Archive for March, 2014

Racism is alive and well in America.  But it’s not your father’s racism.  It’s yours.  It manifests differently.  Just as overt.  Just as insidious.  Just as evil and just as frustratingly ignorant.

The scourge of contemporary racism seems to be that we elected a black president and therefore it’s over.  As in, wow, the Kenyan without a birth certificate got elected what more do you want?  So now we are somehow post racial.  Um, okay….  Hate groups on the rise, particularly in the south.  Protesters waiving the confederate flag in front of the president’s house.  Brandishing signage with hilariously tragic spelling depicting him as a witch doctor, a bone through his nose, he and his wife as primates.  Terrible Ted Nugent says in public: “I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America.”

We are so post racial.

I thought Bill Clinton was the first black president.

Here’s a bitter truth:  Not all republicans are racist but like it or not, most racists are republicans.

A colleague said to me the other day, “why can’t they just get over it?”  Because we have a bi-racial president?  Why can’t they just get over it?  Somehow in light of that, “they” should just forget hundreds of years of slavery, rape, cruelty, abuse, degradation, discrimination, segregation, exclusion, bias, torture, murder, persecution, exploitation and egregious debasement.  Why is it they just can’t get over being pissed upon and shat upon, imprisoned and disenfranchised?  All made possible with actual legislation.  Unconscionable legal charter and statute enacted and enforced by the white ruling class.  Why can’t they just wake up tomorrow and say they’re cool with white people?  Why do they have to act that way?  Why don’t they just surrender their identity and blend in?

Because we have an optically darker commander in chief, we should put this all behind us.  Because slavery ended over a hundred years ago.

The new racism is pretending it’s not there.  The new racism is people who do not know they are racist.

Or those who lack self awareness so completely.

Still, they go after it hard.  All of it.  Anybody not resembling the pasty white, smug, shit eating smirker they see in the mirror during the morning constitutional and shave.  Women’s health =”feminazis”.  Immigration =”wetbacks”.  Voting rights =”niggers”.  Saber rattling =”rag heads”.   They do this because they got their asses handed to them twice by a black president despite their best and most mendacious efforts.  They hate it.  They are threatened.  They are afraid and they know these are the issues that will rile up the base, the womenfolk and the kids.  They know these issues are toxic.  These are issues they gerrymandered, issues they manipulated, issues they fucked with in one way or another over and over.

But still, issues they can’t defend or reconcile under the antiseptic light of day.   And when the lamp clicks on at night, they scatter or obfuscate like amateur street performers caught cheating rubes and slobs and fools.

These are issues that will guarantee their demise but they can’t help themselves.  Because they hate and fear.  Because that’s what they are fed.  By the media and institutional indoctrination.  By fucking religion.  Dogma.  Jesus was white. Santa is white.  They are beginning to understand that they are actively courting extinction.  They see the inevitability of being caught in the trap they set.

There are no more racists in the world than there were before 2008 but they have boiled to the top.  They are furious and and desperate now.

I know them.

You know them.

We all do.

You all are pretty easy to spot.

You talk, you say it out loud, you give the examples of Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice, Muhammed Ali, etc. and you say, if these blacks could rise to the top then why can’t the rest of them?  Like they can’t because the rest of them are stupid, incapable somehow despite the inequity of advantage afforded them.  You say this like you believe they are not an exception even though it’s obvious you believe they are.  You say this with a straight face and it makes me furious because you will never know the obstacles they encounter everyday, much less what the average person of color is up against relative to your own experience.  You will never know and you pretend we’re all treated equally when you fucking know we’re not.  When you open your mouth to say this shit, I hate you for it.  Not because you don’t understand, but because you don’t even try.

You have friends who go to great lengths to explain you to each other. People who hope you mean well but lament your lack of understanding. People who are embarrassed by you but apologize to each other because of you. All these people are in your life and smile at you every day.  They want to like you, but they can’t.  They still offer you a friendly face and do their best to be civil to you.  But they hate the the things you say and do because it’s so painful to them that you refuse to understand because you don’t care enough to try.  They wish they could make you see them, and not merely what you think is their plight, what you think is their ascription to victimization.  Most of them have given up on ever hoping you can. Some of them even try to love you, to excuse you, because you see yourself as a real American and somehow a defender of liberty and the pursuit of happiness or what the fuck ever.  They bend over backwards to give you the benefit of the doubt.  They want to believe that you at least mean well.  They hope you’re noble in some way but they can’t stand the things that come out of your mouth, and they try really hard to afford you some yardage because they hope you’re sincere in some way that you never demonstrate.  You always let them down. You always disappoint.  Always.  They hope you are not what they see, but they see you nonetheless.  They hope the generosity and compassion you exhibit otherwise means you’re not that big of an asshole.

They are wrong. You are a fucking bigot.  A racist.  I pity you for it and so should they.

You are the new racist.

Same as the old one.

Because you hate yourself.  Because you’re so afraid of everyone else because you know they are the same as you.  Because you imagine you have the advantage and you cling with such fierce and angry desperation to the idea that you are somehow privileged.  Because you believe you are somehow entitled.  You’re not.  We see that.  We try not to hate you for it.  But it’s one hell of a stretch.  Goddamn you make it hard.

What we do hate, without reservation, is that you refuse to accept that we are all the same.  What we hate is that you know that if all people, regardless of race, creed or color, were afforded equal opportunity and evaluation, you know you would be forced to confront that truth.  What we really hate, is that you frantically engage in every possible activity to undermine that truth.  What we hate is that you hate yourself so much that you do it all so willingly, so ignorantly, so shamelessly, so blindly.

We hate that despite you knowing the truth, you still behave as though you don’t.

Drinks for my friends.