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A major American political party just nominated a Black man to be its Presidential candidate.

Wow.  I can’t express how proud I am of the Democratic Party and America right now.  Way to go folks.

Historic times, I’m glad to witness them and be on the right side of them.

I’ve said this before, but it is worth repeating.  I rarely, if ever, hear nice people complaining about having to be politically correct.  It is almost exclusively the domain of jerks who don’t want to feel peer pressure to not be jerks.  If you can’t speak of others in basic terms that aren’t insulting, you need to shut up.  Now.

I’ve always felt that one of the biggest impediments to racial progress in America is that there aren’t any slurs of sufficient hatefulness towards White people.  Honkey just doesn’t cut it.  I’ve been called that before and it always seemed somewhat comical, like a cast member from Sanford and Son was insulting me.  No matter what happens in my life, I will always be able to handle taunts from someone that reminds me of Rollo with a smile on my face (Rollo, by the way, is my favorite character from that show).

I have decided, however, that despite the lack of a good slur, we need to have a euphemism for a name.  White is too easy.  So in the vein of African-American (which is dumb and I never use it), I think white people should be Blanco-Americans.  That is a term I think we can all be uncomfortable with, thus leveling the playing field.

 

Dear World:

Let me just put this out there now so no one is surprised by any future action I might take. The next person who, either directly or indirectly, suggests to me that the only reason I support Barack Obama for president is because “I like black people better” is getting the teeth knocked out of their mouth. Man, woman or child, friend, foe or family, it doesn’t matter. It’s happened 3 times now and I will not tolerate it a 4th.

The anger that this evokes from me has almost nothing to do with my views on race. What pisses me off to the highest level of pissivity, is the accusation of prejudice. That somehow, all things being equal, I’m going with the black people. And you know what? I might. But my views on the subject don’t deserve to be demeaned with a casual “he fancies black chicks” sort of condescension.

My wife is black. My in-laws (whom I currently live with and am deeply indebted to) are black. My kids are bi-racial. My best friend since high school and her daughter (who is my goddaughter) are black. So, yes, I love Black people.

Every single person I have been in a fight with since adulthood (if I recall correctly) is black. Every bully I have dealt with since 1984 is black. The only person who has ever spit on me is black. I have had Black men who I don’t know from Adam scream the most racially offensive stuff you can imagine at me on the street. So, yeah, I hate Black people.

The people who told those bullies to back off are black. The people who dusted me off after the fights are black. The girl who wiped the spit off me is black. The guys who screamed back at those men with me are black. So, indeed, I like Black people.

My experiences within the Black community are as wide and diverse as the people themselves. Which is to say, they run the gamut. Which is precisely my view of White people. Saying that I only like Barack Obama because he is black insults me as much as a Clinton (or McCain) supporter would be insulted by charges of racism in regards to their support.

Let’s recap: I like Barack Obama for his stances, for his policies and for his leadership abilities. If you insist that I only like him because he is black, I am going to SYFPH for you. In fact, it might not be much of a FPH once I’m done.

Thanks for your attention,

James

I have decided that I am going to support Barack Obama in his campaign for POTUS. I like his outlook, I like his ideas, and I think he will choose good people to work with. The third part is the most important to me. Having smart, well-trained people in the right spots makes all the difference in the world. FEMA, anyone? It would be the polar opposite of the barrel of monkeys that GWB has running the circus.

There are a couple of memes being spread about Mr. Obama by the right-wing noise machine.

The first is that he is “too inexperienced“. Malarkey. Everyone, right and left, says that “politics as usual” would (and is) a bad thing in Washington. So how do you expect an insider to change it? Politicians don’t get to know the ropes and then change them, they become assimilated, entrenched, and dependent on the current system. Let some new eyes look at the problems. As Obama says “I’ve been there long enough to know it needs to change”.

The second is (and there will be more variations than the current ones) that he is just flash and no substance. Expect tired variations on old stereotypes like he is just a smooth talking huckster and probably a few veiled versions of him being “uppity”. I can feel it coming the same way I can when the rednecks I work with lower their voices and glance over their shoulders. It’s not really prognostication on my part, it’s just Republicans being themselves. How else does one preserve the rich, white, christian male power structure?

I recently read some stuff written by Michelle Malkin.  Nasty stuff.  Hateful stuff.  I won’t even link to it because the only reason she isn’t denounced as a hateful racist is that she is, you know, like not white.

Which brings me to a different point altogether.  Am I the only person who thinks it odd that the de facto spokesman for white supremacists in America is a Filipino woman? The daughter of immigrants no less.

Wow.  Maybe women, minorities and immigrants really are taking ALL the jobs.

It seems that every couple of months now we have some minor celebrity standing up and braying out some racist crap at the top of his jackass lungs. This time it is Don Imus. Hopefully he will be the last for at least a year, but I’m not getting my hopes up. In today’s public discourse it seems that the jackasses feel obligated to bray. Hell, half of them are getting paid by Fox to bray.

Here is what he said:

IMUS: That’s some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and –

McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.

IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos there. I’m gonna tell you that now, man, that’s some — woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like — kinda like — I don’t know.

McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.

…ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.

Now, it’s not enough that he was just a sh!!heel to a group of girls who should be on top of the world right now with a fabulous accomplishment. It’s not enough that he is insulting their looks when he himself looks like a stand-in for the Cryptkeeper. (Or better yet, check this out. That’s hitting the nail on the head.) It’s that he has to be a racist jackass about it and then he and his buddies (and others) have to sit around and make up excuses for it.

I’m going to go over this again just to be sure I’ve made my point.

When you do/say racist things, that makes you a racist. Period. Like Chris Rock says, “What do you have to do, shoot Medgar Evers?”

Some might say that that is an awful tight line to hold to, that one slip like that shouldn’t a racist make. It does. Just like one fling makes you an adulterer and one punch makes you a child abuser.
The line needs to be tight, the standards very stringent. America burnt it’s karma on this subject long ago. There are too many tragedies, too many injustices and too many humiliations to let any more go. This is not an envelope that can be pushed. In fact this envelope needs to be sealed tight and mailed off.

So should Imus be fired? Yes.

Should he be shunned by others? Yes.

Is he a racist? Yes.

Should everyone with a show be held to this standard? Yes.

Does that include black people? Yes.

It really pisses me off when other jackasses start braying on about how “rappers say things like that why can’t he?” Nice strawman, dude. Bad behavior doesn’t excuse other bad behavior. And if you believe that line of thought so much, rappers use the word “n***er”, too. Would it have been okay for him to call them that? I didn’t think so.

In fact, stop with the angry rich white guy crap, right now. O’Reilly, Hannity, Gibson, et al. just STFU. I know you guys have it tough, what with all the brown people oppressing you with their desire for something resembling simple human dignity, but you are cordially invited to STFU and keep it shut. I know it’s not gonna happen, though. Jackasses are built to bray.

My lovely wife and I went out this weekend on a little date.  During said date, we went to the movies and saw Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls.

I have to admit having a few reservations about going to see a Tyler Perry movie.  If you don’t recognize the name, he is the cat with the Madea character featured in Diary of a Mad Black Woman and scores of other melodramas all written and directed and starred in by him. I also have to admit to finding the Madea character absolutely noxious.  Just as I don’t like Martin Lawrence’s Big Momma character or Eddy Murphy’s Mama Klump character.  They all end up being these big balls of stereotypes that completely turn me off.  And because they are just a jumble of stereotypes, they don’t ever achieve any real depth because they can’t get past the limitations of those stereotypes.

All that was to say that the name Tyler Perry automatically induces a cringe in me.

Daddy’s Little Girls was an excellent movie.  And Tyler Perry himself was nowhere to be seen. Well written, well acted and well directed.

A quick synopsis of the movie:  A single, lower class father is trying his best to raise 3 girls and make something of himself, despite the hardships of near poverty and the mother of his daughters being a drug dealing crazy woman. During this struggle he meets a rich, powerful woman lawyer and they fall in love.

It touches on subjects that are often ignored in mainstream media:  hardworking Black men who care for their kids, self-reliance of Black communities, and class differences in the Black community.

It is a well-constructed movie with no wasted parts that I can recall. I highly recommend it.

As a continuation of the discussion of my last post, I will address a tangential subject.

We, and by “we” I mean all human beings, have this habit of giving celebrities and people we generally don’t want to condemn way too much benefit of the doubt. I have heard, read and said the words “I don’t think he is really ___ist, he just said/did something kinda ____ist.

Let’s be intellectually honest about this. If some guy standing on a street corner starting yelling those same things as Mr. Richards did, you and I would easily condemn him as an ignorant racist. Yet somehow because Mr. Richards was holding a microphone and we have seen him on sitcoms, he is not *really* racist, he was just angry. The dude on the street corner is angry, too. So what’s the difference?

The yelling of racial slurs and talk of lynchings was not part of his act. It wasn’t an attempt at a joke. There was no punchline. It was an attempt to marginalize and intimidate some black men. Just like when the same things get yelled at them from a street corner.

As an intellectual experiment, let’s assume he isn’t racist. So screaming racial slurs at someone does not a racist make. How do you get to be one? What do you actually have to do? Don’t give me any talk of feelings or mental state. You can’t measure how someone feels or measure their opinions. So let’s not waste time on the immeasurable. What actions does it take to make one a racist?

We’ve already determined that calling others racial slurs doesn’t make you racist. Do you have to get violent? Do you need to have cut eyeholes in your bed linens? Do you have to have a diesel soaked cross in the garage? Where is the line then?

We wouldn’t forgive other actions in this same manner, would we? We wouldn’t say, “Sure, he slept with a 6 year old, but he isn’t a pedophile, he was just horny”. Or is it simply that it was words and not actions? How many slurs does it take?

I could go on in the Socratic method all day long, but I will give you my answer on how many slurs it takes for me these days. One. Just one. I spent enough years letting it slide. No more.

I take the zero-tolerance approach. I’ve heard many a slur at my place of employ. I don’t speak to those guys. If I must to get my job done, it’s all business and just that. If it is someone outside of work or someone I don’t actully interact with during my job duties, I never speak, I never nod, I never acknowledge their presence.

When someone crosses that line, that’s it for me. I am very much into politics and Matt Yglesias is a highly respected Democratic pundit. He used the term “w___ger” once and I have never read a word by him again. I don’t read things that reference his work. I don’t follow links to his site. He is dead to me, just like all those others.

Of course, it makes life difficult sometimes. It would be easier just to let it all slide. Oh, he and she and they aren’t really racist. Well, I can’t always take the fight to the racists, but I can remove them from my life.

Here is my statement to Michael Richards: STFU.

That fake ass non-apology (6th one down): STFU.

The meeting with black leaders: STFU.

The whole “I’m Jewish” thing: STFU.

Dude, you career is now officially over. It has been unofficially over for a few years now, this just seals the deal. No matter what you do, what you say, or who you say it to, you will always and forever be that racist dude.

And let’s not pretend that you aren’t actually racist. You are. Period. Don’t give me the whole “I was just angry” crap. I’ve been in a position to be really, really angry at a lot of different black people in my life. I’ve been so mad I’ve put my fist through walls. I’ve never gone there, though. Why not? Because I don’t have that in me. You, Mr. Richards, do.

So take your little ruined career and just plain unfunny behind and STFU.

The 01/16/06 episode of The Chair and Automan is out. Download the MP3 directly here. Or better yet, get a podcatching client and subscribe to this podcast here. Or check out my Odeo channel.

In this episode:

I talk about racism cropping up in my life and Dr. King. I tell of my work’s “zero tolerance” policy towards such things. I talk about really digging reading essays by a guy named Tim Wise. I play songs and babble.

The links:
Son Of Nun
Nay-Sun
O.D.M.
Tim Wise
Dr. Martin Luther King

Audio feedback/promos are always welcome at jaslusher AT gmail DOT com.

UPDATE: No your ears aren’t playing tricks on you, I did play the Nay-Sun song twice and did not play the Son of Nun song. Sorry. I will go with the “I’m completely stupid” defense.