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There was a day not so long ago when I thought racism was funny. I’d tell a racist joke and would almost immediately backpedal into a disclaimer like “I’m not racist, I have black friends!” Or I’d launch into a false justification about the difference between racism, stereotyping, and simply cracking a joke.

But in truth I have one black friend and, if we’re going to talk in stereotypes, she’s just as “white” as I am, which just goes to show that stereotypes are made to be broken. My perspective on other races and cultures has been shaped by the media, and chances are good that yours has too. Most of us here in central Pennsylvania and areas like it have absolutely no frame of reference in the real world on which to base racial judgments.

I don’t find racism as funny as I once did and I’ve got a black comedian to thank for that. Dave Chappelle attempted to deal with bigotry through satire and, after two successful seasons realized that most of his audience just didn’t get the joke. Before he walked off a stage in Sacramento he stated,

“You know why my show is good? Because the network officials say you’re not smart enough to get what I’m doing, and every day I fight for you. I tell them how smart you are. Turns out, I was wrong. You people are stupid.”

Chappelle realized we were laughing along with the racism rather than at the absurdity with which he portrayed it. The fact is most of us don’t understand race. I know I don’t and I can never hope to, which brings me to this disingenuous “white pride” tirade that more than a few friends of mine actually had the audacity to pass on. If I thought any of you actually had an ounce of pride in your heritage I’d stay silent, but “white” isn’t a heritage: it’s a color.

In exercising your “white pride” you’ve all managed to stereotype yourselves too; and what does the stereotypical white person believe? Let’s read on and find out. I can only write from my own personal experience so, if I’m wrong, feel free to disagree. The original post is bold and my thoughts will follow. Thanks for hearing me out.

You call me, “redneck”, “hillbilly”, “slaker”, “Cracker”, “Honkey”, “Whitey”, “Gringo” “albino ” and you think it’s OK.

…But when I call you porch monkey, coon,jiggaboo, Kike, sand nigger, rag head ,Towelhead, WOP, diego, kraut, spooks, paki, beaner, wetback, spik, polock, Camel Jockey, Jap, Gook, slant eyes or Chink you call me a racist.

The best justification you can come up with for using racist labels is that “they’re doing it too?” As compelling an argument as that is, I don’t buy it. If you’re not a racist, you have no reason to use racist slang; and if you are a racist you have no right to complain about being called one. Racism isn’t just a disease of white society: rather ironically as I see it, racism itself is totally colorblind in choosing its victims. But it’s still wrong, and it’s still a disease.

-You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you, so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live?

Of course ghettos are a violent place to live. That’s what happens when a lot of poor, discontent, and disenfranchised people are forced to live out their lives in squalor with little opportunity to do better. Look no further than the Middle East if you need proof. Today black on black violence is more prevalent than the white on black variety, but you can’t dismiss the fact that minorities have been forced to inhabit these places partially because of historical government policies, with government being a predominantly white institution. So even black-on-black violence has a little shade of white in it somewhere.

But complaints about white on black oppression and violence are largely based in the past, though to some the wounds are still wide open and manifest as bigotry in both races. Civil rights activists that actually care and seek to overcome our embarrassing past have been asking angry black youths for years to abandon the victim mindset, stop blaming the white man for their problems, and start looking for solutions. I say civil rights activists that actually care because we still have a few opportunists who make money by exploiting racial tension.
-You have the United Negro College Fund.

To put this in perspective, “In 2005, the UNCF supported approximately 65,000 students at over 900 colleges and universities with approximately $113 million in grants and scholarships” (Wikipedia). If you do the math, that’s an average of $1,738 per student, or about one third of one semester at a public school. When discussing the cost of education this amounts to mere pennies on the dollar, so why complain? Besides, if you’re hardworking and driven you can find money to pay for college regardless of your skin tone.

-You have Martin Luther King Day.

And so do the rest of us. Civil rights are something to be celebrated by everyone, not just African Americans. Plus I’m white and I still get the day off because I work at a high school. I’m not complaining.

-You have Black History Month.

Coincidentally many blacks agree with you that Black History Month is pointless, as black history is as much a part of American history as the Revolutionary War. If history is taught correctly, anyone attending a high school level U.S. history course can’t help but learn about it.
-You have Cesar Chavez Day.

Actually I don’t have Cesar Chavez Day. It’s only a holiday in four states; and what’s wrong with Cesar Chavez? He fought for the rights of farm workers, and actually opposed illegal immigration because it negatively affected the wages of farm laborers.

-You have Yom Hashoah

Yom Hashoah is a day of remembrance for holocaust survivors and it’s only a national holiday in Israel. Frankly I think it ought to be on our American calendars as well. The lessons of the holocaust are too important to be forgotten. But I suppose Jews ought to forget about their dead as we should forget about ours from 9/11, right? Is that what you’re getting at?

-You have Ma’uled Al-Nabi

Muslims have Mawlid an-Nabi (Muhammad’s birthday). Christians have Christmas. I think the only people who really ought to be jealous are atheists, so quit whining.

-You have the NAACP.

Do you understand how civil rights work? In a nation run by a government which has actually passed laws legalizing discrimination and poor treatment of some subset of its population, that subset must act as a single cohesive unit in order to show strength and thus force social change. Not that it matters; whoever wrote this trash is obviously grasping at straws, looking at their color, then deciding whether or not he should hate them.

-You have BET.

Yes but I can’t imagine they’re very proud of the fact.

-If we had WET(white entertainment television) …we’d be racist.

As a matter of fact we do have White Entertainment Television. You can tune in on any channel that’s not BET.

-If we had a White Pride Day… you would call us racist.

White Pride Day… what would that entail? In fact what does it mean to be proud of one’s whiteness? Why would you be proud of (or ashamed, or feel anything else about) the lack of pigment in your skin? What value could that possibly have? I understand pride in one’s culture, one’s religion or one’s nation, but color? Color is an attribute completely outside of one’s own control. You had no choice in selecting it, and you certainly couldn’t change it if you wanted to; and it’s literally impossible to display pride in one’s own color except by contrasting it and showing contempt for someone else’s.

Besides, no one is celebrating Black Pride day or anything like it. They’re celebrating important dates in the history of their culture, both happy and sad. If you want to celebrate important holidays in your culture, you might want to start by learning about where you come from instead of focusing on something as meaningless as skin color.

-If we had white history month… we’d be racist.

Every month is white history month, just as many blacks would argue that every month is black history month.

-If we had an organization for only whites to “advance” our lives… we’d be racist.

We did: it was called the United States government, and fortunately somewhere along the way it was decided that all men really are created equal and so our government ought to treat them as such.

-If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships…you know we’d be racist.

I’ll concede a point here. This has actually happened, with the predicted result. Preferential treatment based on skin color is racism regardless of whom it benefits or harms.

-In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights…you would call us racist.

If you didn’t march for your rights I’d call you un-American. As for marching for your race, when the government starts to take away your rights based on the color of your skin I’ll be right there with you. In an intelligent nation such as ours this should never happen again.

-Did you know that some high school students decided to make a club for only the white students because the other ethnicities had them… they all got sent to court for being racist but the african-american, Latino, and Asia clubs were not even questioned.

I don’t know enough about this incident to comment, but I’d love to know both the motive behind starting a white pride student club as well as the results of the court hearing. Minorities start clubs because as single individuals who look and act different than the majority are easily preyed upon by others. As a group they have strength and safety. The white kids have safety in numbers by default.

-You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you’re not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.

They’re proud to be African American or Brazilian, Latin American, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, or whatever their nationality happens to be. Categorizing people by the color of their skin is ignorant because, among other reasons, no single color belongs to a single nationality.

I am white.
I am proud.
But, you call me a racist.
Why is it that only whites can be racists?
Now watch, I’ll be a racist for posting this
So what? no one will re post this for fear of being called racist
if you think its true re-post it saying ” I’m not racist but its true

It’s not true that only whites can be racist; whites just happen to take me most heat for it, probably because we’re unfortunate enough to have an overabundance of people who think this way and are foolish enough to open their mouths.

The point is this. If you’re racist, stop hiding behind white pride. There’s no such thing.

Several weeks ago at the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, Colorado, a guest speaker suggested to his audience of high school students that they “have sex and use drugs” (article). Joel Becker, a professor of psychology at the University of California, was quoted as saying,

“I am going to encourage you to have sex and encourage you to use drugs appropriately. Why I am going to take that position is because you are going to do it anyway,” he continued. “I think as a psychologist and health educator, it is more important to educate you in a direction that you might actually stick to. So, I am going to stay mostly on with the sex side because that is the area I know more about. I want to encourage you to all have healthy, sexual behavior.“

As expected parents, teachers, and school board members are furious about this open invitation for their children to explore the wonderful and exciting world of sex and drugs.  I give Joel Becker a lot of credit for having the guts to make such a statement in the forum in which he did. The reaction, though expected, simply proves his point: many parents and educators take an unrealistic stance on sex and drugs by exclusively advocating abstinence rather than responsible indulgence.

When the school board discussed the issue one parent speaker was asked to stop reading the transcript of Becker’s speech because the language was “not appropriate.” Perhaps the problem with America’s youth is not that people like Joel Becker are telling them they don’t have to feel guilty about their natural urges; but rather that parents are afraid of words like “masturbation,” “ecstasy,” and “we ate some ’shrooms and then I gave her the old ‘Cleaveland Steamer!’” These people are parents, mind you, which means they must have had sex at one time in their lives.  I’m guessing from this article that it occurred at gunpoint.

Abstinence doesn’t work, and I don’t think anyone needs to see statistics to understand that (but here they are if you want them). You can make as many promises to God as you’d like, but at the age of 16 you’d burn down a convent full of nuns just to watch their titties bounce as they run out the door.  It’s easy to have convictions when no one is testing them.

If you’re a parent, be responsible and talk to your kids realistically about sex and drugs.  If this means you need to conquer a few of your own hang-ups, then so be it.

The following is a rebuttal to an essay that’s been traveling the Internet for the last two years, often known as “Jay Leno… Hits the Nail on the Head.” Each time I read it I find myself disagreeing more and more and chose to respond in kind. Since I have a tenancy to be overly-verbose I’m splitting my response into several posts; but I think anyone interested in politics and the state of the world in which we live will find them interesting. Enjoy.

I love my country and all of the luxuries which it provides me. But I see things a little differently than the author of the essay to which I’m about to respond. He sees we “malcontents” who complain about life in America as spoiled, ungrateful brats who take our freedom for granted. I think those who view the world through rose-colored lenses and pretending that the last six years of our nations history have been it’s most glorious are the one’s that don’t appreciate their freedom. Let me explain myself.

Since September 11, 2001 the Bush administration has used our country’s most devastating tragedy to push their own agenda and approve legislation that limits our freedom as Americans. This is all done, of course, in the name of National Security, and of course the nation has had a long history of suspending our basic rights during times of war so it’s occurrence now should come as no surprise. Does our past make these actions justified? Is it the American way to give up our most basic beliefs when some cave-dwelling religious zealots threaten our lifestyle? I don’t think so.

What follows is the original article followed by my own rebuttals. I think the author (and my friend that posted it) have some good points, but you can’t just blame the “discontent” in America on the media. Admittedly many American news outlets have turned into partisan shills, but there is still some truth to be found in what they report.

(Coincidentally this article has been circulating around the Internet under the false assumption that Jay Leno was it’s author. He was not. According to Internet myth busters Snopes.com, the actual author is a political commentator named Craig R. Smith. His essay was penned in 2005 so the statistics are outdated and the state of the union has changed considerably since it’s writing.)

The original essay appears below in red. My own thoughts are written in black.

The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some poll data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true given the source, right?

The Newsweek poll alleges that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed and 69 percent of the country is unhappy with the performance of the president. In essence 2/3s of the citizenry just ain’t happy and want a change.

If Newsweek was the only magazine offering these statistics they’d hold little merit. After all, you would expect to see these numbers in the magazine labeled the “most liberal of the major newsweeklies.” However many independent sources confirm these numbers, not just Newsweek. Pollingreports.com displays the poll results from a variety of different sources including both Newsweek and Fox, which are surprisingly in complete agreement. The trend seems to show that Bush’s approval rating was dropping from from the beginning, bounced upwards following 9/11/2001, and has been slowing plummeting to it’s current state since the beginning of 2002.

So being the knuckle dragger I am, I started thinking, ”What we are so unhappy about?”

Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter? Could it be that 95.4 percent of these unhappy folks have a job? Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time and see more food in moments than Darfur has seen in the last year?

Sure, we do have all of these things and I’m pretty sure we haven’t heard anyone complaining about them. Even Mr. Al “Global-Warming” Gore is an energy hog. Consumption and comfort is the American Way. In fact America has been doing the opposite of complaining about our consumption for quite some time now: we’ve lied to ourselves about the scientific fact that our way of life is not ecologically sustainable without making some changes.

And Speaking of Darfur, I think it’s interesting that we’ve poured an estimated $400 billion into the War in Iraq so we could hang Saddam, a war criminal posing no threat to the U.S. nor with any connection to 9/11 or Al Queda. Yet there are currently living, breathing war criminals in Sudan seeing to it that an entire ethnicity is starved, raped, and brutally murdered. We spend a pittance compared to Iraq and pass some feel-good legislation. If we’re going to police the world, shouldn’t we do it right?

Maybe it is the ability to drive from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through each state? Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter? I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just not good enough. Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provide services to help all and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.

Currently we can drive across the country without having to present identification, but that’s about to change. By slipping the provision into a must-pass war spending bill, the federal government has approved something called the Federal REAL ID Act. This new federal identification card will contain more information about you than your drivers license and be “machine readable,” likely by including an RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chip in your card.

What does this mean for you? Because the REAL ID is required to be “machine readable” it makes identity theft a breeze. If RFID technology is used, a thief need not physically scan your identification; it could, theoretically, be stolen out of thin air the same way I used to steal my neighbor’s wireless network signal (that’s illegal now too, by the way).

What’s more is that it means the federal government can track you anywhere in the country which you make a purchase requiring identification and, if they decide to use RFID, literally anywhere you take your ID. RFID scanners could be positioned at key points in roadways, cities, and anywhere else in order to track the movements of all who pass through. Personally I find this frighteningly Orwellian, but I suppose you don’t have anything to worry about so long as you obey the law. Of course the difference between a patriot and a traitor is only a matter of dates.

About that helicopter that flies you to the hospital when you’re in danger of shuffling off your mortal coil: that’s the most expensive flight most people will ever take. According to one website (opposed to the construction of a Helipad at San Francisco General Hospital), the average cost of emergency air transportation costs between $15,000 and $20,000. Of course if you’ve got great health care coverage this isn’t a problem, but not everyone does. In 2005 approximately 16% of Americans had no health coverage at all. I for one have survived the last four years without health insurance through a combination of youthful resilience and dumb luck, but in times of pain and illness it was no walk in the park.

Former sportscaster for ESPN and columnist for the Kansas City Star wrote a commentary thanking Imus for providing the black community with yet another distraction from the real problems that plague them. He writes,

“Thank you, Don Imus. You’ve given us (black people) an excuse to avoid our real problem.

You’ve given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

You’ve given Vivian Stringer and Rutgers the chance to hold a nationally televised recruiting celebration expertly disguised as a news conference to respond to your poor attempt at humor.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it’s 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.”

Didn’t I just write something about a celebrity coming under fire for racially charged banter?

Here’s the thing: Don Imus is a shock jock. He’s paid to say what’s on his mind and to say it with candor. He’s given a lot of money to shock, entertain and, every so often, to offend some people here and there. In no way do I defend what he said, but you can’t say that context doesn’t matter.

Speaking of context, does anyone actually think that Imus uttered the phrase “nappy-haired hoes” in hatred against anyone, let alone an entire race? It was clearly a joke, albeit a tasteless one, and everybody pressing this issue knows that. Imus made a mistake. Imus apologized. Now let the wrinkled alcoholic hillbilly alone.

I’ve said it before, but it amuses me how minister and civil rights leader Al Sharpton takes it as his God-given right to ruin careers and ruin lives every time a white man fucks up and gets caught saying something off-color (if you’re reading Al, that pun was completely intentional). This man knows nothing about forgiveness and, as a minister of the Christian faith, this makes him the worst kind of hypocrite. Call me naive, but shouldn’t a civil rights leader, a man that by definition demands equality and justice for all peoples, hold everyone to the same standards? I think he wants us all to be equal, but (to paraphrase Orwell) he wants the people he represents to be “more equal” than the rest of us.

“We cannot afford a precedent established that the airwaves can be used to commercialize and mainstream sexism and racism.” (Al Sharpton)

I completely agree! So why isn’t Al going after black artists for such lyrical masterpieces as A Nigga’ Wit a Gun, Bitches Ain’t Shit, Bitch Niggaz, For All My Niggaz & Bitches, Can U Control Yo Hoe, and I Miss That Bitch? Oh I get it… it’s one of those deals where you’re only allowed to say the word if you are the word, right? I can call myself a hillbilly white trash cracker, but I can only tell a woman she has nappy hair if I or someone in my family sports a similar hairstyle; and I can only call someone a ho if I myself am a scandelous skeezer or skank. Equality my ass, Al.