Racism - ain't it just so adorable?
Today, I had the questionable pleasure of, on one hand, listening to George Allen go on the defensive over new revelations that he is a stupid thug with a complementary racist streak.
On the other hand, I had the equally questionable pleasure of listening to a sales rep in my office talk about going to church and being invited to another church. As she described the "black church" to my news clerk, I listened from my office as she tried explaining what she thought it was going to be like.
"You know how black folks are," the rep noted at one point.
No, I don't know how black folks are. I do know that, as white bread as I may appear, I happen to have some black and Cherokee ancestry. I also know that, after becoming intrigued about that, I did a little research and found that if I had been a resident of the old Republic of South Africa, I was legally 'colored.'
I certainly have few qualifications to 'know' what it's like to be black, but I think I have a pretty good idea what dumbassed white folks are like.
On the other hand, I had the equally questionable pleasure of listening to a sales rep in my office talk about going to church and being invited to another church. As she described the "black church" to my news clerk, I listened from my office as she tried explaining what she thought it was going to be like.
"You know how black folks are," the rep noted at one point.
No, I don't know how black folks are. I do know that, as white bread as I may appear, I happen to have some black and Cherokee ancestry. I also know that, after becoming intrigued about that, I did a little research and found that if I had been a resident of the old Republic of South Africa, I was legally 'colored.'
I certainly have few qualifications to 'know' what it's like to be black, but I think I have a pretty good idea what dumbassed white folks are like.
posted by Frontier Editor at 00:45
14 Comments:
sigh...
What do I say to this?
The (un)fair me...
So you would be considered legally "coloured" in South Africa? But come on, we know how snooty they are over there (yes, I'm just being wicked).
hey bro me too! and 'worse' still my mother is a kraut - just don't mention the war ;o)
If people could only hear what they said, would they continue to speak? Too bad there wasn't a secret video camera recording that rep...show it to her boss and see if she still has a job and they have a customer.
OK... second try... Blogger doesn't like me today! Is it cause I'm black? Yeah, I found out recently that I have some black bloodlines from my Iranian side... fascinating but there is no way to research it seeing how Iran is so backwad and f-ed up right now! Oy!
As for your post... brilliantly written! Bohemians everywhere applaud you my friend!
Well put x
yeah, it's comments like that that make me think of ways to simply stay home. forever.
That's funny. :)
Oftentimes people make the mistake of stereotyping behaviors to be traits of a race. I have run into places on the blog scene where white women write the exact same way I do on my blog and it is fine, but I have witnessed a black blogger get bashed for writing that way. She was bombarded with "why do you write this way, aren't you smart? Why play into the stereotype?"
But it was okay for those same commenters to go to their blogs and write in a string of profanity and slang without their education being in question.
People love telling me in the 'real' world that I 'act' white. And here I was thinking I was just being me and educated. Dang it! :)
Nice post.
Well, as a pure 100% aryan what can I say. Luv you all, black, white, coffee coloured and yellow too (them thar Chinese aren't really yellow are they). Remember that Blue Mink song, The great big Melting Pot - completely freaked out the whities, that one did.
WOW There is a big fat juicy slowpitch right down the middle...
I figure that these so called stereotypical 'traits' are somehow cultural because I never see any tribes in old National Geographic magazines flashin' gang signs.
I think that the artifice of 'others' was perfectly skewered by Blazing Saddles...
I laugh everytime I even think of the guy speaking authentic frontier jibberish!
Fronty, there are a lot of ignorant people in the world. G Edwards is right, if this woman actually heard herself maybe she would want to change.
I got called a "race traitor" online a couple weeks ago. Freaked my brother out, because thats all new to him. Sigh. I'm in the position of learning as I go, since I have to help my kids learn to deal with racism while they look at me and think I couldn't possibly know how it feels. And they are right.
This is just one of the things I love so much about HE's blog.....he gets comments from some DAMN fine bloggers. So I backtrack you and now I have another fine bookmark to add to my list of people who are capable of saying things that ought to be said, versus, well, you know.....THEM.
"Scuse me while I whip this out....."
Everybody knows that Edward R. Murrow's mentor was Carl Kolchak, who, as we all know, surely could have stumbled across some time warp thingy in order to be there to mentor him (yea, I know, I'm making these epiphanies up as I go along). Or maybe they don't know, but who cares.
Another reason I know I am going to enjoy your blog is your shameless insistance that ELO was and still is cool. All we need do now is make them PHAT, or whatever the hell it is that today's youth uses to denote coolness.
I just hope I don't need a shitload of dimes to read this blog of yours, or quarters, if inflation is taken into account.
As far as race goes, I, you, and everybody else is human, and that's bad enough.
Hmmmmm.
I think we're all probably in the same ballpark, row and adjacent seats here.
Cleavon Little is truly a man for our times, even if he did die far too early. Oversimplifed multiculturalism can just as bad as overt racism.
Like the Mike said, we're all human. Getting along is not just blindly accepting all other cultures. It's recognizing that we're all human, we all have our bad and good points, and that the only real way we can get along is to realize that there are certain basic instincts and ideas we all share that are more important that killing each other for the ones we don't share.
It's a pretty good generalization that we all want to eat, sleep, make babies, see our grandchildren and feel that we had a good life before we die.
There have been times in my life when I've met Muslims, Hindis and Jews who were far better Christians than many Christians that I knew.
People, no matter what religion, race, culture or lack thereof, fall in three categories - humane, inhumane and indifferent. I just hope I run into more than my share of the humane ones and that I can even begin to live up to the way they live.
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