Monday, March 22, 2010
On a Don't-Want-To-Know Basis
If there's anything Glenn Beck represents, it's the resistance of white America to know any negative views that black Americans have of them, especially those based on fact and experience. Black folks have long known that the sharing of their actual perceptions of white folks were nothing but trouble. There's a long tradition of silence in the black community.
When the black power movement split off from the more civil Civil Rights movement, we white folks had a bitter taste of what our history of racial relations had wrought. I remember reading the Muhammad Speaks paper in the late 60s and wondered just how I'd gotten so Devilish in my limited history, but I had to acknowledge the abuses and exploitations recorded by Malcolm X, W.E.B. DuBois, Countee Cullen, Billie Holliday, Nina Simone,and others as I combed the literature for more documentation of what had gone wrong.
I read what black Americans finally had to say about us. I'd read enough in the white press to know that every time a black person had been arrested for a crime, I'd seen him identified by his race. I'd been the watcher of many a cartoon invested with black stereotypes, whether Bosco and Baby or Disney crows. I'd even giggled as my seventh grade boyfriend drew monstrous lips on his caricature of Nina Simone when "I Loves You Porgy" climbed the top 40 charts in 1960.
As a gay person, I know what lack of exposure to oppressed minorities can do to the silent-but-deadly (like a fart) majority. There's nothing better than lack of exposure, either to the people or to their realities, to maintain the status quo.
While the members of the s-b-d majority still holds the floor (and its days are numbered, if you pay any attention to demographic projects), they can articulate their cluelessness to their fellows. They can utter their fear-phrases and trigger the formation of more militia groups and identify those whom they think should be silenced for their honesty.
White liberals may have had their moments with w.l. guilt, but in a sense, they paid their dues and came to understand that there were lots of Americans that didn't enjoy the same level of privilege that they did.
Now we have a president who dares not fill us in on his own experiences. You want the experiences, you read the book. He's the president of all the American people, now, and he can ill afford to remind us of what his experiences are. There are lots of the unbalanced awaiting the call of the extreme right to do what their icky media counterparts suggest.
In the meantime the Republicans have ordered a thousand cases of Pink Pearl erasers and a gross of buckets of White-Out for the undoing of the one show of strength that the Democrats have mustered in the recent health care reform effort. By God, they're gonna pay.After all, the people who don't want any frank opinions from African-Americans on institutionalized racism aren't hot to hear about what life without health care is like, either.
They're just more inconvenient truths.
# posted by Lulu Maude @ 11:18 PM 
Comments:
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Good stuff Ms. Lulu, it's not just that we're obtuse, but as Upton Sinclair said, it's hard to get somebody to understand something when his livelyhood depends on his not understanding it.
The reaction by the right to the health care reform bill passing hasn't got a goddamned thing to do with the bill (unless it's a politician getting greased by Big Insurance).
The right is just pissed that a darky has managed to muscle a major change in the law.
I know racism still existed in America before Obama was elected, but it took his election to uncover just how massive an issue racism remains in America today.
Fortunately, right-wingers tend to be ignorant of any spiritual tenents besides Jesus stuff. They don't know about or believe in karma.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.
The right is just pissed that a darky has managed to muscle a major change in the law.
I know racism still existed in America before Obama was elected, but it took his election to uncover just how massive an issue racism remains in America today.
Fortunately, right-wingers tend to be ignorant of any spiritual tenents besides Jesus stuff. They don't know about or believe in karma.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.
the wingnuts are very fussy when it comes to their feet. they don't even want to think about walking in anyone else's shoes. that's why it's so ironic that you'll find lots of them in bowling alleys.
They think they know about Jesus stuff. In fact, they think Jesus is very much blessing all their diabolic thoughts, words and deeds.
I was looking up the name & story of the child who was present @ the historic signing of the HCR bill. His Mom got, sick, so sick she lost her job, then her health insurance, then she died.
11 year old Marcelas Owens had become a health care advocate. He had a front row seat to how things go wrong w/o health care access, and it was pretty damned courageous of him to decide to be an advocate- seeing he's 11 years old.
But even then, the shithead right wingers could not resist lashing out.
His prominence has attracted a backlash from conservative commentators, who accuse reform advocates of prostituting and exploiting him as he tells his mother's story.
He's 11 years old, and his Mom died 3 years ago. That is a tender young age to lose your Mother.
So nothing is sacred in this fight in this human rights struggle.
I do wonder this-- where were all these angry villager types when Bush2 was doing the Abu Ghraib abuse & allowing torture- violating both domestic & international laws? When generation theft really did occur as we were buried in a trillion dollar debt.
All of that vile & illegal stuff was OK, but dare to have availability of health care to people who need it--- that is the item that causes such furor to throw bricks, send white powder in the mail & use cross hair icons & tell people to "reload", (Palin now says that's code for voting).
It's hatred, and prejudice, and perpetuation of the us & them, haves & have nots stuff that is entirely divisive.
Sadly, I was thinking it is like the new 21st century KKK, only now they show their faces & carry guns openly.
It's scary, subhuman, hateful & violence provoking all in one.
How low to even pick on an 11 year old kid.
I mean seriously.
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11 year old Marcelas Owens had become a health care advocate. He had a front row seat to how things go wrong w/o health care access, and it was pretty damned courageous of him to decide to be an advocate- seeing he's 11 years old.
But even then, the shithead right wingers could not resist lashing out.
His prominence has attracted a backlash from conservative commentators, who accuse reform advocates of prostituting and exploiting him as he tells his mother's story.
He's 11 years old, and his Mom died 3 years ago. That is a tender young age to lose your Mother.
So nothing is sacred in this fight in this human rights struggle.
I do wonder this-- where were all these angry villager types when Bush2 was doing the Abu Ghraib abuse & allowing torture- violating both domestic & international laws? When generation theft really did occur as we were buried in a trillion dollar debt.
All of that vile & illegal stuff was OK, but dare to have availability of health care to people who need it--- that is the item that causes such furor to throw bricks, send white powder in the mail & use cross hair icons & tell people to "reload", (Palin now says that's code for voting).
It's hatred, and prejudice, and perpetuation of the us & them, haves & have nots stuff that is entirely divisive.
Sadly, I was thinking it is like the new 21st century KKK, only now they show their faces & carry guns openly.
It's scary, subhuman, hateful & violence provoking all in one.
How low to even pick on an 11 year old kid.
I mean seriously.
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