I Have Issues...

So, I'm in Idaho. That's where my lovely new job has sent me on my first assignment. Everyone has made jokes about potatoes. I have given everyone who's mentioned them the confused puppy look. My thoughts went instantly to white supremacists, skinheads and underground nuclear warheads. That would have been a fun game of word association.

Well, with hate crimes on the brain, I sit next to an Arab gentleman on the airplane. He is reading the Koran. My first thoughts, honestly...ashamedly: "Oh f*cking-sh*t! For the love of God!" (I know those 2 sentiments don't exactly go together, but it's that kind of day.) I have never claimed to have lived 34 years in this racist society and gotten by unscathed. As embarrassed as I was, I was also scared beyond belief. Then, he kept staring at me. I was watching him in my peripheral vision. He would snap his head forward every time I would turn to see what the hell he wanted. This didn't make me any more at ease. I'd also start plotting the perfect position to curl into so that I'd feel the least amount of pain when we crashed to my death each time we hit pockets of unbelievable turbulence. My pessimism is on full blast today.

While I was waiting for the hotel shuttle at the airport, I thought about all of the horrible things I could be falsely accused of out here and how no one would believe me and then I'd have to call the Boise police, which was certain not to go well for the black girl, so I'd just keep quite and succumb to whatever injustice befell me just to avoid making waves. It doesn't help that all day I've been reading Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon which revisits life in America for blacks in the 1st half of the 20th century. Sigh.

From the plane I send the following text message: "Oh man! I'm the only person with bigot of color up on this plane. I feel like I'm going to a Klan Rally. Pray for me!" Freudian slip: bigot was supposed to be a bit. Who's the bigot, right?

It has been a very sobering day. Fear is powerful. Today I have experienced how easily it becomes a lens that distorts. I see how difficult it can be to convince someone looking through that lens that they aren't seeing what they think they are seeing. The truth is that everyone in Idaho has been as friendly as anyone anywhere else. (And much more friendly than what I encountered in Minnesota.)

I've only met one person from Idaho in my life. I was teamed up with him in a small group and I made the same assumption about him that I made about everyone else in this state, that he'd hate me. He was such a nice guy. We hung out that weekend I spent in Seattle a year and a half ago. We actually had a chance to talk about the assumptions we made about each other and how glad we were (and embarrassed) to find out that our assumptions were wrong. I realized that my assumption that he'd hate me only served to justify my prejudice towards him. I wish I'd remembered that earlier today. It would have been a much better flight.

OK, there you have it. I suck sometimes too. Prejudice is funky, from anybody. Even me.

Peace.

On Imus and Stuff I was Trying to Avoid

Once upon at time there was this guy named Don Imus. He said stupid racist and sexist things on the air about the Rutgers University women's basketball team. He is a dick head. He got fired for being a racist, sexist, dick head. End of story.

Wait, no, not the end of the story.

Suddenly, all of the black people in the land started turning on themselves and blaming themselves for Imus's comments. Now, these black people were a bit deluded. They thought they were talking about other black people. But somewhere along the line, after 1964, they forgot how to be one people. They forgot that pointing the finger at "them" was also pointing the finger at themselves. So sad. So very sad indeed.

You see, after Imus, the S.R.D.H., said what he said, black people across the land started emailing each other and going on tv and radio talk shows talking about how they really did Imus to themselves. They blamed their music, their ghettos, their Ebonics, their limited access to the best education in the country for people like Imus, the S.R.D.H. saying racist stuff like that. They discussed reasons why they shouldn't be outraged about Imus, when there are misogynistic messages in their own music. It's as though the powers that be sprinkled pixie dust among them and confused them and now they can't distinguish between the cause and the effect. It's a sad state for these people.

They have forgotten who controls the music industry, who controls the images they see of themselves on tv, in the media and on the silver screen. They have forgotten the role racism has historically played in the creation of their ghettos and how survival has caused many of them to forgo many of the luxuries and comforts others of them enjoy. It's as if the lot of them has been brainwashed. They no longer think like the generation before them who knew that their survival as a people required unity and fighting for the collective. Instead, it seems like something akin to Stockholm syndrome is running amok in the land.

Is there hope for the people? Will those in the fringes who see the dastardly scheme at work learn how to communicate the need to stop the self-hating infighting? Will the people stop spending so much time being disgusted with one another and take back the spirit that embodied King and those of his time? Will the Cosby's in the land offer solutions to the problems, instead of constant criticism? Or will they all turn completely individualistic and identify with "pull yourself up by your bootstraps, all by your damn self" ideology of ...well, you know who the villains in land are. No need to utter their name.

Stay tuned for the next event that causes black people to convince each other that they shouldn't express outrage about racism merely because there are problems at home.