This is a public service announcement. This is not to say that creepers shouldn't be called out on their creepy bullshit. There will be some backlash. It will most likely be creepy.
You're welcome.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Monday, April 5, 2010
'Barack Obama Is A Racist!'
Those words flew out of my mouth this weekend at a small gathering of neighbors, words filled with fake delight and laced with all the sarcasm I could muster. Of course, my host did not know me well enough and thought I was agreeing with him. Then I laughed and laughed because of my cleverness. You see, I know these gentlemen are not Obama supporters, and in fact are far from it. The first time I was in their house, I recoiled from a greeting card they had displayed with Barack Obama on the front with one of his teeth blackened out. Later in the night, we talked a little bit of politics, and I'm fairly certain my brain almost exploded when one of them declared, 'I think Sarah Palin is really smart'.
I'm an avid reader of news, but on Saturday, I had seen little of it. I woke up feeling not so nice from karoake the night before, but went out for a fantastic brunch with a friend, did some shopping and cleaning, then somehow ended up in my backyard with my neighbors, drinking, eating, and all of the good stuff that makes me so happy to have found such a wonderful place to live in the middle of a city that has a mildly bad reputation. As with what often happens at my neighborhood parties, we all ended up taking tours of each others apartments. These men fell in love with my cats, and I fell in love with their chartreuse couch. At some point, my Sarah Palin admiring neighbor recounted a news story about which how Barack Obama filled out the census. "He only checked African American... not anything else."
"Oh, well then, Barack Obama is a racist!" I said, with a laugh. "Yes!" neighbor replied. My face must have done something to betray what I was actually feeling (as it often does), because then we weren't allowed to talk about politics anymore. Not that I could have, because of my laughing at figuring out the conservative response to Obama's census before it was even said out loud or before I read about it on the internet. The next day, I felt vindicated when I went on the internet to check it out myself. I can't even bring myself to link to the articles I found because of the ridiculous and vile comments that have been left on them since then.
I feel the need to write this response now that I've had some time to think about it, and I wish I could have articulated it better at the time.
Barack Obama is not racist. He doesn't hate white people, as much as some may claim he does. When he checked off 'African American' on the census, he did so because that's how our society views him. If he weren't famous, if we didn't know anything about his parents, his upbringing and merely saw him on the street, we'd guess that he was a black man. That is how we'd define him. If we saw Obama at the grocery store, we wouldn't assume that his mother was white, or that he was raised almost exclusively by his white grandparents. We are not good at distinguishing the intricacies of someones background. So I don't fault Obama for choosing 'just' African American on his census form. I fault the rest of us, living in our American melting pot, our great country where any dream is supposedly possible, where we judge someone on their appearance, then attempt to dismiss or degrade them when they choose to fit into the the very image we ourselves project onto them. I judge us. Hard.
I'm an avid reader of news, but on Saturday, I had seen little of it. I woke up feeling not so nice from karoake the night before, but went out for a fantastic brunch with a friend, did some shopping and cleaning, then somehow ended up in my backyard with my neighbors, drinking, eating, and all of the good stuff that makes me so happy to have found such a wonderful place to live in the middle of a city that has a mildly bad reputation. As with what often happens at my neighborhood parties, we all ended up taking tours of each others apartments. These men fell in love with my cats, and I fell in love with their chartreuse couch. At some point, my Sarah Palin admiring neighbor recounted a news story about which how Barack Obama filled out the census. "He only checked African American... not anything else."
"Oh, well then, Barack Obama is a racist!" I said, with a laugh. "Yes!" neighbor replied. My face must have done something to betray what I was actually feeling (as it often does), because then we weren't allowed to talk about politics anymore. Not that I could have, because of my laughing at figuring out the conservative response to Obama's census before it was even said out loud or before I read about it on the internet. The next day, I felt vindicated when I went on the internet to check it out myself. I can't even bring myself to link to the articles I found because of the ridiculous and vile comments that have been left on them since then.
I feel the need to write this response now that I've had some time to think about it, and I wish I could have articulated it better at the time.
Barack Obama is not racist. He doesn't hate white people, as much as some may claim he does. When he checked off 'African American' on the census, he did so because that's how our society views him. If he weren't famous, if we didn't know anything about his parents, his upbringing and merely saw him on the street, we'd guess that he was a black man. That is how we'd define him. If we saw Obama at the grocery store, we wouldn't assume that his mother was white, or that he was raised almost exclusively by his white grandparents. We are not good at distinguishing the intricacies of someones background. So I don't fault Obama for choosing 'just' African American on his census form. I fault the rest of us, living in our American melting pot, our great country where any dream is supposedly possible, where we judge someone on their appearance, then attempt to dismiss or degrade them when they choose to fit into the the very image we ourselves project onto them. I judge us. Hard.
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