This family would be easy to point to and say “Look how easy they have it! Of course this girl is going to succeed, she’s going to have ample opportunity too!” But this is not a story about her, or her family. This is a story of my privilege.

It is harder to look at the things that you have that you don’t deserve. It’s easier to go “I deserve so much more because I work so hard” or talk about all the difficulties but you have had to face. But, even people who have had legitimate difficulties (and I imagine there are quite a few of them) mixed in was all the stuff that institutions have favored about you, the headache that you don’t know that you don’t have*, and sheer dumb luck. I’m female, bisexual, poly and I’m currently lower-middle class. I’m also white, cis-gendered, grew up middle class and grew up in the United States. Your life is always going to be intermixed with what you do, and what happens to you.

I was reminded of that, very strongly, when reading this post from “Forever in Hell”. The post talks about a poor business owner who’s 2 miles away from the nearest bus station, and because of it can’t find anyone to work for him because he needs people to have a car. The relevant part here:

But you have to be able to drive. That’s an odd way of putting it, isn’t it? Why would you need to be able to drive to be a metal fabricator or a welder? What Mr. Isbister means to say isn’t that you need to be able to drive, it’s that you have to be able to afford a car.

Where I live, bus riders are divided fairly evenly between three groups: people too young to drive, people too old to drive and people too poor to drive. Mr. Isbister isn’t talking about the first two groups, he’s talking about the third group, and all of those people are fully able to drive. I have a driver’s license. I know how to drive a car. I just can’t afford to own, maintain, repair and gas a car. That’s expensive and I just don’t get paid enough.

Neither, I would guess, do Mr. Isbister’s employees. And that’s the problem. Henry Ford was a racist asshat, but he did get one thing right: he paid his employees enough to afford the product they were producing. He was only doing that to create a demand for his product (can you imagine a time when you had to create a demand for cars?), but the point still stands.

In order for businesses to be able to pay low wages, they depend upon our tax dollars to provide services to their employees that their paychecks just won’t cover. Low wages won’t cover the cost of owning a car, so your tax dollars pay for public transportation to get employees to work. Low wages won’t cover the cost of food, so your tax dollars pay for food stamps and WIC*. Low wages won’t cover the cost of housing, so your tax dollars pay for housing assistance*. Low wage and part time jobs don’t cover, or even offer, health insurance, so your tax dollars pay for health insurance for their children. And on and on and on.

My job is to drive a kid back and forth. I got this job, because I graduated with honors from high school, and this was my parent’s gift to me, so while I have been paying for the insurance and upkeep on it for the last 7 years or so, I never purchased it. Last month, my car which hadn’t had any problems before, suddenly had the timing belt break on me. The mechanic told me it would be at least $600 dollars to repair**. This is the third major expense on it, and Hubby and I had already decided before this happened that if there was another, that we were just going to junk it for it’s pathetic $200.

$200 dollars is not enough to buy a new car, and my job, it should go without saying, requires me to have a car. Had I not had my husband’s car to fall back on, I would have been flat out screwed. Did I do anything to deserve this luck? No. It’s just what my situation had available for me. We went with one car for awhile, and we could have stayed a one car family, but it was turning out to be really difficult with our wildly divergent schedule. So, Hubby’s family lent us their second truck, a manual. Did I do anything to deserve this? No, it was luck that’s Hubby’s family is wealthy enough to do that and that they could offer it to us. Now, Hubby’s car is starting to sound funny, so we’re taking it in to the mechanic’s. The second truck is a stick, which I of yet don’t know how to drive, so Hubby’s grandparents are lending me one of their vehicles for the couple day’s it’ll be in the shop. Again, did I do anything to deserve this? Did my hard-work lead good things to me? Did I even pay for it in any way? Absolutely not.

If someone else would have been in another situation, they would be flat out screwed. They’d have to quit this job, and lose the painfully meager salary. I have the privilege of a) having a car to get the job b) having a back-up when that fell through c)having in-laws that were in a position to, and willing to***, help me out when this car needs preventative maintenance. This is a privilege that I have that others do not, and one that I’m going to be taking advantage of. And I wish people who say things like “I’ve worked for what I have” could recognize where they didn’t work.

It is more than likely that Hubby and I will eventually be middle class, and probably upper middle class, at least if our parents and grandparents life-path’s are any indication. And I just hope, when and if that happens, that we can keep the knowledge of our assistance, and apply it to everyone else, not just who we know.

*Ani Difranco “Shroud”
**And already had called a couple junk yards to give us quotes on how much we could get for it, demonstrating that he didn’t think it was worth fixing.
***My in-laws confuse me. When it’s everyone, it’s “people should rely on themselves, and pull themselves up by their bootstraps” conservative tripe. When it’s their friends and family suddenly it’s “Everyone needs a little help in the beginning”. I’m not sure how they live with the disconnect.

A restavec (or restavek; from the French reste avec, “one who stays with”) is a child in Haiti who is sent by their parents to work for a host household as a domestic servant because the parents lack the resources required to support the child. (wikipedia)

I came across this article today, about a 9-year-old restavec named Sende Sencil.

Beaming, and in clean clothes for the first time since the earthquake, Sende, who was thought to be an orphan, returned to the hospital’s tents with the doctors.

As they walked, a man approached them on the street and reached out to grab Sende.

“I’m looking for her. She’s my family,” the doctors remember the man saying in broken English. “I’m taking her home.”

Pediatricians Tina Rezaiyan and Liz Hines, had been looking forward to the day when Sende’s parents might come to claim her, but this was not what they’d anticipated.

“She was trembling and hiding behind us. She was so scared of him,” said Hines, a second-year pediatric resident at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Flashback to 1982: Walking home from school with my best friend, Sheila.* We’d been best friends since the first grade; we walked home from school every day together, hand in hand–though not that day, because one of her arms was in a cast and she needed the other one to carry her books. My eight-year-old self didn’t even notice the cast; it had been there for a few weeks, it was part of the scenery. Only my thirty-six-year-old self stares at it, remembering how Sheila got it.

“So can you spend the night tonight?” Sheila asked me.

I could, and I did, though even my eight-year-old self dreaded it a little. Not a lot, because Sheila was there and she was my best friend and we always had such fun–putting her mom’s 45s on the plastic record player upstairs and setting it on “78″–who needed an actual Alvin & The Chipmunks record when you had a stack of 45s and a record player with a “78″ setting? And eight-year-olds think that what they see and live is the way it is for everybody–they don’t resist the system because they aren’t even aware that there is one. But the night Sheila’s stepdad broke her arm was still fairly fresh in my memory, and I had no cozy feeling that I was entirely safe from him either–he’d hurt me before too, though nowhere near to the degree he hurt Sheila.

But Sheila did need a lot of help–there were all the newspapers to fold and rubber-band, stacks and piles and mountains of them, for her paper route the next morning, and there were her little brothers to take care of, and there were dishes to wash and the bathroom to scrub and all the floors to vacuum–I especially hated the dishes. The water was thick and sludgy; it reeked and clung to my hands, wrists, arms–it made my stomach heave, the look and the smell of it.

Nobody there ever cleaned anything but us, Sheila and me. When we got to her house, I had to step around a mushy, skidded-up pile of pancakes on the floor–I only knew they were pancakes because I’d seen one of her little brothers, in a tantrum, throw them there the weekend before, the last time I had spent the night. We cleaned those up, of course, while we were cooking dinner (spaghetti, with ketchup because we couldn’t find any cans of sauce and neither of us had the faintest idea how to make anything else to put on it).

Sheila’s alarm clock went off at 5 am–it was pitch-black outside and freezing. I helped her strap the newspaper bags on, two of them, then wrestled my own up over my shoulder, balancing my backpack with my schoolbooks and hers both stuffed into it on the other shoulder. We slogged out of the house and set off on Sheila’s route. I never, ever wanted a paper route of my own.

“I can’t wait for summer vacation,” I puffed–Sheila had tireless legs and even though I was the faster runner, I couldn’t compete with her ability to walk, walk and keep on walking at the same steady, unwavering pace. “I can’t wait for summer.”

She was silent, then she said, “I have to go visit my dad.”

“Not all summer?” I was horrified–I couldn’t go all summer without seeing her!

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I have to ask my mom.” Silence again, for a while–I was getting too breathless to speak much anyway, between Sheila’s soldierly pace and the need to hurl a newspaper every fifteen yards or so. But something did occur to me–

“He doesn’t–” I skipped forward a few paces, to catch up with her. “He doesn’t–hurt you like your stepdad does, does he?” There was a curious taboo in ever really articulating these things, even though I’d watched them and she of course knew I had watched them happen–but the taboo was there. Impossible to explain it.

Her face was pale and cold under the streetlamp. “He doesn’t hit me,” she said. She quickened her pace; I fell behind, despite my best efforts. “When I’m twelve,” she said to me, over her shoulder, “I’m going to go live with my grandma.”

“Oh really?” I asked. Her grandma lived in town–I brightened. So she wasn’t going away, at least. “You can do that?”

“When you’re twelve you can pick who you want to live with,” she said. “My grandma already said I can come live with her.”

I couldn’t imagine my mother letting me go live with my grandmother, and I would really miss my little sister anyway–it never occurred to me that Sheila might miss her little brothers, though. It wasn’t even remotely the same situation. Her brothers didn’t love her–they treated her like a not-particularly-valued nursemaid and mostly all they ever did was get her into trouble.

Following the earthquake in Haiti some people have been pushing for adoption of Haitian children by folks in the global north. This includes Penny Young Nance, CEO of the anti-choice, anti-feminist organization Concerned Women for America.

A group called the Adoptees of Color Roundtable has issued a Statement on Haiti written from the perspective of a group of adoptees of color who oppose international adoption of Haitian children.

This statement reflects the position of an international community of adoptees of color who wish to pose a critical intervention in the discourse and actions affecting the child victims of the recent earthquake in Haiti. We are domestic and international adoptees with many years of research and both personal and professional experience in adoption studies and activism. We are a community of scholars, activists, professors, artists, lawyers, social workers and health care workers who speak with the knowledge that North Americans and Europeans are lining up to adopt the “orphaned children” of the Haitian earthquake, and who feel compelled to voice our opinion…

…about what it means to be “saved” or “rescued” through adoption. (via)

Not that Sheila was a restavec, of course. Besides the fact that she wasn’t Haitian, the people working her like a dog and physically and sexually abusing her happened to be her own parents as opposed to second cousins or aunts and uncles. Would anyone have been horrified at her loss of the unique American cultural upbringing and knowledge of her own genetic peoples’ history if she’d been “saved” or “rescued” by adoption into a wealthy, stable Haitian family..? Would she have been?

Even if Sende is doing okay now, some doubt whether anyone in Haiti — a poor country with few services to protect children even before the earthquake — will keep track of her to make sure she hadn’t been sent again to the man who terrified her.

“The agencies will fail in looking after her,” said Dr. Art Fournier, associate dean for community health at the University of Miami, who met Sende at the hospital. “I would have kept her at the hospital until they brought the mother forward and they could get a detailed history of Sende’s circumstances.”

Fournier, who’s been doing medical missions in Haiti for 15 years and is author of “The Zombie Curse,” a book about the country, said he worries the parents will give her away again.

“The parents aren’t bad parents. These are the survival choices they have to make, and desperate times make for desperate survival choices,” he said. “Hopefully Sende can make an impassioned plea not to be sent back to the godparents.”

Because impassioned pleas made by children in these circumstances have any impact at all, whatsoever, on what decisions their parents make about the uses they are being put to..? If that’s the plan, Sende’s pretty much fucked. And I find the attitude about the parents not being “bad” parents interesting. I am a parent, and I would sell myself long before I sold one of my children to someone else into a situation where the best outcome appears to be “house slave but allowed to drink a Coke every day and go to school.” I don’t remember Sheila getting Cokes but I do recall all the Kool-Aid she could drink being one of her perks, along with, indeed, elementary school. We were very good at making Kool-Aid by the 5-gallon jug. I can still remember the big sugar scoop we used to make it–just what every growing kid needs most!

I do understand the concern the self-identified adoptees of color have with the concept of “adoptee farming” and the long history those of Western European descent have of essentially committing cultural genocide by kidnapping all the kids and declaring them “orphans” or “better off faux-white” so they can be “brought up properly.” After all, I’m a quarter Native American myself and not only am I a blue-eyed blonde, I wouldn’t know a word of any Apache language if it bit me in the ass and I have only the haziest notion of the history and culture of any of the Apache tribes. (In short, I’m a great living example of how successful these programs of cultural and racial genocide can be.) However, I wonder how many of these adoptees of color were restavecs themselves.

We uphold that Haitian children have a right to a family and a history that is their own and that Haitians themselves have a right to determine what happens to their own children. We resist the racist, colonialist mentality that positions the Western nuclear family as superior to other conceptions of family, and we seek to challenge those who abuse the phrase “Every child deserves a family” to rethink how this phrase is used to justify the removal of children from Haiti for the fulfillment of their own needs and desires. Western and Northern desire for ownership of Haitian children directly contributes to the destruction of existing family and community structures in Haiti.

Just as long as we keep the relative ordering of the hierarchy of needs firmly in mind, people.

*Not her real name.

But, this is not about the wedding. This is about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

I was sitting next to a very nice lady who had been in the Navy for awhile. We were joking that the military is great job security- “short of doing drugs” she said. I laughed and quipped back “Or, you know, being homosexual”. She smiled and said “Nope, not any more. I was just in a meeting that they informed us, in no uncertain terms, that starting January first the military was not allowed to discriminate based on anything. Not even being gay.”

“Really?” I asked

“Yep.” she said. “They hid it in the military pay raise bill. You can’t get kicked out for being gay anymore.”

“Huh,” I said. “You think there’d be more fan-fare for that”.

“I get the impression that they’re trying to keep somewhat of a lid on it. But, the people who have already been in can stay in.” she said.

I searched on the internet for such a bill. I came across the latest military pay bill- HR 3326, that looks like it’ll be completed shortly Obama has signed into law but couldn’t find anything in the bill about any non-discrimination policies.

The last bill I could find was signed in last July, and as near as I can tell, had no non-discrimination policies in it either.

Any one else in the military tell me anything about this? Political junkies, have you heard of anything?

NEW ORLEANS – A Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have. Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.

“There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage,” Bardwell said. “I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it.”

Yep, children from those marriages, even the ones that don’t last, I mean it’s not like they could e-v-e-r grow up to become President of the United Sta—

“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”

Mostly I think of “piles and piles” as describing my laundry. And did he seriously just brag about letting black people use his bathroom..?

I sure love living in “post-racial” America!

A few hours of sleep later, and a couple tylenol with codeine, and I’m in a state where I can comfortably look at a computer screen while sitting (though not much else). My friend jumps up to send me this conversation(typos kept in because, fuck it, that’s why):

J says:
question – is meghan mccain stupid or just naive?
Antigone: says: *at this point, I have no idea what he’s talking about*
My vote’s on naive
I mean, she’s young, and she was raised by the McCain’s
I think she’ll grow out of it
J says:
she posted a picture on twitter essentially of her tits and an andy warhol book and didn’t expect people to focus on her push-up bra?
Antigone says:
I’m going with naive
I just saw the news headline
I feel bad for the girl, sorta. Got to be rough to head to head with that stupid sort of sexism
J says:
she seems like the type to wear the low-cut dress with the wonderbrea and then gets upset when people keep looking at them
Antigone says:
J, that’s a legitimate thing to get upset about
it’s not “looking”
It’s “staring”
“Ogling”
I don’t like it when people do that shit to me- and it’s nearly impossible to HIDE these things anyway
I wouldn’t want every stupid decision I’ve made from my teen years up to be recorded for posterity in major news publications
J says:
she is in the public light, she has made strides to stay IN, and she knows what not to do if she’s doing both
Antigone says:
Not to mention, I think the picture’s pretty innocuous
People are getting up in arms over the fact she has boobs, for christ’s sake
Was it unexpected? Well, it wouldn’t have been to me
but, that doesn’t make the reaction appropriate
I mean, seriously
J says:
she’s a smart woman, should have known better
rules apply to me if i was posting something and my dick was out
Antigone says:
Her tits weren’t out
Just her clevage
We flash clevage EVERYWHERE
J says:
lol
Antigone says:
Although, I suppose the appropriate analogy would be “her pussy wasn’t out”
Tits =/= dick
Plus, she’s not exactly a child
J says:
she’s a smart woman, should have known better
Antigone says:
I mean, she’s in her 20′s
J says:
semantics aside, she’s made fun of people doing similar things
Antigone says:
well, she’s conservative
I think hypocrisy is sort of their bread and butter
Besides, Ann Coulter does it all the time
I think that’s half of her appeal, actually
“Look! I kinda have tits!”
J says:
lol
Antigone says:
I just don’t see the big damn deal
She’s a girl in her 20s, she did a twitter, she has tits
J says:
i don’t really see a big deal, I do have to pose the question of dumb or naive
Antigone says:
I guess she wasn’t remembering that we live in a society where people can freak out when they’re reminded that women have tits
So, I’m going to have to keep my answer at “naive”
J says:
that sounds about right

For those of you unaware, Meghan McCain posted a photo on her Twitter account, and it shows that she has cleavage. Now, like I mentioned in the text conversation, I don’t understand why anyone would care. But, this does show an interesting trend- my friend J is not what anybody (himself included) would call a feminist. He’s still stuck on the “stupid or naive” duality, and, I guess I bought into too for the purposes of this conversation.

Yet, no one ever talks about the people who were harassing her, and whether or not they’re “assholes, or bullies”. Ms. McCain has breasts, she wears fashionable clothes that show her breasts, she is “supposed to” show her breasts, and now she’s getting punished for having breasts. This is part of the whole continuum of “can’t win” for women. She says “she’s learned from this experience” and the article talks about “Why you should be careful what you put on the internet”. And, that’s true- if you post pictures on the internet, the reaction is probably people harassing you about them. BUT, and this is the big one, that is NOT an appropriate reaction from the people harassing you.

I’ve long felt that is completely ridiculous that we decide who’s “serious” or “worthy” or anything based on their dress. Ms. McCain spouts bullshit, why can’t we decide whether or not she’s serious from what she actually says as opposed to a t-shirt that really isn’t that big of deal? If I say something completely nude, why should that change the meaning of my words? If I’m in a three-piece suit vs. fishnet stockings and a tube top or just a smile what I say is still the same words and still the same meaning, and I still deserve the same respect as a person. No one deserves harassment, even if what they wear (or say) is frivolous.

Ms. McCain does not have political opinions that I generally support. That still does not mean that she shouldn’t be defended against this sort of behavior. It’s not pity I feel for her- it’s anger at her perpetrators. I hope she takes from this experience that feminism still is important, rather than she doesn’t have a right to post pictures on the internet.

And, people, next time you decide to comment on people’s looks, think about what a person wears really says about them.

I haven’t marched on the Mall since 2004–you know I’m gonna be there! Let’s have a show of support, folks!

Regina Benjamin’s Country Credentials: What Rural Medicine Taught America’s Next Top Doc

Since starting her practice in 1990, Benjamin, 52, has become an advocate for patients everywhere. She became the first African-American woman to lead a state medical society and has won numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” and a Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights. Still, she never strayed far from her roots, and currently serves as the CEO of Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic, which she founded. This week, President Obama tapped Benjamin to serve as surgeon general.

Well, that’s cool, I thought to myself. We are living in historic times…the first serious female Presidential contender…the first black man elected President…the first Latina soon to be confirmed to the Supreme Court…not that Regina Benjamin would be the first black woman to be chosen as Surgeon General, but she would be only the second one…

So I’m feeling a mild warmth towards humanity in general as I scan down the story…til I get to the very, very end:

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Member Comments
Posted By: pdskep (July 16, 2009 at 12:51 PM)

Well, it didn’t help her put down the Hagen Dazs. Should the government spokesperson for public health and healthy living be so grossly overweight?

Huh?

So I scrolled rapidly back up–I had noticed a picture of the Surgeon-General-to-be at the top of the article but had given it only a cursory glance, and honestly couldn’t remember having noticed that she weighed 1000 pounds–

OMG!! IT’S JABBA THE FUCKING HUTT!

…er, not. Well, I thought, maybe that’s a flattering picture of her and she’s somehow managing to hide the other 750 pounds below her neck. Let’s look for a whole-body shot–

…er, still not.

Aside from the fact that she’s not “grossly overweight” (hello?), why does her weight really matter, exactly..? Her weight specifically. Is the concern that the kids of America will look at her and go oooh look, the Surgeon General’s fat, that means it’s okay for me to be fat too! Yeah, because that’s what kids tend to base their eating decisions on…the Surgeon General’s weight. (Like the vast majority of kids, and adults if it comes down to that, even know who the Surgeon General is at any given moment.)

Is the concern that, because she is physically clearly not perfect, then her brain and her conscience and her dedication (which are presumably the things she was actually chosen for) are also not going to be perfect? (That raises the interesting corollary that someone whose weight is perfect, is more likely to have a perfect brain, conscience and dedication as well…oh really…?)

Because people with the magic BMI number are SO much more likely to be both smart AND saintly!

I am not the only one who has noticed this trend and commented on it–no indeed:

Since President Obama announced his pick for the nation’s Top Doc, Internet message boards have been atwitter with the observation that Dr. Regina Benjamin is fat.

Critics seem to believe it’s ironic that the nation’s top doctor would be overweight, and it’s led the most nattering of nags to conclude that she should not be picked for prom queen, er, I mean, surgeon general.

Thank God, too. C’mon, people, let’s make some noise–this is fatophobia at its most disgusting, and most ignorant as well. Spread the word.

She has more qualifications than any of the other justices currently serving on the Supreme Court did at the time of their nominations, which really is the only acceptable standard for nominating a female minority–I think we all know this.

So far I’ve heard both that she once saved baseball and also that she has a personal vendetta against white firefighters. (Now that’s one of the most specific prejudices I’ve ever encountered anyone being accused of.)

Naturally Michelle Malkin is weighing in on this–nobody could ever accuse Michelle of being able to even remotely stand her own status as a woman of color, which since Sonia Sotomayor seems to think that both having and considering having experiences other than that of white men is okay in a judge, means that these two ladies will probably never even get close to the recipe-exchanging stage of friendship. What a shame!

*Puerto Rican, but whatever, six of one, half-dozen of the other, right? (Thank God my Colombian and Salvadorean friends don’t read this blog! or if they do, I bet I’m about to find that out.)

Group 2 thought this was on topic for the “social aspect of racism today” in our last assignment… This was attributed to Michael Richards after he made racial comments during his comedy act.

“Proud to be White”: Michael Richards better known as Kramer from TV’s Seinfeld makes a good point…………..
“Someone finally said it. How many are actually paying attention to
this? There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans,Arab Americans, etc.

And then there are just Americans. You pass me on the street and sneer
in my direction. You call me ‘White boy,’ ‘Cracker,’ ‘Honkey,’
‘Whitey,’ ‘Caveman’… and that’s OK.

But when I call you, Nigger, Kike, Towel head, Sand-nigger, Camel
Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink .. You call me a racist.

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

You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day.

You have Black History Month. You have Cesar Chavez Day.

You have Yom Hashoah. You have Ma’uled Al-Nabi.

You have the NAACP. You have BET… If we had WET (White Entertainment Television), we’d be racists. If we had a White Pride Day, you would call us racists.

0A
If we had White History Month, we’d be racists.

If we had any organization for only whites to ‘advance’ OUR lives, we’d
be racists.

We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, and then we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce. Wonder who pays for that??

A white woman could not be in the Miss Black American pageant, but any color can be in the Miss America pageant.

If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships…
You know we’d be racists.

There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US . Yet if
there were ‘White colleges’, that would be a racist college.

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 racists.

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.

You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us. But, when a white police
officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug dealer
running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a
racist.

I am proud… But you call me a racist.

Why is it that only whites can be racists??”

MODIFIED
The response I posted is below the fold:

First and foremost, this may have been attributed to Michael Richards, but it has been around for quite some time. I shall do my best to answer each point. (I hope people don’t mind, I adjusted the formatting from email-forwards)

“Proud to be White”:
Michael Richards better known as Kramer from TV’s Seinfeld makes a good point.
Someone finally said it. How many are actually paying attention to this?

There are African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Arab Americans, etc.
And then there are just Americans.

All of those people are Americans. They just have another descriptor, because we consider the “default” to be “White-Americans” or “European-Americans”. This is a sign of racism against minorities, not against whites.

You pass me on the street and sneer in my direction. You call me ‘White boy,’ ‘Cracker,’ ‘Honkey,’ ‘Whitey,’ ‘Caveman’… and that’s OK.

No, it isn’t. I don’t know what straw-man your burning that thinks that these slurs are acceptable, but that smell is terrible.

But when I call you, Nigger, Kike, Towel head, Sand-nigger, Camel
Jockey, Beaner, Gook, or Chink .. You call me a racist.

Because those insults are racist. You are maligning people based on a race; that is the definition of “racism”

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

Does one wipe away the other? I would imagine that the “you” in this line is referring to people in “ghettos”, which I’m assuming mean low-income areas. But crime (violent) crime rates are consistent along income lines, not so much among racial lines. If we have a lot of poverty among minority communities, a better question we might ask is “why”?

You have the United Negro College Fund. You have Martin Luther King Day.
You have Black History Month. You have Cesar Chavez Day.
You have Yom Hashoah. You have Ma’uled Al-Nabi.
You have the NAACP. You have BET… If we had WET (White Entertainment Television), we’d be racists.
If we had a White Pride Day, you would call us racists.
If we had White History Month, we’d be racists.
If we had any organization for only whites to ‘advance’ OUR lives, we’d
be racists.

Not to steal a common line or anything, but EVERY day is “White pride day”. The only reason that we have separate days is because we have not integrated ALL groups of Americans into our history. Quick test: name a black activist who wasn’t Martin Luther King Jr. Try naming a women’s rights activist that isn’t Susan B. Anthony. Try naming a Hispanic activist at all. Now name some of the Founding Fathers. That’s why we have separate racial groups; because institutionally everything else is set up to help white men. You can’t possibly claim with a straight face that men are underrepresented in business, politics, or academia.
And to complain about Yom Hashoah is sickening; you object that strongly to having a day of remembrance for the HOLOCOUST?!?
And of course different religions have different holidays: the question you should ask yourself is why Christmas is a federal holiday when people who aren’t Christian, or even religious, don’t celebrate it?

We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, a Black Chamber of Commerce, and then we just have the plain Chamber of Commerce. Wonder who pays for that??

The different Chamber of Commerce groups. And, again, the only reason you have these different chamber of commerce is because different groups were historically not allowed into the “plain” Chamber of Commerce. There are still plenty of Chamber of Commences that discriminate, but made sure it’s no longer explicit.

A white woman could not be in the Miss Black American pageant, but any color can be in the Miss America pageant.

The Miss America pageant was explicitly racist until 1970, where the first black woman entered (under protest from many). Now, Miss America still remains very white-oriented, as the idea of “beauty” is still a very thin, straight-haired, delicate feature ideal. Thus the Black Miss America. (Oh, and the first black American crowned Miss America was in 1984: lovely for a pageant that started in 1921. Since 1970, there have been 6 black Miss America’s, two Pacific Islanders, and one Native American)

If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships…

There are, explicitly. Of course, then you have the “merit” scholarships that default to rich people whose families have enough money to provide a secure educational environment.

You know we’d be racists.

Considering that they’re from the KKK, there’s a pretty good chance, yeah.

There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US . Yet if
there were ‘White colleges’, that would be a racist college.

Again, I default to the fact that MOST of the colleges in the United States started out as “white’s only” colleges. You’ll also find that of those 60 colleges, none of them have been opened since blacks have been allowed into “white” colleges. Also, most of those “black” colleges let white people in.

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 racists.

What “rights” are you missing? The right to call people racial epithets? And there are groups that march for the “white race”.

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.

Brown, yellow and orange? Who’s marching for those? And I see plenty of “Norwegian Pride” and “Irish Pride” and “Scottish Pride” and “German Pride” so I don’t think white people are exactly being neglected.

You rob us, carjack us, and shoot at us.

“You”? Who is this “you”? I’ve been robbed by a white guy. Does that mean I get to say all white people are robbing me?

But, when a white police officer shoots a black gang member or beats up a black drug dealer
running from the law and posing a threat to society, you call him a racist.

Only when he assumes the black guy is a gang member or drug dealer just because he’s running. If I saw videos of cops shooting a black guy because he “mixed up his tazer and gun” or beating the life out of guy while calling him “nigger” I’d be fairly concerned about getting fair dealing from them as well.

I am proud… But you call me a racist.

It’s not your pride that people are calling you racist for.

Why is it that only whites can be racists??

That straw you’re burning smells pretty bad. I think the people who wrote this need to check their privilege.

Anti-choice measures all across the country failed tonight (including the 3-peat “Parental notification” measure that failed in California). Children won’t have to worry about being thrown out of a house or beaten because of an unwanted pregnancy.

Dole, the atheist-baiting bigot, was defeated in Nouth Carolina.

But, like getting an A on all of your classes but failing one, my disappointment today is about Proposition 8 in California. I was hoping against hope that people wouldn’t want to take away people’s right to marry. I was hoping against hope that even though they wouldn’t give the rights to people, that they would recognize those self-same civil rights when the courts were forced to step in.

But they didn’t…

And now, after a major stepping stone forward for the civil rights of one group, all I can think of is the civil rights lost to the ones who tripped and fell. They lost their right to legal recognition of their love, and all of the privileges therein. All of the rights of marriage: the health care from the partners insurance, the community property, the tax break, the visitation rights; all of the things that took me and my Hubby 15 minutes and 65 bucks; are being taken away from people who are my friends and loved ones.

All so people don’t have to tell their children that gay people exist. All so people get to keep the magical word “marriage” to their happy little heterosexual selves. All so “traditionalists” who don’t what the hell the word “tradition” means can stay stuck in their backwards, bigoted world, afraid of how fast the world is changing, and too lazy to want to keep up with it. And this is bigotry; plain and simple. This is not wanting homosexual people to have the same rights as heterosexual people, because some pastor said that a 2000-year-old book written by a bunch of bronze-age, nomadic goat herders about a megalomaniac, sadistic sky fairy that had been translated and re-translated a bunch of time through the centuries had a few, taken-out-of-context phrases that meant to literally say that “gays are icky”.

I’m disappointed, and I’m furious. I’m angry because I’m now going to be told that the gay rights movement just needs to ask nicer next time, and if they wouldn’t be so in-your-face about it, and just wait nicely, then they would have won. I’m angry because people are proud in their bigotry: they are CELEBRATING it under some sort of fuzzy definition of “values”. And I’m angry because anger is a much more productive emotion than sorrow.

*Technically, I would have preferred McKinney. But, Obama’s the one I voted for.
*That and 9-11.