So, the recent news about how repulsive-looking L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling told his trophy girlfriend not to bring black people to his games, or have her picture taken with them, has got me thinking. It reminds me of the Don Imus scandal where he called Rutger's women's college basketball team "nappy-headed ho's." Of course, there's the recent outbursts by the new right-wing hero, the anti-American (literally) Cliven Bundy, who muses that maybe black Americans would be better off if they were still enslaved. And then there's the sickening spectacle of George Zimmerman, the wannabe-cop-loser who targeted and then murdered an unarmed teenager (who I don't want to name in the same sentence of his piece-of-shit killer) because he was black. And the equally sickening defenders of Zimmerman who thought they could refute the allegations of his racism by pointing out how very black and scary his victim was. Then there's the decades-spanning career of Nazi-sympathizer Patrick Buchanan and his cromagnon opinions about black people.
It just goes on and on. And, of course, we Canadians have our own Christie Belchforth, denigrating the cultures of the First Nations, and the boorish Ezra Levant with his racist tirades against the Roma people and his murderous anti-Arab racism.
Can we at least get the right-wing to admit that racism exists? You know, just because people don't have the racist belief that different skin colours equal different "races" or "breeds" of humans, or some eugenic pseudo-science about genetic superiorities or inferiorities, they can still be racist. When you think people are poor and suffering due to the deficiencies of their backward and inferior cultures, that's racism. When you don't want to associate with them because of the colour of their skin, that's racism. When you think they should be re-enslaved, that's racism for fuck's sake!
I'm so glad that I'm white. Because I enjoy the privilege of not having to be so fucking angry and defensive all the time in the face of stupid racist cops, and employers and teachers and business-owners and asshole commentators like those listed above. I don't have to hear how a major sports-radio commentator called a white basketball team a bunch of skin-headed peckerheads. I don't have to hear how I should be sent back to the gutters of Europe, where I came from. I don't have to hear about how should be re-enslaved by the Greeks or the Romans (my Dad's side of the family are Slavs, the people after whom all slaves are named, at least in the English language).
Will these gutless cowards ever look in the mirror and admit to themselves that they and their country are still disturbingly, appallingly racist?
It just goes on and on. And, of course, we Canadians have our own Christie Belchforth, denigrating the cultures of the First Nations, and the boorish Ezra Levant with his racist tirades against the Roma people and his murderous anti-Arab racism.
Can we at least get the right-wing to admit that racism exists? You know, just because people don't have the racist belief that different skin colours equal different "races" or "breeds" of humans, or some eugenic pseudo-science about genetic superiorities or inferiorities, they can still be racist. When you think people are poor and suffering due to the deficiencies of their backward and inferior cultures, that's racism. When you don't want to associate with them because of the colour of their skin, that's racism. When you think they should be re-enslaved, that's racism for fuck's sake!
I'm so glad that I'm white. Because I enjoy the privilege of not having to be so fucking angry and defensive all the time in the face of stupid racist cops, and employers and teachers and business-owners and asshole commentators like those listed above. I don't have to hear how a major sports-radio commentator called a white basketball team a bunch of skin-headed peckerheads. I don't have to hear how I should be sent back to the gutters of Europe, where I came from. I don't have to hear about how should be re-enslaved by the Greeks or the Romans (my Dad's side of the family are Slavs, the people after whom all slaves are named, at least in the English language).
Will these gutless cowards ever look in the mirror and admit to themselves that they and their country are still disturbingly, appallingly racist?
2 comments:
Their motto is, thwap, "If they don't look like me, they don't count."
What an impoverished worldview.
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