Before anyone starts calling me a racist, I’d like to say right here and now that I DO NOT WATCH NASCAR! Whenever I see someone driving in a circle at high speed over and over again, I call the cops, who usually arrest them for being drunk. (An interesting trivia footnote: The earliest race car drivers were, in fact, moonshiners who hopped-up their autos to evade and outrun the feds who chased them during their midnight booze deliveries.) When I get behind someone at a stop light with a big #3 or #7 plastered on the back window of his pickup truck, I usually think that it’s a score card for how many ex-wives he has or how many times over the legal safe drinking limit he plans on getting Friday night.
If it seems I’m being flippant about the term “racist,” then give yourself a cookie – I AM. As I grow older I find more and more people, some with actual brains in their heads, dropping the “racist” label on anything, everything and everyone who makes them uncomfortable or socially challenged or who questions their homogenized feel-good worldview. I used to just keep on walking, but now I relish the opportunity to spend some quality time to rattle the hell out of their lack of world history, education and pre-approved political correctness.
I’m not, nor will I ever be, politically correct. No surprise there. I’m too honest and fearless to allow others to fill my head with processed knee-jerk filler. I find the conversation attached to the “square peg in the square opening” social requirement for most groups mentally retarded and intellectually dishonest. I’ll never sell my soul and personal opinion so I can watch a room full of self-important drunks nod in agreement as I recite the gang’s approved creed. They stink of fear and weakness. I abominate their blather and would rather swallow a bellyful of my own vomit than waste a drop of it on one of their shiny-mirrored shoe tips. I hold this standard to groups of all color, ethnic origin, political viewpoint, gender, sexual orientation, and religious belief system. Safety tip: If you don’t want my opinion, then don’t ask for it.
I’m a deconstructionist by nature.
With all that said, I’ve compiled a checklist about Black History Month that deserves thinking about. Don’t feel bad about not being included this time around if you are not black. I’ll get to you later.
1) I never owned anyone, so excuse me for not having any white man’s guilt. Blacks are just people to me.
2) I’ve showered with black men at the gym and have noticed that many of them have the same national-average penis size as I do. I’ve been winked at by black homos, too. In church even. Word.
3) Slavery originated in Africa, not in Europe. One example: There was plenty of slave trade in ancient Egypt before Great Britain ever wrapped a single fish-n-chips in newsprint. It was called indentured servitude. Ask any Jew. Egypt is located in the uppermost part of Africa. Transatlantic slavery was not an original thought. Nor were the shitty cruise accommodations. I could belabor this point for days. Slave labor was not a universally white idea. Europeans just knew how to turn a profit in the new North American plantation arena.
4) Africans were sold and/or traded their own people to slave dealers as chattel. Many of those traded were captured from other tribes and were simply viewed as gross national product rather than human beings. Why not trade them for something they could use rather than kill them outright and procreate with their inferior women? That was the attitude. The price was right.
Slavery still exists, even in our capitalistic society, in the form of an economic caste system. We are always going to be divided by haves and have nots. Even Jesus acknowledged that. But He instructed slave owners (employers) to treat their workers as equals deserving of compassion and respect. He also taught that slaves (employees) should work with the ethic of a true journeyman and as if unto God Himself rather than to any earthly master. That sure sounds like something out of an MLK speech. Someday, maybe, we will meet on that hill and see each other eye-to-eye…as one. The dream indeed.
5) There is no such thing as an African-American. AFRICA IS NOT A COUNTRY. AFRICA IS A CONTINENT. Get a map. Tanzania is a country in Africa.
There is no such a thing as an Asian-American or an Australian-American, European-American or Antarctican-American. These, too, refer to continents. This hyphenated-American status is just a new way to not say the old-world people-colors like black, red, yellow, and white, which replaced other tags like chink, nip, mick, gook, kike, booga, limey, wop, frog, wetback, kraut, gash, towel head and other less friendly terms applied to foreigners. The only way someone can be truly Canadian-American is with legal dual citizenship papers. Check your wallet. You don’t have ‘em! If you were born in America, then you are an “American American.” My background can be traced to the Irish and Slovak; but when I step off the plane in France, I’m only viewed as an American citizen. It doesn’t matter how your family got here. If you were born here, then you’re from here.
6) How come the most horrible streets in America are named after Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? The popular argument is so that children growing up there will always be reminded of what he stood for in their cultural history. Um…why not rename a decent street in a more upscale sector of town where they can get a solid visual of something more hopeful that they can imagine and work their way toward as an exit from poverty? His memory deserves far better.
7) How offending would it be to start a White College Fund in America that excluded blacks? How about an award for strictly white musicians and actors? How about a whites-only TV station? This past Christmas I sat with a batch of very nice older black ministers and discussed how cool it was that they were going to attend this year’s party with the Black Knights, a social club for police officers of color. I jokingly told them that I was going to party with the White Knights uptown for the same reason and invited them to come along. They froze. Historically, the term “White Knights” was applied to those in membership with KKK. I made my point. Until that moment they never even considered the segregation angle of their affiliation. We all laughed out loud about it. Something to think about.
8) PLEASE hold a meeting soon and tell all of us how you’d like to be referred to. Right now the NAACP has me wondering if you need to consider a new brand name or if I should start calling you “colored people.”
9) Buy a belt, dumb ass. Nobody wants to watch a grown man look like he just ran away from a Deep-South chain gang. You look like you are wearing a giant poopy diaper and you had to pick out your school clothes by yourself. Even kids on the short bus know how to pull up their pants. “Pants on the ground. Pants on the ground. Lookin’ like a fool with your pants on the ground.” That came from YOUR elder, dude. If you’re going to dress like a clown, then don’t get upset when you get laughed at for looking like one. Have some self-respect. You are your own worst stereotype!
10) In closing, I’d like to mention that I have absolutely no problem with people enjoying their ethnic roots and sharing them with the world. We should celebrate our differences as well as our similarities, especially as Americans. We are STILL a young country and an experimental melting pot in the eyes of a splintered world. We are full of bad ideas, hurts, class wars, and agenda-driven superiority plays. We are also a beacon of hope to the planet and an example of how we can overcome all of it to co-exist as “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Segregation benefits no one. Enjoy Black History Month, people. Let some healing take place.
Now gimme summa a dat swee’ p’tatta pie, yo!
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