. Keep focused on women being pushed around and assaulted by men because they can. Keep the focus where it belongs.

I don’t give a damn whether Bill Cosby’s career is ruined. I care about the women who have come out in droves to repeat the awful things he did to them. THEY ALL CAN’T BE LYING.

I don’t give a damn whether A woman lied about being raped. I care about the thousands who have been and who are afraid to face a condemning society that till tries to make it her fault.

I don’t give a damn what the grand jury testimony was in any of these cases. The fact remains a trial should have ensued because trials ensue in 99% of all the cases they hear as long as cops aren’t involved as potential defendants.

I don’t give a damn if many, or even most cops are good and risking their lives every day. They chose the career after all. I care about every damn dirty one who uses his/her power to push around others because they feel ineffectual everywhere else.

Some of you have told me that I’m not nice. You are supremely right. I’m not. I’m not nice to hate and injustice and inequality. I’m not nice to power used against people to keep them small and beaten down. I’m not special. I’m part of that great sea of decent people who mostly are nice, because they don’t want to offend. Well I want to offend. And I’m not going to be the least bit shy in telling you that you are a damned racist when you use the words and codes that announce it to the world.

It just happens to be the penalty you pay for watching that shit-“news” show Fox. You don’t even know, that based on what you do say, you might just as well use the “N” word, we all know what you mean.

And when more white people stop being nice, as the article suggested, well, then we might just cause you to go inside your tiny little mind and slam the door and avoid the public where you don’t belong. And we can get on with the work of building a decent society where people come first, ALL people, not just your lily-white group.

PS: And all that crap about “I am not against immigrants just ILLEGAL ones” (oh the crime!) We get that too. It’s just code you idiot for all your fears and your real cowardice to state the truth of your bigotry.

 

 

 

 

Thoughts on Living Dark in America

Tags

racism, right wing

I’m not a white man, I’m a white woman. A few Black men used to tell me that white women and Black men shared a common victimization. They claimed that Black women were freer than both of us.

I was never sure that I bought that argument, and I certainly don’t buy that I share an equality of victimization with Black men or women.

But it does give me a certain empathy that comes easier for me than perhaps to the white male.

In my professional working days, I dated a number of police officers. A few were regular beat cops, a couple were Sergeants. I  called a number of detectives and even one Deputy Chief good friends. Since this all occurred in one of the larger metropolitan forces in America, I think I know of what I speak.

Given that all this happened in Detroit, Michigan, once the “murder capital” wherein I worked with and under a list of rather well-known African-American police/ judges/politicians, I speak with some small knowledge of the realities of both crime and racism in America.

We are in the grips of a series of well-publicized incidents wherein Black folks have been killed by white police officers. This has happened in myriads of places, among forces that are more or less bigoted toward their policing communities. The evidence (1) or more properly, the allegations are all over the place. Some cases “seem” more clear-cut than others. People who are favorable to the police in one case are not necessarily favorable in other cases.

Whatever the truth may be in any case, there is a strong and clear perception that the system has failed the African-American community in large part. One example will suffice. Studies suggest that where marijuana is concerned, people use it pretty much in an equal amount racially. In fact, in some years, whites out use marijuana. Yet when you examine arrest rates, Blacks are arrested at stunningly higher rates. A look at the incarceration rates across the country speaks to the same conclusion.

Blacks are targeted. This has always been the case, and it continues to be the case. All the explanations and arguments cannot dissuade this conclusion no matter how hard people try. Deflections to “blacks commit more crimes against blacks than anybody else” are convenient diversions but nothing else. African-American parents teach their boys at an early age a whole series of behaviors in public that are required of them that are unthinkable to a white parent. Walking and driving while black is a real concept.

During my time practicing law, it was not unusual to be told by a client, “the police rolled up on us, stopped us, and said, ‘what are you doing in THIS neighborhood?'” No such thing is asked of a white kid.

The insensitivity to race in this country is stunning and shocking. The Right-wing continues to claim that we are a post racial country. And of course this is understandable when you are busily trying to dismantle government support systems, deny people the right to vote, and otherwise diluting the influence of dark skins in the decision-making process. Suddenly we don’t need to feed the hungry because they are poor and victimized by an unfair system that revolves around poor schools, lack of transportation choices, injustice in the courts, and so forth, but rather because they are “lazy” and have not learned the values of hard work and sacrifice that all good white children learn.

The point is there is a vested interest on the part of the Right to negate racism in America. Their champions become those handful of Negroes who crave the limelight and are willing to dance Bojangles tunes in return for being patted on the head and “considered” a real presidential candidate. African-Americans who stand up and declare the unfairness (as well as well-meaning liberals) are just “playing the race card”

Go to any right-wing blog, and read the comments. I regularly post “humor” pieces consisting of nothing but verbatim comments by people on topics of racial injustice. The same sick and ugly remarks pervade the hundreds that are posted.

Yet, I am daily told that I am the problem. I fail to understand the dangerous jobs our police people are doing, against criminals who are armed to the teeth. I fail to have any balance. I am always “playing the race card.”

Yes, I play it, because it fairly cries out to be played. This country is still ugly racist and you, Right wing, prove it every single day.

Here is a list of what is considered racist:

1. I’m not a racist. Well, you probably are if you made that statement. People who are sensitive to race and working to eliminate racism recognize that we are all racist or bigoted in ways we don’t even realize. We are always looking for the ways that we “assume” before thinking, “react” before thinking. We recognize our tendencies and work to eradicate them.  To say you are not a racist is to utterly fail to even grasp this concept. You are deeply racist, and haven’t even begun the process.
2. We have a black president, and a black attorney general. As Chris Rock said, this is not an example of “progress”. There have been Black people for decades and centuries that were more than capable of being all these things. To suggest that white American has finally reached such a point, has little to do with “progress” from a Black perspective.
3. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are black racists. There is no such thing as a black racist. It’s an oxymoron. Racism denotes the power to control a minority by a majority. A minority cannot be racist. Individuals of any race, creed, or gender can be bigots. Learn the difference.
4. Blacks need to raise their children to work hard and be law-abiding. They already do. What you are really saying, is that black people need to act white. You are not constrained as they are by crime-ridden neighborhoods, poor schools, lack of good transportation, poor government services, local merchants who take advantage of them though inferior products and high prices. When you have tried to fight though all that AND teach your child to be polite to slur-slinging authority figures and keep their hands out of their pockets and not play with toy guns, and not to walk down certain streets, and not to wear those tennis shoes, and not to wear your hat that way, and not to be out after 10 p.m., and not to ride in that sort of car, and, and, and, maybe you will get it.

Much has been made in recent months of mostly white men walking around in stores carrying their “I got a big dick” guns, in some male peacock display of misplaced masculinity. People forget that the Black Panthers did the same thing in California back in the 70’s and then Governor Ronnie Reagan called for new gun laws to stop this danger to the public. Black men with guns is dangerous. White men with guns is “protection to all”. Do you FUCKING SEE THE DIFFERENCE?

One day we will look back on all this (we being future generations no doubt) and see all the hypocrisy. A study just confirmed what has been known for a number of years. The bulk of the “tea party movement” was born, bred and financed by the Kochs. They personally don’t give a damn about all your religious issues, but they do find it a good thing to have your mind occupied by gays and affirmative action, by “socialist” boogie men behind every government program designed to help those less fortunate. They and those like them are behind the misdirection that you live with.

As long as you blame others for your shit-life ( or at least it would be a whole lot better if I didn’t have to support THEM), then you are not blaming them–the people with all the money and with all the power. They continue to reform this country into an oligarchy where the rich have everything and everyone works for them in some sick Ayn Randian dystopian nightmare. And you play your part by calling for free markets and free guns, and worrying about who is marrying who.

Get a clue. Markets have never been free, and the Kochs and their ilk don’t want free markets, they want them rigged as they now are to favor them. They want international markets to be open to their products and they will abuse and exploit workers worldwide and do so with impunity. They are intent on reducing you to no more than a Bangladeshi sweat-shop worker. They don’t care about your old age, or your health. As long as we continue to breed, there will always be enough. Platitudes are all you actually get from paid politicians who say we just have to get back to the good old days of hard work and sacrifice–you know, like you and your parents. Stop supporting these lazy no-accounts. That ain’t racism, just good old American pride.

Bullshit.

As they sit with their December tans in San Moritz and laugh over martinis at the gullibility of their “tea bagger” supporters,  while you continue to talk about “respecting our police” and calling young a young kid who may have snatched a few cigarillos a “thug”. Yeah, continue doing your “job”. The rich laugh all the way to the bank.

PS: all this shit applies to brown skins too.

 

(1) Given that almost none of these cases has resulted in a prosecution, we can only surmise what the evidence is. Grand jury testimony is not evidence nor proof of anything, having been untested by cross-examination or subject to objection by the other side. This is no “other side” in grand jury proceedings.

And You Thought There Weren’t That Many Stupid People

Tags

racist hate, teaparty nuts, the crazies

It can send chills down your spine just thinking about it.

I bet you had no idea before the Inter-Tubes were invented that there were THAT many stupid people in the world, and a great huge hunk of ’em live in the good ole US of A.

I mean if we are so dang special as the Righties insist with our X-CEP-TUAL-ISM, and it’s all God-given as the last best chance for humanity and all, why it seems that God would not allow that many stupid people to reside on the golden waves of grain and all that purplely majesty, noh?

Well, as I said, we lived in a our naivete until the danged old Internet showed us that there was just a lot more of them fools than we thought. Before it, one might run across only one village idiot in a lifetime. No more.

Nothing has brought forth the dancing dunces more than our current President, who happens to be both smart, and accomplished as well as exceptionally thick-skinned. The marching morons seek excuses for how a Black man (half-black as they so often point out) can be any of that stuff, so they have spent the last six years or so sweating the small stuff, attempting to uncover that he is a savant in disguise and is really a walking-talking Ken doll with some Russian/Kenyan/Marxist/Jihadist Svengali operating the levers and pulling the strings.

Two wildly unimportant in incidents occurred in the last could of days that goes to show just how ground-slitheringly anphibian these “people” really are.

The first one involves the President giving a speech somewhere, and making a joke about getting back to Chicago and his house, and finding on his desk a fair amount of old mail, including some old bills. As is apparently common, a transcript of the speech is released, and some fart-head noticed that the “old bills” phrase was omitted. The White House explained that it was just a transcription error.

But the whacked out world of conspiracy theory gunned up the motor and went full bore.

At Blaze we found these comments:

Boompa2 writes: Spyder-News Alert–It was just reported that an Operative from Citizens United, posing as a TV repair Man, infiltrated the Obummer residence. While in Barry’s office, the Operative found the stack of unpaid bills. At the top was an envelope titled “Pay Per View”-Past Due. A movie titled “Chicks With Richards{inset nickname}” was viewed 666 times @ $14.99. No wonder the joke was left out. Oh yeah, catch the 666? Boompa went boompa on his head I bet, and now sees double. Where is Boopa1? Check the cellar or the freezer.

pa-native interjects:

We all need to check our “white privilege” before judging Obolas statements…

You see, slavery existed by a bunch of dead guys years ago, many of which NONE of us are related to in any way…but we need to keep paying reparations to all the “victim classes” out there for a better America…

sarcasm of course…I know my family immigrated here LEGALLY in 1920, assimilated, loves America and has been Patriots since we hit Ellis island, where we were screened for disease, lice, infection etc etc… Gosh its good to know your lineage, right stupid idiot. Good Obola, Obama…but thanks for the history lesson…”slavery existed by a bunch of dead guys years ago, [many?] of which NONE of us are related to in any way….” Gosh prose like that warms my heart.

You might think the WSJ would attract a better class of people. You would be wrong.

five01c3 complains: So if Obama lived in Detroit, his water would have been turned off ages ago. Gotcha. Air Jordans and flip phones are way more important than water, anyway. Do I sense just a tad of racism in their five? Mixing all those lies into one bundle makes it efficient I guess.

Alone explains:

I don’t know why anyone would be surprised at this remark “unpaid bills” what would you expect from a welfare baby!

Has anyone ever noticed how the left is only concerned with itself. There doesn’t seem to be any concern for those of us that pay for them. That would e a right pithy argument dear singular idiot, if only the RED states weren’t the biggest eaters of the free pie. Facts are such damnable things aren’t they?

Right after this little “major event”, we get of course the amusing and rather endearing episode of our President being teased by a young man. The fellow, knowing his girlfriend is all kinds of nervous about voting next to the President of the USA, walks by and says, “Mr. President, don’t touch my girlfriend.”

The President ad-libs a few lines, the lady giggles in embarrassment, and when later interviewed they both seem like the nicest of people.

Everyone who saw it thought it cute and playful, handled superbly by the President.

Well, not quite everyone.

Ya see the nut jobs over at World Net Daily have a different take.

vettelover advises: Pretty sure Barry does not like girls. Yes we know, you and your ilk of whack-job believe the President is gay, that Michelle is a guy in drag and the kids belong to somebody else. Next weeks meeting of the first class morons meets at eleventy o-clock under neath the McD’s sign on NOBODY COULD BE THIS STUPID AVENUE.

You waves frantically: ObaMao is quite the embarrassment to the People of the United States of America!!! His tyrannical reign is coming to an end. Can I get an Amen!!! So he’s Chinese? Wow, that explains everything. Thanks for the info YOU FOOL.

tuffone3 wonders: If a white man said the same thing to the president, would the president have called him a brother? He is half white, after all. And why exactly are you so obsessed with his parents ethnic background again? Do not, I repeat, do not get a DNA test. You will not like the results, I am fairly sure of that.

Moga Moa has the answers:

He better worry about Obama trying to feel him up

I suspect this planned photo op was a pushback against blacks suspicion he’s a pervert homosexual. Ya know what they say, them that crows pervert the loudest are usually stinkin’ terrified that they are PERVERTS themselves. Just sayin’

I mean seriously people. I’d just hate to be a Republican and know that these are my peeps. They walk into voting booths across America and vote for the same jerks you do. I mean does it make your skin crawl? Or perhaps it gives you a big warm fuzzy. Crazy is as crazy does.

** all the above are actual comments from these publications.