Hurricane force Winds of Change
The racial element of the recovery effort for hurricane Katrina is now coming loudly and strongly to the forefront. Trust me, it won't die down, debate will swirl like the eye of said storm and accusations will fly like so much wind whipped debris for months to come. I don't consider myself a racist, but I am. I'll take the high moral road and tell you how I've overcome my childhood racist roots and deny, deny to your face that I am anything but all about equality regardless of skin color, creed, or political bent. But I'm not being honest with you or myself. The other day, pre Katrina, I was thinking while reflecting upon this wonderful circle that I've blogulated myself into.....hey Edge, ya know, there aint no diversity here. I mean, there could be, after all what better place to be accepted for how you present yourself and what you say than here in the land of anonymity? But we're almost exclusively caucasion aren't we. I mean, we certainly don't have a gender issue here, there are far more female bloggers in my blog township than males and I don't attribute that to my blomaho status.....I think it is universally a truism in blogworld. I'm sure there are reasons for that, one of which is the whole in touch with your feelings thing at which the female of the species is far superior to the typical stumbly mandom attempts at introspection. In part it may be due to women being more likely to have jobs that avail themselves of computer access. I don't know and that's not the point or of much import toward where I'm headed here.
Let's say my circle and your circle and his circle and her circle spread to and reach 200 hundred bloggers. Just sayin', for the sake of argument. Where are the people of color? Don't tell me, well Edge, you know, they are less likely to have computers or computer access. Oh fuck that. There are more poor underpriveledged whites than there are Blacks and we certainly don't have a shortage of white folks here who are struggling economically every day of their lives.
Do we not reach out to them, fuck I don't even see them, do you? I don't think it is a matter of intentional exclusion, I've never seen that. Rarely is anyone less than a flaming asshat excluded here. We don't discriminate by national border. Fly and Maddy speak Canadian, Ed and Clare talk a funny kind of English, no one cares about that or treats them any differently. Maria is one of the few Mexican's that I see and no one treats her any differently for it. Rick speaks a language all his own.....Texrik or some dialect. People accept him even when they don't understand a word he says.
So, back to the racism issue. If I'm so non racist how I come I live in a predominantly white neighborhood in a predominantly white part of town and have no friends of color, beyond acquaintances and how come if you pit the little white college with three white starters against the school from the East that recruits playground street stars from the inner city, how come I'll be pulling for the lil white dudes? And just because I grew up with the word nigger and thought "the coloreds" was respectful compared to that and that Negro was way up the respect scale, just because I've not heard any of my three children ever utter the N word....yeah, I'm all non racist? And I'm of a liberal vein. Uh huh. And when the word of looters and roving gangs first broke on the streets of NO, didn't we think, yeah, blacks? Outta shoot em on sight....how many times you hear that the past few days? Fuck, I said it, right here in print.
So I am one prejudiced mother fucker, yes I am. But you know what? I've become much more equal opportunity in my prejudices, oh yeah, I really don't care what the color of your skin is....see how far I've come? No, I'm class prejudiced. There are 37 million Americans living in poverty. There is where my prejudices lay I tell ya. Why I barely give these people any account at all. And you know why? Cause my government doesn't want me to give these people any credit or respect or sympathy. And I play right into their hands when programs are cut and stereotypes are created, yep, cause when you take shit from these folks, well, I fucking get some of it in my climb toward the highest level I can possibly reach. That's where the fault lies, right? Lazy fucks, dragging us down, won't work, sucking the welfare tit. Black, white, Hispanic, whatever, shiftless fucks are dragging us down, you fuckin betcha.
Nuh uh.
They're being held down, just like you and me, only farther down. This is not a racial problem, this hurricane recovery issue. It's a class distinction. Two thirds of the population of NOLA was black....notice I say was. What do you see when the news coverage sweeps eastward into Mississippi? Why it's white folks who look alarmingly similar to the Black folks we just saw in LA. Obese, living in squalor or little better, unable to express themselves with the grammatical correctness that will make us non racist elitists grant our immediate respect. Sympathy, yes, empathy, no, I don't know how to empathize, I can't relate to their lives, let alone their plight.
It aint race people. It's the downtrodden and we have millions of them. Tornadoes in Texas would show Hispanics by the thousands sifting through the rubble of their poorly built smashed domiciles. A hurricane on the Gulf Coast of Texas would show Viet Namese fishermen inspecting the wreckage of their shrimp boats, a killer blizzard in the West might show Native Americans dead, stranded, and broken.
I know this is becoming laborious and preachy but let me finish with some astounding statistics, I know, I hate statistics too but these are fucking amazing I promise. The income distribution in the US is not a bell curve, it's an L curve. If your income is measured by $100 bills stacked neatly one on top of the other and the income horizontal axis is a football field and you make $25,000 your stack is one inch high. If you have a household income of $40,000, you are on the 50 yard line and your stack is less than two inches high. You have an income of $100,000? Why your stack is a towering four inches in height. And you are a mere five yards from scoring a touchdown.
The Forbes 400? A combined NET worth of ONE TRILLION DOLLARS.
THE TOP 1% MEASURE THEIR INCOMES AS STACKS OF $100 BILLS IN FEET, EVEN MILES. BILL GATES INCREASED HIS NET WORTH BY A STACK OF $100 BILLS 30 MILES HIGH LAST YEAR ALONE !!
This top 400 doesn't even include overpaid entertainers and atheletes.
Where do you think the power rests? This skewed income distribution is contrary to democratic principles. Duh. Who calls the shots?
And, you notice the 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Regency in NO got moved to the front of the bus evacuation line? It was not because they were white.
And we're guilty, all of us, for feeding the monster with our Peyton Manning jerseys and our $50 concert tickets and almost $10 to see a movie and our computer purchases and our willingness to buy into the stereotypes and maintain the status quo.
I'm done. I'm not even going to proofread. Really, I'm done, it's my girl's birthday and I'm going to go lighten my heart as best I can prejudiced mother fucker that I am.
And go read Rachel, she says it so much better than I.
Let's say my circle and your circle and his circle and her circle spread to and reach 200 hundred bloggers. Just sayin', for the sake of argument. Where are the people of color? Don't tell me, well Edge, you know, they are less likely to have computers or computer access. Oh fuck that. There are more poor underpriveledged whites than there are Blacks and we certainly don't have a shortage of white folks here who are struggling economically every day of their lives.
Do we not reach out to them, fuck I don't even see them, do you? I don't think it is a matter of intentional exclusion, I've never seen that. Rarely is anyone less than a flaming asshat excluded here. We don't discriminate by national border. Fly and Maddy speak Canadian, Ed and Clare talk a funny kind of English, no one cares about that or treats them any differently. Maria is one of the few Mexican's that I see and no one treats her any differently for it. Rick speaks a language all his own.....Texrik or some dialect. People accept him even when they don't understand a word he says.
So, back to the racism issue. If I'm so non racist how I come I live in a predominantly white neighborhood in a predominantly white part of town and have no friends of color, beyond acquaintances and how come if you pit the little white college with three white starters against the school from the East that recruits playground street stars from the inner city, how come I'll be pulling for the lil white dudes? And just because I grew up with the word nigger and thought "the coloreds" was respectful compared to that and that Negro was way up the respect scale, just because I've not heard any of my three children ever utter the N word....yeah, I'm all non racist? And I'm of a liberal vein. Uh huh. And when the word of looters and roving gangs first broke on the streets of NO, didn't we think, yeah, blacks? Outta shoot em on sight....how many times you hear that the past few days? Fuck, I said it, right here in print.
So I am one prejudiced mother fucker, yes I am. But you know what? I've become much more equal opportunity in my prejudices, oh yeah, I really don't care what the color of your skin is....see how far I've come? No, I'm class prejudiced. There are 37 million Americans living in poverty. There is where my prejudices lay I tell ya. Why I barely give these people any account at all. And you know why? Cause my government doesn't want me to give these people any credit or respect or sympathy. And I play right into their hands when programs are cut and stereotypes are created, yep, cause when you take shit from these folks, well, I fucking get some of it in my climb toward the highest level I can possibly reach. That's where the fault lies, right? Lazy fucks, dragging us down, won't work, sucking the welfare tit. Black, white, Hispanic, whatever, shiftless fucks are dragging us down, you fuckin betcha.
Nuh uh.
They're being held down, just like you and me, only farther down. This is not a racial problem, this hurricane recovery issue. It's a class distinction. Two thirds of the population of NOLA was black....notice I say was. What do you see when the news coverage sweeps eastward into Mississippi? Why it's white folks who look alarmingly similar to the Black folks we just saw in LA. Obese, living in squalor or little better, unable to express themselves with the grammatical correctness that will make us non racist elitists grant our immediate respect. Sympathy, yes, empathy, no, I don't know how to empathize, I can't relate to their lives, let alone their plight.
It aint race people. It's the downtrodden and we have millions of them. Tornadoes in Texas would show Hispanics by the thousands sifting through the rubble of their poorly built smashed domiciles. A hurricane on the Gulf Coast of Texas would show Viet Namese fishermen inspecting the wreckage of their shrimp boats, a killer blizzard in the West might show Native Americans dead, stranded, and broken.
I know this is becoming laborious and preachy but let me finish with some astounding statistics, I know, I hate statistics too but these are fucking amazing I promise. The income distribution in the US is not a bell curve, it's an L curve. If your income is measured by $100 bills stacked neatly one on top of the other and the income horizontal axis is a football field and you make $25,000 your stack is one inch high. If you have a household income of $40,000, you are on the 50 yard line and your stack is less than two inches high. You have an income of $100,000? Why your stack is a towering four inches in height. And you are a mere five yards from scoring a touchdown.
The Forbes 400? A combined NET worth of ONE TRILLION DOLLARS.
THE TOP 1% MEASURE THEIR INCOMES AS STACKS OF $100 BILLS IN FEET, EVEN MILES. BILL GATES INCREASED HIS NET WORTH BY A STACK OF $100 BILLS 30 MILES HIGH LAST YEAR ALONE !!
This top 400 doesn't even include overpaid entertainers and atheletes.
Where do you think the power rests? This skewed income distribution is contrary to democratic principles. Duh. Who calls the shots?
And, you notice the 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Regency in NO got moved to the front of the bus evacuation line? It was not because they were white.
And we're guilty, all of us, for feeding the monster with our Peyton Manning jerseys and our $50 concert tickets and almost $10 to see a movie and our computer purchases and our willingness to buy into the stereotypes and maintain the status quo.
I'm done. I'm not even going to proofread. Really, I'm done, it's my girl's birthday and I'm going to go lighten my heart as best I can prejudiced mother fucker that I am.
And go read Rachel, she says it so much better than I.
posted by Edge | 1:58 PM
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