Thursday, October 30, 2008

PSSSST...He's Black

I am a white guy. I'm not bragging or complaining, I'm just saying I'm white. One thing that I have noticed consistently over the years is that white people try to conceal when they use the descriptive term "black" when talking about black people. It goes like this. A white person tells a story and gets to the part to describe a black person. At this time White Person forms an L with his hand and places it along side his mouth, thumb along bottom of chin and forefinger pointing up along cheek. It is now safe for White Person to say "black" in a very soft voice. White Person's bigoted actions do not go unnoticed. Black Person notices the gesture of White Person's secret pose and feels the heavy eyes glancing in his direction. Of course White Person says, "Don't Look", which makes the recipient look more. This is going to surprise some of you, Black People Know they are Black! It's not a secret. I imagine that it is not offensive to black people to be referred to as black but is very offensive to hear people say "black" as though it's a bad word.

Democrats and Republicans have come across the aisle in mass bipartisanship agreement in regards to George W. Bush being one of the worst, if not thee worst, president of all times. They agree that W. has the Midas Touch in reverse. Everything the guy does turns to portapotty shit. It can't be flushed. It piles up. It smells really really bad. John McCain brags about having agreed with Portapotty Bush more than most of his Republican colleagues.




On the other hand, Obama is thoughtful, rational, and reasonable in his thought, ideas, and clear opposition of what Portapotty Bush has done to our country. So why isn't Obama further ahead in the polls?



In the primaries when the Clintons bashed Obama for his relationship with his reverend, Obama addressed the ongoing race tensions and unequalities in our country brilliantly. He delivered the most powerful civil rights speech of my lifetime (Sadly, Dr. King was assassinated before I was born.) Obama has already made major strides in getting people talking about major issues that plague our nation, such as negative race relations. Obama is opening people's minds to accept great ideas that will move our country forward positively across the board. I don't expect neo-nazis to embrace him, but all of them would benefit from his leadership. These extremists rather be raped by greedy white control than prosper under sound, fair, black leadership.

8 comments:

puddy said...

alz - nice post. i particularly like the 2nd vid - the one with the distinguished young gentleman pointing out that Barry is a black man.

Frank Rich's weekend NYT article was heavily laden with our current race dialogue and is a pretty good read.

...and I agree about Barack Hussein's race speech. In my opinion, it was his finest moment to date - outshining his 2004 speech by a mile (although that was a pretty good one too).

Kup said...

I know that dude...


Great post amigo.

Mauigirl said...

Great post - good point about white people who whisper "black." I don't think they mean to be racist, it's probably more a discomfort that they're trying not to mention it, because mentioning it means they've noticed it, and if they've noticed it, they feel it means they're not race-blind (kinda like the way Colbert says he doesn't 'see' race in his satirical take on the issue). But what they don't realize is that if they shy away from mentioning it, they're not taking it for granted and therefore see the black person as "the other." So it's kind of a vicious cycle. Goes back to the old Phil Ochs song, "Love me, love me, I'm a Liberal," where he satirized white liberals who claim not to be prejudiced but really are.

Randal Graves said...

Oh yeah? Well I work with a black guy! Who's black!

alzaido alzaido said...

Thanks Pud, Sal, And Mauigirl.

Maui, I agree in all regards. I'm happy that Obama is so so good. I hope he delivers. Race relations have come a long way, but there is still a lot of enlightening to be done. There should not be anything wrong with using identifying characteristics to describe a person. Color is one of the most basic ways to describe anything.

Wow Randal! I don't work with any black people. I don't work. None of my colleagues are black.

boukman70 said...

As a black man, I have to confess that what I find even more annoying is how some white people won't mention race at all--even when describing someone. I've been caught more than once looking for, for example, a short brunette, spending frustrated minutes in a sea of white folks, not being able to find her, only to find out that she was Asian. It would've saved me a lot of time if you just would've said it. I personally look upon race as value-neutral, but it makes you wonder if white people do. Or is it that I'm supposed to laud them because they don't "see race," as mauigirl pointed out? I find that phenomenon particularly annoying and patronizing. After all, if one actually, physically cannot see race, it's only because they are from a privileged position where their race is not foisted upon them as an artificial definition of who they are supposed to be.

As to the video, have you heard about these supposedly "progressive" white supremist cliques who are voting for Obama in the hopes that his election will start a race war? What weird-ass times we are living in!

Dick Tremayne said...

Nazi social club. Hysterical. Denying a love for Hitler, but having a Nazi soldier tattoo. Ugh... Where do they grow these people?

alzaido alzaido said...

Boukman, I know what you mean. I had a job at a Chinese restaurant once. Customers would often ask me to get their servers. I would ask if their server was the short one with black hair. Of course they always said yes, not getting the sarcasm. Because if they got it, they would be bigoted. Right?

Another interesting thing is people only seem to take issue with pigmented skin and not other pigmented external features such as eyes and hair.

I had not heard of the race war theory. That's crazy. As Dick Tremayne said, "Nazi social club. Hysterical." Scary too.