The only thing worse than a moron is a moron who has his own show on talk radio. Nothing gets my blood boiling quite like some arrogant prick who has it all figured out and spews his largely fallacious tripe to the totally oblivious masses, with complete disregard for the laws of reason.
So tonight, on the way home from my birthday dinner, some conservative pundit (and by pundit I mean socially irresponsible dickhead) is on the radio, best I could tell doing his damnedest to give me an aneurysm. I'm sure he thought he had a point. But I couldn't find it, and I like to consider myself a reasonably intelligent person. First he's going on and on about how 76% of black America believes that race played a part in the response, or lack thereof, of the federal government to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. He's lamenting the sad state of affairs that must exist when "76% of black Americans feel that the color of their skin instantly relegated them to second-class citizenship." As in, "black Americans" are the ones who have decided that their very blackness makes them somehow second-rate. As in, this isn't so much about systematic bias and oppression that began around the same time the first slave ship weighed anchor, as it is a simple self-esteem thing, really. Pandemic low self-esteem. As in, isn't it pitiful, this obvious self-loathing that we white folks clearly have nothing to do with? As in, what was it called? - Oh yeah, RACISM! Oh, Racism has long since left the building. In fact, I hear it splits its time these days between residence wholly in the imaginations of "black America" and a sweet little cottage it shares with the tooth fairy and Easter Bunny.
I'll give the idiot one concession. That statistic is indeed sad. Not new, really, not even exclusive to natural disaster relief debacles, but sad all the same. HOWEVER, he can't let well enough alone. He then says that whether race actually played a part, whether black people in America are in fact still treated as second-class citizens, is COMPLETELY irrelevant to the fact that they feel that way. And further, this is just awful for America. Yeah, buddy, it's awful, alright. But how is it possible for the truth to be irrelevant? If people are being discriminated against, how is that anything but relevant to their believing it to be the case? And shouldn't they be pissed off about it? Shouldn't the rest of us be? Better yet, wouldn't we be, had the proverbial shoe been on the other foot? Seems to me that knowing that there is a problem gives us both the responsibility and the means to go about solving it. Stop pretending that prejudice isn't out there, start dealing with your personal assortment.
Beyond that, I don't believe it's just about black and white. The thing about racism today is that it is far too easy to just pretend it does not exist - if you're white. The idea of hating someone else because of the color of their skin is so fundamentally ridiculous that whenever someone brings up its factual, though illogical, existence, they are treated like they just attributed their troubles to Santa Clause. Racism isn't real! Nobody believes in that stuff anymore! Come on, take some personal responsibility. You can't blame us white folks for EVER! But race is far from the only issue here, and I would even go so far as to say it is not the key issue. I believe the major factor here is socio-economic status. Simply put - money. If there is a God in this country, it is the American dollar. And black, white, or polka-dot, if you don't have it, you are wholly insignificant to those who do. Poor people are expendable. Anyone who thinks the response would not have been different had this tragedy happened in a wealthier place is a fool. Poverty contributed exponentially to the degree of the devastation. And poverty has played a large part in the aftermath. The fact that well over twice as many black families as white ones fall below the poverty line in itself makes race a factor, and raises important ethical questions about the responsibility white America bears. They are poor, they are black, and they are right. So what are we going to do about that? Einstein there, naturally, didn't have any suggestions. Not so much as a "Can't we all just get along?" Apparently, the way he sees it, folks just need to know their role and quit their bitching.
He did, however, have comments about charity. But they were so completely asinine that they warrant their own blog. I know you're all on the edge of your seats. Nothing like a drug induced rant to enthrall the masses. I wonder if any of this will make sense to me tomorrow?
No comments:
Post a Comment