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.

It Was a Hell of a Ride, But, Dude, It’s Over

Tags

paternalism, power, racism, sexism, white privilege

I don’t recall as a pubescent girl, ever much thinking that I’d have rather been a boy. All that stuff in their pants looked rather homely to me as a child. As I grew older and wiser, I figured worrying that my boobs wouldn’t be “perky” enough was small potatoes versus worrying that my pecker wouldn’t pass muster either in the locker room or in a ladies vagina.

And then there was hair loss later in life, and well, I don’t pretend to know whether men obsess over chest hair or not, but it just seemed that their burdens were not worth the exchange.

I suppose it all goes back to caves, or whatever suitable accommodations were “home” to our ancestors on the plains of Africa. Men are for the most part stronger which makes them quite useful for things that require brute strength. Ironically men who work with their hands and use their bodies as their machines are fairly looked down upon by their Madison Avenue brothers as having not “made it” in the wicked world of power and wealth today. But it was the originator most likely of men’s superior classification.

In an event, men ruled, and that is pretty much everywhere you look across the blue marble we call home. In the only parts that counted (by those same men), white men ruled all others, including men of color. And it was all seen as good and well, as evidenced even by major religious scriptures, who took it for granted that men pretty much ruled naturally and with God’s imprimatur.

Somehow, even allegedly smart white men failed to see that Jesus rather turned that cart upside down when he suggested that women were, *gasp* capable of preaching the “good news” of the coming Kingdom.

Things have gone on in that vein for some time. Well, to be honest, it has gone on through most of recorded time. I’d hazard a guess that even where women ruled it had more to do with “blood lines” than competence, and many sturdy men were gathered around such a lady to “guide” her to correct decisions.

It continues today, but the battle is now fully engaged, and white men are getting a bit nervous.

Women have always been angry, but anger needs direction and some sort of power base to be effective. Only in the 20th century do we begin to see real movement to question the paternalism that has been the history of women’s life in America and the world.

Another aspect is now apparent as well. While white men were busy running the world and making obscene amounts of money to feel “successful”, the rest of the planet was busy reproducing like rabbits. Left with so much extra time on their hands, they played in the garden of rare delights also known as ladies private parts. And the birth rate has skyrocketed and well, do the math.

Ms. Lindsey is correct. If you look around white dude, well, I can understand why you are shakin’ in your boots and clingin’ to your guns. Your days are numbered and no amount of prancing around neighborhoods with your semi-automatic penises strapped across your chest is gonna make any difference to that.

You are a not dying, but certainly about to become wheelchair ridden, mere shadows of yourselves.

Now, I don’t say this with glee necessarily. After all, I’m married to one of y’all.  I rather like him too, so I have no ill-will in general to white men, just everything mostly that they stand for.

We can all pretty much agree that you have done a lousy job of runnin’ things. I mean yeah, you build a lot of stuff, but it seems for the only purpose of blowin’ it all up eventually. You guys can’t stop arguing about whose penis is bigger and if you ever bothered to ask us, you’d know that has nothin’ much to do with it.

Yet you persist.

And our sons and daughters and well, all of us suffer for your insatiable desire for bloodshed. There just ain’t enough hills for all of ya to be kings on.

So I can get why you are so angry. And like petulant children who can’t have ice cream for breakfast, you take it out on everyone you come across.

What you all are in need of is some basic psychoanalysis. I mean your ability to blame it on anybody but yourselves is shocking. It’s the black, brown, female, immigrant, wrong religion, youth, liberal, educated, government, et ceteras into oblivion’s fault for your troubles. A white man never looks in the mirror and sees the cause of his own disaster.

Anyway, you get all out there in your twisted but fact-less minds, and become conspiracists of one sort or another. We’ve visited the FEMA camps, and gun confiscations, the Muslim Brotherhood infiltration to death. We’ve been birthered to death and delved into the drug-induced supposed gayness of the black guy in the WHITE house.

We have tried to talk sense to your sense of impending loss, we really have, but past a certain point, crazy is too crazy to hear let alone understand. You are like the child who attempts to solve his unhappiness by making public scenes of displeasure at the world.

Unfortunately, you’re methodology includes the killin’ of plenty of innocents as you strike out in anger and frustration that you can’t always be first in line and get the best cupcake.

It’s over dude.

Do the math.

You are like the king who rules over a kingdom of “others”. Once his army became “others” too, it was only a matter of time, until they learned to count. Suddenly it was lookin’ a bit grim for the king.

Some of you have taken to claiming that you are the one’s being victimized now. Oh, if only that were true. We’d surely come to your aid if it were true. But it’s not.

Nothing is more pathetic than hearing a white dude proclaim that he is being discriminated against. Dude you were born with a white penis, what more could a person want? With it came all the entitlements and assumptions that have always attached to a new born white male. There is no “stretch” to thinking of you in a new more powerful way. It’s business as usual for you.

You can’t fathom how that is not what it is for the rest of us. We have to first convince somebody(s), that we can do the job, that we are smart enough, strong enough, carry the right emotional schema, are not unsuitably encumbered by family and obligation, and a host of other things. Women must explain that their menses won’t cause them to divulge the nuclear codes nor will “pillow talk”. Black and browns must assure that they have enough of the “cultural”requirements to govern. Remember, they weren’t “raised” the same as white dudes, which has become by their decree the cultural norm.

And since the numbers, (damn them) simple are what they are, white dudes are gonna lose no matter what. You can’t shoot it, marry it, enslave it, or stick it in a company town. It’s just gonna swallow you up.

So you lash out.

Do you realize that almost all crimes of mass murder are committed by white men? Dude, this endears you to no one. Let us know that your brains are falling out because you can’t be king any more, and we will help. If you don’t, well, the end is your demise one way or the other.

But please, stop trying to take us with you.

On the Road Again

Tags

environment, faith, journeys, racism, religion

“Are you Catholic?” Alex asked. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “You know,” he added, “I grew up at St. Genevieve’s, went to school there too. But. . . .” So went another of the ever-occurring reasons for “why I don’t go to church anymore”. I can relate.

Substitute, writing for Catholic, and you have my last few weeks in a nutshell.

Confused?

Welcome to my world.

So am I.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had returned to the Church once again, seeking. . .something? Hell if I know what.

I didn’t find it. Nothing bad happened. The priest was okay as priests go. I don’t expect much.

If you don’t know what you are seeking, it’s pretty likely you won’t find it. How would you know?

Writing is just about as confusing. I’ve written a lot over the years. All sorts of writing. Big bold essays of a hundred pages, footnoted to Hades and back. Short, “reflections”. Legal arguments chock full of citation to other learned writings. Notes of books I’ve read. And then all this blogging. Years of it. thousands of posts, millions of words, ideas formed, bent, twisted, reconfigured, spit out. Arrogance, pomposity, mendacity, with a rare humble crumb offered here and about. My guts displayed for any who bothered to note it.

Do I have nothing left to say?

Perish that thought. I’d shrivel up and croke. My enemies (having enemies is a true joy if you think about it seriously) wish I would just “shut the fuck up”. That alone should spur me forward.

I start, I stop, I flounder. As good as I came, I saw, I conquered (veni, vidi, vici) doncha think?

Why are we so three oriented? Tragedies come in three, examples are most often offered in threes. Trinity? Trifecta? Triple creme? Triple crown. Banana split which has little to do with the split banana and everything to do with three scoops.

I’m reading a very intriguing book. What is God? Not Who, but What. It all stems from that flip. Turn a globe upside down and leave it like that. It will make you rethink a few things.

I’m processing faith versus religion. I’m pretty down on religion right now. Composed of fallible humans what would you expect? Is it necessary? Church votes yes. I’m pretty much votin’ no at this point.

I choose to express my faith through some rituals of this faith system. I call it Catholicism. You can call it the Whore of Babylon if you are not well educated. I don’t care. There is too much wrong to defend it. There is more right than I often admit.

I’m pretty sure that God is not what we think. But I am not at all sure. I don’t think I’m supposed to be sure. Augustine said we can only say what God isn’t. That is hardly a recipe for success.

Church is like stopping off at a rest stop. It is good to get out and stretch your legs, relieve your bladder, and munch a snack. But it’s not home. You got to get back at the grueling drive that never ends. Thinking, watching, staying awake. Driving requires concentration  if you plan to do it successfully over time. So is God-seeking.

One premise is that there is always something not quite real about reality. We sense there is more, but we can’t see it. We recognize the unreality. We have become desensitized to unreality. It passes by us with nary a nod.

A man says, “I am going to kill you because you are raping our women and taking over our country.” Another man says, “that’s hate against Christians,” (since the dead are Christians). Whose reality are we talking about?

I don’t reject the Catholic Church because of its theology. There is a Catholic Church here that is “not aligned with Rome”. They love my politics. But I don’t go and sit in the pews there. There is one of those Universalist Unitarians, or something here. There is Bahai here. I am not interested.

I plant my butt in a pew and I sit, and I wonder why I’m there. I count off the various “parts” until we get to communion and then the closing prayer, and then the closing hymn and then. I’m free again.

Why do I go?

I stopped going.

I feel something missing. Vicious and jealous mistress you faith!

Faith and religion. Two separate but unequal things. Faith matters, religion is some bonus at least once upon a time. Ever? Never? I did good once. It does good sometimes, somewhere.

The problem as always is the people. Fallible humans muck up the mud. Turn it ugly and personally motivated.  I hate welfare not because I don’t want to help the poor but because I want to decide who to give my charity to. So they say. What they mean is I can then avoid giving welfare to lazy queens and princes who lay in bed half the day before they saunter down to the welfare store and pick up their checks. As I JUDGE them anyway.

I don’t want the government to tell me how much to give. I bet ya a million bucks you couldn’t come begin to tell me how much the “government is taking out of you in taxes” to support medicaid, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and so forth. You couldn’t even give me a ball park figure of what they take. But somehow, you assure me, you would give more if it were voluntary. Yeah, sure ya would.

Religion starts off with laudable goals. Seek God. Take care of God’s people. But your old fallibility rose like the skunky smell it is, and you changed that to “God’s chosen people” however YOU JUDGMENTALLY DECIDED THAT.

I’m for Israel because they are God’s chosen, you utter with perfect surety. Bullshit.

If you believe God has favorites then you believe in an awfully wicked and strange being. One who creates so poorly that He finds one poor slob called Abram and tells him, he will “create a nation” of him. Hope he does it better than the first couple of times. Dont’ forget the whole fiasco of Noah and that damned ark that couldn’t be built large enough to begin to house “all God’s creation”.

Yet you got a passel of morons whose brains are so gucky with sludge that they gotta cling to that stuff as literal and then make it their life’s work to make you take it literally too.

And God is not in that damned Book you fool. PEOPLE wrote the book. They wrote it about the God they were seeking. Since you can’t tell me much about God on your own, why do you think they were any better at it? They’re just trying, same as you and me. Yet you kneel before the freakin’ book.

So here I sit. I read that the Pope has offered up an encyclical on the environment. As sure as it’s June and it’s hot, right wing Catholics are finally letting out what they really think. They really really don’t like this pope at all. Unlike their precious JPII and Benedict however, Francis doesn’t inherit the “God’s chosen” appellation. We don’t have to pay attention to Francis when we don’t like what he says.

“He’s not a scientist. He’s just giving his opinion on a subject that he has no expertise in.” So the upshot is to ignore what he says. He’s a dupe of some libtards in the Vatican who haven’t explained to this poor illiterate fool that words matter. “He’s a marxist, anyway.”  If you tried to continue the conversation say about women priests, they would tell you. “Pope John Paul has spoken on that issue and we will not allow further conversation because he says it is a closed issue.” Some personal opinions count. Oh yeah, the one’s you agree with.

Whose reality are we talking about?

Everywhere I go, I see the same thing. Distinctly different takes on reality. Both can’t be right. Or perhaps they can.

God is in the mysteries of life.

Oh, seeking Him there is not as easy as sittin’ in the pew. Reading and thinking and meditating, and working out the details. Only to realize that each and every insight provides fresh mystery, new questions, and potential conflicting yearnings.

Open your eyes, and your ears. But mostly open your heart. Take little if anything for granted. Seek serendipity, and sweet harmony. Enjoy the sugary taste until the bitterness creeps in. Seek further, and never stop. Ever.

That is human becoming.

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.

 

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.

The New Black Man on the Block

Tags

Ben Carson, GOP, History, racism, tea baggers

Anybody who knows me knows a couple of things about me. One, I believe education is the only sound way to move humanity forward, and two, education need not necessarily be formal to produce an educated person. Plenty of folks have done it on their own, and while harder and somewhat precarious, one who is determined will be educated.

One of the things that was indelibly imprinted upon my cerebral cortex around the time I was in law school, or perhaps after that hellacious thing called “the bar exam”, was the realization that some people can matriculate fully through nearly the hardest subjects imaginable, and be dumb as the proverbial rock. When I got to know lawyers who were stupid, I immediately concluded that there were an equal number of stupid doctors, physicists, and psychiatrists. An important object lesson when you contemplate handing over your gotten gains to an investment counselor.

As everyone who is anyone knows, Ben Carson, neurosurgeon extraordinaire, and compelling story of rising out of poverty man supreme is the new darling of the excruciatingly insane right. When Alan Keyes, Allen West, and Hermie Cain have stumbled while carrying Confederate dreams, Ben has jumped forth willing to sacrifice his integrity and soul for a chance to be “somebody” nay, the only-body with dark skin in the white party of the GOP.

I read about Carson well more than twenty-five or thirty years ago when I was a fledgling lawyer in Detroit and indeed I was impressed with his story of being raised by a single mom in Detroit. He was indeed a stellar image in the tarnishing mirror of inner-city poverty. So I don’t come to the party late as it were and as so many of my rather uninformed, Patriotic platitudinous Tea Imbibing acquaintances  have.

To hear them talk, Ben discovered both sliced bread, the true Ark and by virtue of his status as real honest-to-goodness hero, he has the creds to talk with authority on any issue at all. Being smart means you can be an expert on everything.

But alas, our Ben is but what used to be referred to as an idiot savant–supremely gifted in one area (brain surgery) while he is at best equivalent to a seven-year-old on most any other subject.

This is a man who, given all his education part of that being in BIOLOGY FOR GOD’S SAKE, insists that evolution is false. This is a man who equates health care for the poor to being “next to slavery, the worst thing that has happened to the Black community.” This is a man who today attacks the AP standards in American History suggesting that they more likely train the next generation of ISIS fighters.

Proving that he has not read the material at all, he falsely claimed that there were two paragraphs about George Washington and none about Martin Luther King. What really incensed him is that the material devoted time discussing the behavior of Americans toward Native Peoples, the internment of the Japanese during WWII and the vileness of Jim Crow. I mean seriously folks, teaching truth is so wrong when you are trying to build a nation of sheep who will OBEY their betters.

The fact that Carson has learned so well to obey his, is apparently his proof that everyone should be like him, so that, should some poor person have a certain gift, they too can aspire to be the puppet paraded around the circus ring to “prove” the Good Old Party of white indeed is an equal opportunity exploiter.

All of this matters naught to the empty-headed faux patriots out there who say they are just itching to vote for Carson for President. He tells them what they want to hear after all, and that’s always much better than the truth. One can only hope that one dies the sweet death of delusion before the house comes crashing down.

Of course, Ben, like all the others who pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, forgets all that guv’mint help they got along the way, as they dance the NO SOUP FOR YOU tap for the pleasure of their white betters who coo at them like the house pets they are.

Ben won’t be going far, though he is part of the dream ticket, I’m told. With Cruz as President and he as VEEP, the GOP can probably get away with at least 60-1000 years of never having another candidate of color in their midst. Sarah had her chance, so that’s one bird down and two to go.

The kids at Jefferson County Colorado who are trying to prevent their school from dumbing down and patriotizing up their curriculum have no idea just how wonderful they are. They shame millions of adults who should know better.

Oh the Hypocrisy of It All

Tags

Humor, hypocrisy, racism, right wing nuts, satire

H Y P O C R I S Y !

A sweet sounding word. Like a crispy hippo maybe?

Oh, sorry, words do that to me sometimes. Just love the little buggers.

Back to hypocrisy, which as you know is not a good thing to be. Hypocritical that is. Or to be: a hypocrite.

Defined as:  a person who claims to have certain beliefs and/or values, but does not actually live by them.

Street definition: asshole.

The world is full of ’em. And to go by what I see, most of ’em don’t seem to know that they are such. Which leads me to the conclusion that people who are hypocrites are not very good at thinking.

See, the reason most of us aren’t hypocrites is that we rather immediately see that our beliefs and actions aren’t lining up, and we work pretty fast to correct that, lest we be called a . . . .wait for it . . . . H Y P O C R I T E !

We have talked many a time about the religious right, the fundamentalist, who proclaims Jesus as their savior in a very earnest voice (God bless!), shaking a tattered bible in one hand while doing so. One would wonder if the tattering came not from reading but from all that shaking of it, given that said fundamentalists mostly do not practice what they preach.

You see, it flies in the face of their emotional attachment to themselves and their desires. So the Good Book is twisted and mangled until to them at least it says that the poor should get off their lazy butts and get a job, that gays should give up sex because it’s nasty “their” way as God sees it, that the rich are people whom God obviously loves since a free market is right in Luke, if you just read that parable about the landowner paying different wages to his workers. God loves him some weaponry too, as Jesus said, assault rifles with big clips are part of everyone’s attire to go shopping at the Wal-Mart. And let’s not forget dear Sarah the Bible hugger herself, who just a few days ago reminded us that to a “real” Christian like herself, why waterboarding was just baptism for Muslims! Can I hear an Amen?  The list goes on, but you get the picture.

Why we have the fine example of one Cliven Bundy who it seems figures that he should be able to graze his cattle free of charge on government land. Said hypocrite then went on to ‘splain to all of us stupid people about them “negroes”, and what ails them. It seems that those “negroes” sit around on cement porches all the while they wimmin’ are abortin’ them young chillen, and they be sending their young men to prison. All cuz, they have no DIE-RECTION in life, which is cuz the feds are givin’ them those SUB-SITIES.

See that’s how Cliven sees things, and Cliven sits atop a horse so he can see a far piece.

All the while, Cliven of course don’t think that he is getting any SUB-SITY all the while grazing his cattle on someone else’s land for FREE for TWENTY FREAKIN’ YEARS.

See that is whatcha call hypocrisy.

Now the Rightie-Tighties were all in favor of Cliven at first. It was just wrong for the Government to OVER -REACH as Sean Hannity told us. I mean forget that it was RONALD REAGAN who signed that EXECUTIVE ORDER way back that was the source of Cliven’s pain. (can I get two hypocrisies?). Forget that. It was wrong, Sean said for the big bad government shouldn’t show up with guns to take the cattle. I mean, it’s only grass for God’s sake, and who should care? I mean Cliven is just cheatin’ the gov’mint out of a little bit of taxes. Ya know.

But then Cliven opened his pie-hole and forgot to use those racial code words but just spoke out the truth as God made known to Cliven, and well, all those rightie-tighties started backin’ off.

Sorry Cliven, you aren’t a very good person, but the idea was still worth supporting, however you might be.

And some said it was REALLY about the dang government havin’ that land in the first place. All that eminent domain stuff. I mean seriously. Just another instance of the gov’mint having stuff it don’t need unless it wants to run your life.

Yeah.

Cliven could have that land iffin’ the gov’mint weren’t grabbing it all, to “protect” it and stuff, from lawful use by say, yer gas and oil interests. Yeah, just another example (eminent domain) of gov’mint messing with capitalism. Next step: socialism, which we are already nearly there so, safe bet you can say C O M M U N I S M !

Oh, nuts, did you hear any of them rightie-tighties talking about the evils of eminent domain when it came to the Keystone Pipeline? You don’t really think that thing is going only through land owned by the gov’mint did ya?

Guess they forgot.

Can I get a H Y P O C R I T E ?

There there is Donald Sterling, a man with a name that in no way describes his character I tell ya.

Donald is an old fart, I mean old. And like a lot of old farts, he has hisself a young mistress, cause he could afford to buy one. And she is exotic, meaning that she has a heritage that would be called “mixed”. She claims she is part African-American and part Hispanic. Donald don’t mind, cuz only the Hispanic part seems to show much, and that is still okay among his white old fart friends.

But this cute little thing is pissin’ Donald off, cuz she’s “hanging around with black people” in public, sorta like “pallin’ around with terrorists” I suppose. That makes Donald look bad with his white old fart friends.

So he told her to knock it off. She can bring ’em home, f**k ’em, feed ’em, and do anything else with THEM, but NOT IN PUBLIC. A bit of decorum you NOT WHITE TRAMP PLEASE!

All the while Donald owns the Clippers, which is coached by an African-American and whose players are mostly African-American, and their SUCCESS reaps him tons of money. Hard to figure how that can happen when Cliven ‘splained that they just sit on porches all day. Guess Donald was given them plenty of DIE-RECTION or somethin’.

Yes, it’s time to shout H Y P O C R I S Y ! again.

And I bet ya, I just bet ya, though I am just speculatin’ that if you check on his right ass cheek, you will find GOP emblazoned there.

I just betcha.