Attorney General Holder is right: we are cowards.

[nolawitch58]

I will know that what he said is not true the day that I am not the first one to bring up the subject in lunch conversation at work. CNN had a short piece on Holder followed by a couple of callers and emails. I pointed out to my colleagues that the ones who claimed racism wasn't a problem in America had never experienced it themselves.

One caller was an older, white person from a rural Southern area in Mississippi. She must not have gotten the memo that the ones who are perpetrating the racism aren't allowed to say when it's over. Statistics for MS show that though there is a large population of black people in the state, they are not proportionally represented in elected office. Like other Southern states, there is still a strong Ku Klux Klan presence that has metastasized out of the cities and infested the suburbs and rural areas. Louisiana had a Klan killing recently that defied logic (even more so than the pretzel logic of their very existence): they murdered someone who was being initiated into their chapter of the vipers. Yes, they killed another white person who wasn't quite racist enough for them. I'll bet every drop of blood in my body that the same dumbshit had at least on one occasion railed that the white population was dwindling while the minorities were increasing. Way to go, redneck idiot; contribute to the very thing you decry. The CNN caller sounded like a MS native and so was a product of one of the rotating bottom performing educational systems in the country. They're still referring to education as the three Rs, even though anyone with more than a third-grade intellect knows that writing begins with a W and arithmetic begins with an A.

Another caller was in the military, where he claimed that all anyone cared about in the service was performance and race was irrelevant. That may be true because hmc_lavadogs confirms it back in his Navy days, speaking fondly of superb officers he served under who happened to be of color. What happens to those valiant servicepeople of color who return to their communities? If they have to come home to hellholes like rural Alabama, Mississippi or Louisiana, they're still seen as lesser humanity by the entrenched racism there. It doesn't matter if they have Purple Hearts, Silver Stars or a chest full of medals for valor. Some dumbass cracker will always see that veteran as the n-word.

The only part of the CNN package that gave me hope was one caller and an email. The email was from Arizona and confirmed the racism against the Native Americans there. The person I moved to New Orleans with from Phoenix had to move back to Phoenix because she didn't like that New Orleans had so many black people. When I heard that, I was dumbfounded. She's been gone since the early '90s, and I can imagine her sitting in Phoenix a few years back watching the coverage of Hurrican Katrina thinking she was glad not to be anywhere near here. I had no idea she had such a closed mind. She must be under the misapprehension that there are no middle-class and professional black people and that they're all ghetto gang bangers. Too bad for her. The one caller was an African-American woman from Tennessee who doubtless experiences the negative effects of racism every day. She said that Holder was right on from her perspective.

That's what it all boils down to: perspective. Only the intellectually dishonest can say that something doesn't exist because they don't feel it themselves. As I've rolled my eyes and railed in the past about those people so lacking in empathy that they can only call for justice or help for a problem if it's right under their noses in their own families or friends, these idiots are oblivious who think that because we have a president who is half black racism is now a non-issue. On the flip side are those who are so steeped in the effects that see every problem as stemming from racism. That's the forest for the trees syndrome.

After I'd fed the cats this morning and had crawled back in bed, my mind went to my many happy times of cleaning the local cemeteries. I remember talking to the dead as I cleaned, telling them that it was awful that their loved ones had abandoned them. This morning, I had some clarity on that. They created their own abandonment for the most part. Their racism drove their progeny to leave the neighborhoods in which they had lived and died when black people moved in. Instead of embracing their new neighbors of color, they fled. Instead of helping them assimilate into the middle class, the racist whites left them to their deteriorating ghettos. Instead of being there to model law-abiding and nuclear family behavior, they settled into their own safe enclaves in the suburbs. As racism becomes less and less pervasive, people may be copacetic with more integrated neighborhoods. We can hope.

I'm bringing my notebook to the Endymion parade this afternoon. I need to get some writing done and am perplexed as to why I can't just slam it out while I'm sitting here at my computer. This book is only coming out in longhand when I'm away from the house. IDGI. I used to be able to sit with my headphones on and rattle out page after page directly from my brain to the keyboard. It's kinda irritating that I can't do that with Ruxandra.

Comments

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, Tantric_Chef once told me that the "ghetto gang-bangers" borrowed the whole thug culture from poor southern whites, or that element known as "poor white trash." (I'm white and grew up in trailer parks, so I'm allowed to say that.)

[nolawitch.livejournal.com]

I lived in a trailer park too after I moved out of my mother's house in a Podunk-assed town wedged in between corn fields and cow pastures. I can see the whole gang culture emerging from mimicking the douchebag KKK and groups of their ilk. When people see themselves as a powerless underclass regardless if they understand the concept or not, they will do what they can to accrue power in any way they can. White people had gangs to run bootleg liquor during Prohibitions. They also had criminal gangs as fictionalized in the movie "Gangs of New York." Then again, humans have a tendency to be joiners anyway, no matter what their social stratum might be. The upper classes have their country clubs and fraternities. The middle classes have their lodges and Legion halls. The lower classes have their hangouts and their 'hoods. It would be interesting to see an academic investigation into the way gangs form, morph and dissipate.

It's a damned shame that instead of modeling the behavior of good citizens, the dumbass crackers dumped the worst of their culture onto the burgeoning black population. Ultimately, it's still the fault of white people that black people are still marginalized in so many places. Every time some white windbag says something to the effect of "what else can you expect from those people," he's feeding that level of low expectation.

[pecosdave.livejournal.com]

Racism is something I've observed and studied for most of my life. My reasons are personal, I was taught by my school system and society that white people have historically been racist and still are the ones, yet my personal observations from being one of the few white guys, and even rarer for that area being a non "kicker". My observations:

EVERY race has the potential be racist regardless of what Dr. Shakti Butler says.

The race relations issue is getting BETTER in the U.S.

The issue is PERPETUATED by those with personal interest.

Young people tend to have less racist tendencies than the older.

Pushing "Diversity" instead of tolerance is one of the current problems perpetuating the issues instead of allowing it to be resolved.

To explain -

We need to integrate is number one. Every race creates their own cultural clicks, that are often exclusive. The biggest problem with these clicks isn't that they don't let others in, they guilt trip the ones who leave holding them back. The drive to "keep it real" and "not sell out" tends to trap people who grew up in poor communities in them. If you start moving up the ladder and making more money you alienate/become alienated from your friends. I'm not going to suggest disallowing close friendships for kids, but parents do need to teach their kids they don't have to do as their friends do and it's ok to move up.

There are people with something to gain by yelling racism. Al Sharpton for example uses "fines" and donations (ransom/blackmail) anytime he thinks he can leverage something that can be perceived as racism. It doesn't matter if an incident was racist or not, if sounding the alarm could hurt a person or organization. Using the "race card" for personal gain and in the process dragging the real but diminishing problem of racism out is a slap in the face of Martin Luther King Jr. who fought to integrate, not perpetuate.

I've noticed that older people (older generations) are less likely to be racist than younger people. The main exception being young people from culturally exclusive groups (of any race). Long story short mainstream America - good, nearly cleansed. Hillbillies, rednecks, hiphoppers, gangsters, chicano's, mafisto's, inner city types, yakuza, etc.... Still racist.

BTW - in Arizona Indian racism goes both ways, but honestly I have a hard time blaming the Indians.