You know, I'm ashamed

[netmouse]

That anyone in this country can fail to appreciate how much of what Rush Limbaugh says is utter bullshit.

Yeah, sure, Rush, we should go back to segregating buses. The one with you on it will be segregated right out of town.

Man, he doesn't usually manage to get under my skin, mainly because I don't ever listen to him most of the time, but "ignore the crazies" is just not working in this country, and it's kind of scary sometimes.

Comments

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

While waiting in the optometrist's office, I read an article in the Philadelphia Trumpet about racial tensions. It says to avoid them is to ignore them and Obama is to blame because he publicly asks for better. It also says God sent the flood of Noah because of inter-racial marriage. I was so mad I couldn't see straight. Oh wait... that was the dilating eye drops. But still I was mad.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

::love:: for this comment.

and, um, rather the opposite for the people who wrote that article.

[blue-duck.livejournal.com]

Whaaaaaah? Wow. Just... wow.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and the article says Noah was spared because he was "perfect in his generations", which they think means racially pure.

The office also had the "War Against Family" issue, with a cover story on a woman's duty to make the man the primary provider, and the evils of homosexuality lead by none other than Satan himself. If one believes the cover illustration, adultery, divorce, abortion, premarital sex, porn consumption, working mothers, and deadbeat fathers, are inflicted on a family by someone other than the family members.

This magazine claims to have a circulation of more than a million worldwide.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

WTF? That's bloody insane. Not the eye-drops, the racist assertion.

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

Well you know what they say. With faith all things are possible. "A cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree." But the racist assertion, that's bloody insane.

[metalfatigue]

http://jim000037.livejournal.com/310658.html

[phawkwood.livejournal.com]

I came to this article through Felix Salmon's twitter. I'm not really sure how I feel about it (it's not really related to the above other than it's about race relations). I think he makes some good points but at the same time the whole thing sometimes comes across to me as a "Hey look how many black friends I have" kind of thing.

I'm curious as to your opinion of it.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Did you read the whole thing? In the beginning it's hard to figure out if it's satire or not, and I think maybe he himself didn't know when he started writing it. I was glad to see he'd found RentaNegro.com and so had that perspective reflected back at him about what he might have been doing. But he obviously learned a few things, and going along the journey with him I think is interesting and not awful.

I think it is in fact a cogent point that if you *do* count how many black friends you have and the number is 1 or 2 (or less than that) that it makes sense to look around and ask why. And perhaps to go out of your way to see if you can change that.

I think precisely that willingness to do something kind of artificial is what's going to be needed to improve race relations in this country, but you need to eventually be sincere and not surface about it in order for it to work - like he did, you need to not just invite black friends to your parties, where they might seem like the token minority you're showing off, but also go to their parties and push through the experience of being the minority on the scene yourself. Examine yourself, and be open to hearing their stories and actually be interested in hearing and seeing their perspective and culture.

I like how he wrapped it up, and I also hope he might stay in touch with some of his new black friends and keep going with it. A follow-up article in a year or so would be the really interesting bit. In the meantime, this has a trueness to me:

Sure, it’s scary at first. White people aren’t used to being outnumbered, so if you’re white that’ll take some getting used to. White folks might wonder: Will they be angry at me? (No.) Is it okay if I ask to touch their hair. (No.) What should I do when it comes time to shake hands? (This is a serious fucking question and is harder than winning a game of rock-paper-scissors.) Will I always feel comfortable and able to say whatever comes to mind? (Nope.) But relax. One of the most hopeful results of this experiment: No one punched me in the face, whatever faux pas I committed. In fact, to the person, everyone I asked to participate in Operation Black Friend agreed. There is a tremendous amount of goodwill out there. All you need to do is turn off the Radiohead and walk out the door.

Especially the bit about the hair. I hear that a lot. :)

[phawkwood.livejournal.com]

Yes, I read through it all. And as it progressed it seemed less... what ever it was seeming at the beginning.

This is honestly not an issue I've spent a lot of time on. I grew up in inner city (tho middle class) Detroit, and being "out numbered" is really nothing new to me. I always had a mix not only of black friends and class mates but other ethic backgrounds as well. It was just a part of my life, so much so that I got to the point where while I knew that there was this problem of "racism" out there, I always thought of it in stereotypical terms since it wasn't a part of my experience, at least not in a way that I noticed. (I'm sure I missed a lot of things, some of the Chaldean / Black tensions I was aware of but seldom saw)

I had to move to "middle America" to see just how things are. Out here, right on the edge of the metro, I was amazed at what I found. It wasn't the cross burning, robe wearing kind of racism that I always used to think of, it's just guys who don't like people of other colors. Not for any reason other than they are a different ethnicity. Even after living here for almost 10 years I haven't gotten over some of the attitudes I've found.

Both of these experiences really mess with my sensitivity to these kinds of things. At least that's my excuse.

And I have to admit, as I loose touch with old friends from back home, I'm slowly falling into the category the author was in.