(no subject)
Wow, a couple hours later and I've already been yelled at about my last post via email by an acquaintance of an acquaintance. I decided to reply to said email here rather than returning email fire.
Point #1: If talking about race makes me a racist, well, fuck me then. Apparently I need to live in some fantasy world where everyone looks the same and no one ever gets upset about a perceived lack of sameness. Would that make me the perfect human? How do I get to this magical fantasyland of delight and wonder? Should I regress to the age of one and gain this at the cost of shitting myself constantly? Should we all?
Point #2: Yes, I'm well aware of white liberal guilt. I suffer from the modern version, thank you fucking much. I don't give a flaming white fuck for what my great-great grandad on the Arkansasian side might have hypothetically done to your great-great grandad (or MY great-great grandad on the other side, for that matter). I really fucking don't. You know why? I wasn't fucking there. I wasn't alive then. Not being alive at the time makes it rather hard to have a say in the way things happen, thus making guilt over nonactions rather stupid. I can look back at it as an event that happened and that was abominable and sadly understandable, but no I don't have any fucking guilt over it. I'm aware of the *current* racial inequalities that have been pointed out to me or that I've found through direct observation and personal research. Should I *not* be aware of them? Am I automatically going to be thrown into the category of "white folk who bemoan the sad state of the proud negro" just because I have no idea what to do about it? Fuck you! Fuck everyone who writes shit like that without offering suggestions! Offer some goddamn suggestions if you want to bitch! Obama being president does *not* make me feel any less bad for anyone (white black yellow or purple) living in poverty in this country, or make me feel like any of that is suddenly going to all be okay. I think I mentioned that.
Point #3: Oh, right. I'm sorry. I can't speculate on what would make a black person happy. Because we're so damn fundamentally different? What the fuck are you even saying? Did I actually at any point talk about Obama being a rolemodel? I did not. And I find your comment about a white person at the Apollo Theater disturbing and odd. You're aware that a number of white people have performed at the Apollo, yes? And one Korean? Did you know about the Korean? Yes, that makes me happy, as it usually does when a group or organization that's traditionally ethnocentric acknowledges another group's existence, yes, even when that group is doing it for a dumb marketing reason. Apparently it pisses you off (see (Point #1)). I'll be glad to have it out with you over the "token minority archetype" some other time.
Point #4: Not that is has much of anything to do with the actual post, but yes I am in fact aware of Obama's obvious inability to deal with the LGBT community's existence. Yes, he's possibly a homophobe in the non-vicious sense. Yes, that tempers my like of the man as do a number of other things. But to be honest I don't care for David Ehrenstein's written vitrol on the matter much either. I suppose that makes me anti-gay, even though I can see where he's coming from? See Point #2. I wasn't happy about the snafu, intentional or not, with Bishop Gene Robinson either, and I'm angry that his fairly eloquent speech* didn't make it to television. I'd like to see a president who has the balls to stand up and openly accept gays as valued Americans as well. In the meantime, would you like to go back to having any number of the presidents who wouldn't have even made a token gesture? I don't like Joe Biden's hardline stance on crime either (which yes, has effected the lives of many more Afrcan Americans than whites, due to what I pointed out near the bottom), but I will sure as shit take him in a hearbeat over Cheney.
Steps on the path, man. I submit that our precious energy be better spent on making sure things get steadily better and slip backwards less, rather than demanding everything be perfect to everyone's standards now. Also, if any good comes out of this conversation besides self examination, it'll be me digging up some old stuff I have on Fullmer's theories on xenocentrism.
*As a side note to other people reading this, I have no fucking clue why, but no one seems happy with this prayer. A scan of the Youtube comments reveals the usual disturbing religious junk (sodomite, putting man over God, gross and ignorant misinterpretations of the phrase "God of many understandings", etc.), but a bunch of other blogs have been calling it watered down or trying to be everything to everyone or trying too hard not to cause offense. Or my favorite, "not hopeful enough". What the fuck? Recognizing that there's some foul shit going on (as usual) and praying for it to not be going on anymore is not hopeful enough? This Cult of Hope business is now freaking me out as well. Man, there's no pleasing anyone sometimes, is there?
Point #1: If talking about race makes me a racist, well, fuck me then. Apparently I need to live in some fantasy world where everyone looks the same and no one ever gets upset about a perceived lack of sameness. Would that make me the perfect human? How do I get to this magical fantasyland of delight and wonder? Should I regress to the age of one and gain this at the cost of shitting myself constantly? Should we all?
Point #2: Yes, I'm well aware of white liberal guilt. I suffer from the modern version, thank you fucking much. I don't give a flaming white fuck for what my great-great grandad on the Arkansasian side might have hypothetically done to your great-great grandad (or MY great-great grandad on the other side, for that matter). I really fucking don't. You know why? I wasn't fucking there. I wasn't alive then. Not being alive at the time makes it rather hard to have a say in the way things happen, thus making guilt over nonactions rather stupid. I can look back at it as an event that happened and that was abominable and sadly understandable, but no I don't have any fucking guilt over it. I'm aware of the *current* racial inequalities that have been pointed out to me or that I've found through direct observation and personal research. Should I *not* be aware of them? Am I automatically going to be thrown into the category of "white folk who bemoan the sad state of the proud negro" just because I have no idea what to do about it? Fuck you! Fuck everyone who writes shit like that without offering suggestions! Offer some goddamn suggestions if you want to bitch! Obama being president does *not* make me feel any less bad for anyone (white black yellow or purple) living in poverty in this country, or make me feel like any of that is suddenly going to all be okay. I think I mentioned that.
Point #3: Oh, right. I'm sorry. I can't speculate on what would make a black person happy. Because we're so damn fundamentally different? What the fuck are you even saying? Did I actually at any point talk about Obama being a rolemodel? I did not. And I find your comment about a white person at the Apollo Theater disturbing and odd. You're aware that a number of white people have performed at the Apollo, yes? And one Korean? Did you know about the Korean? Yes, that makes me happy, as it usually does when a group or organization that's traditionally ethnocentric acknowledges another group's existence, yes, even when that group is doing it for a dumb marketing reason. Apparently it pisses you off (see (Point #1)). I'll be glad to have it out with you over the "token minority archetype" some other time.
Point #4: Not that is has much of anything to do with the actual post, but yes I am in fact aware of Obama's obvious inability to deal with the LGBT community's existence. Yes, he's possibly a homophobe in the non-vicious sense. Yes, that tempers my like of the man as do a number of other things. But to be honest I don't care for David Ehrenstein's written vitrol on the matter much either. I suppose that makes me anti-gay, even though I can see where he's coming from? See Point #2. I wasn't happy about the snafu, intentional or not, with Bishop Gene Robinson either, and I'm angry that his fairly eloquent speech* didn't make it to television. I'd like to see a president who has the balls to stand up and openly accept gays as valued Americans as well. In the meantime, would you like to go back to having any number of the presidents who wouldn't have even made a token gesture? I don't like Joe Biden's hardline stance on crime either (which yes, has effected the lives of many more Afrcan Americans than whites, due to what I pointed out near the bottom), but I will sure as shit take him in a hearbeat over Cheney.
Steps on the path, man. I submit that our precious energy be better spent on making sure things get steadily better and slip backwards less, rather than demanding everything be perfect to everyone's standards now. Also, if any good comes out of this conversation besides self examination, it'll be me digging up some old stuff I have on Fullmer's theories on xenocentrism.
*As a side note to other people reading this, I have no fucking clue why, but no one seems happy with this prayer. A scan of the Youtube comments reveals the usual disturbing religious junk (sodomite, putting man over God, gross and ignorant misinterpretations of the phrase "God of many understandings", etc.), but a bunch of other blogs have been calling it watered down or trying to be everything to everyone or trying too hard not to cause offense. Or my favorite, "not hopeful enough". What the fuck? Recognizing that there's some foul shit going on (as usual) and praying for it to not be going on anymore is not hopeful enough? This Cult of Hope business is now freaking me out as well. Man, there's no pleasing anyone sometimes, is there?