The Color of Greed

Someone recently said something to me about school districts in a certain city. The districts had been recently taken over the state because the local school boards were failing their mission.  You know, blacks enriching themselves at the expense of other blacks.

As if that's somehow unique to African Americans.

Huh. That's interesting. Because....

Bernie Madoff. White.

Enron. The smartest guys in the room. Remember them? Mostly pasty white.

Source (2006)

Jack Abramoff. Just because I have a crush on him, doesn't mean he isn't  slime.

The Robber Barons. They look pretty white. And look how gleeful all the money made them.

And the biggest whiner.

Enriching himself at the expense of all ethnic groups and his god.

I'm sure these two need no introduction. Pay no attention to  Trump's tanning goggle lines.

Nor these two.

And lest you think I believe it's all on one side of the political spectrum....

James Traficant and his Hair of Corruption.

Good old Rostenkowski. What?

In case you wonder how it's done.

Or why....now these fellas look happy. Wonder why?

I don't like that dark stuff

I wheeled my semi-full grocery cart into the check out line. In front of me was a woman of maybe eighty, her hair newly done, makeup just right, a hearing aid implanted in her ear. Her cart remained unloaded while she leaned across it studying the cover of the National Inquirer or The Star.

The checker spoke. "Ma'am, are you ready?"

The woman snapped to and began loading her items onto the belt. I waited until she was finished and reached over for the black plastic separator to put between her order and mine. The cover of the tabloid that had so captivated the elderly woman caught my eye. "Obama Divorce" it screeched in bold yellow across unflattering photos of the President and First Lady.

I busied myself with unloading my cart in my usual OCD fashion.

"Oh, I forgot my coffee," the woman in front of me yelled.

The checker offered to hold her order while the bagger offered to fetch the coffee. The woman gestured toward me. "I don't want to make her wait."'

I appreciated that, but I wasn't in a hurry. "Thanks, but don't worry about it. I'm not in a hurry. Get your coffee."

She shrugged at the bagger who asked what kind of coffee to get. "The one on sale for eight dollars and something. But not that dark stuff. I don't like the dark coffee."

I went back to unloading my cart while the woman fussed at the checker for not ringing her up and letting her go get the coffee after she paid. The checker explained how she needed the bar code, but quickly gave up. The customer wasn't interested in explanations.

Another shopper pulled in behind me and noticed the hold up. I gave her a quick smile with an eyebrow raise. She craned her neck to see the other lines, looked back at me and shrugged. "Might as well stay put."

I smiled and pulled the checkbook out of my purse to fill it out while I waited. The bagger still hadn't returned and the woman tugged the sleeve of my jacket.

"Did you see that about that Obama?" she said pointing at the tabloid.

I looked at the tabloid and nodded.

"You know, her parents paid for him to win. That black son of a bitch was educated in Saudi Arabia," she said conspiratorially, incapable of a whisper.

I took a deep breath and turned to slip my checkbook back into my purse to give myself a chance to count ten and not react.

The woman behind me met my eyes and gave me the one eyebrow raise back. Her arms were crossed as she shifted her gaze from me to the woman tugging on my sleeve again. "Those blacks in Chicago rigged the election to put Obama in the White House. He didn't get all those votes."

I glanced at the checker who was clearly alarmed. The checker the next aisle over, a young African American woman had obviously overheard.

Fuuuuuuck.

The bagger finally returned from Tennessee with three containers of coffee. "I brought you some choices."

The woman made her choice, paid her bill and continued to complain loudly that the checker wouldn't ring her up sooner, that she was unhappy that the Food Lion is closing stores in Georgia (we weren't in a Food Lion at the time), and, how much she hated Obama. Not once did she refer to him as President Obama.

The desire for her to leave was palpable. The checker, the bagger, the woman behind me, the checker across the way and I - we were all aghast. And then the last straw came. The woman tugged her pocketbook up onto her shoulder and turned to me.

"There aren't enough black people in America to elect him. That's how I know the vote was rigged."

I handed my stack of coupons to the checker and smiled. "I voted for him," I said.

"What did she say?"

I turned to the woman who was fiddling with her hearing aid. "I voted for him and I will vote for him again," I said with a smile.

"Ahhh, you're putting me on."

"Nope."

"I never met anyone who voted for him. You're kidding me."

"I'm not. I voted for him."

She drew back and eyed me. "What's wrong with you? Why would you vote for that --? All he does is give away the money of hardworking Americans to no accounts. People who won't get jobs on unemployment, food stamps. Just a bunch of lazy..."

The bagger interrupted. "Can I help you with this?" She gestured toward the woman's shopping cart.

I hoped she'd take the hint. I had no stomach for this pointless conversation. She ignored the bagger. "So what are you? One of them lazy people who won't get a job?"

"I'm one of those hardworking Americans who can't find a job," I said still smiling. I was surprised that I wasn't getting a surge of adrenaline, my heart wasn't racing, my palms weren't sweating and my voice didn't crack. I'd realize later that the medication I'm taking really does work well.

"Uh huh. That's what I thought. You're on welfare," she spat out.

The woman behind me shifted and bumped into my cart. When I turned to see what the problem was, she was glaring at the old woman.

"Actually, I'm not on welfare, not that it's any of your business. I was getting unemployment, but that's run out," I don't know why I felt compelled to keep talking, but I did. "Let me ask you this - do you get Social Security? Medicare?"

"Hey, my husband worked his whole life and paid for those things," she snapped.

"Well, that's true, but you're probably taking out more than he paid in. And what's more, I - me - I worked for twenty-five years paying into unemployment in case I needed it. So before you go fussing about what other people are getting, you should consider that you're part of the system, too."

"Well, it ain't welfare."

"No, it's not. But you know how you're upset that the Food Lion is closing stores? I can guarantee you if people didn't have food stamps, you'd see a lot more stores closing. And I don't know what kind of world you want to live in, but I don't want to live in one where people go hungry."

She opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing. I made an apologetic gesture to the checker as the old lady marched away hollering at the bagger about how rude I was.

I filled out my check and marveled at the fact that my hands weren't shaking. I felt so calm.

"You handled that well," the checker said to me.

I took the receipt from her. "Thanks. I really hate to talk politics. I know my views aren't very popular around here."

"Well, maybe she learned something from you. I know I did," she said with a smile.

The woman behind me cleared her throat. "I'm glad you were the one dealing with her because I would have whipped out my EBT card and shoved it down her throat."

Damn it.

I Write Letters

 
Dear Rich Lowry or should I say the man for whom Sarah Palin's wink launched a thousand erections,

I saw you on CSPANKme last night. It was a rerun of you boring a bunch of young Conservatives to death as you droned on about President Lincoln. The show was taped on a Friday night and those poor kids just wanted to hit the bars and hook up, but there you were, nattering on, equating the political parties of today with the political parties of 1860. You were taking great pains to illustrate a connection between Democrats today and the Southern Democrats who supported slavery. You said something about how they had to deny the part of the constitution that states All men are created equal. I think. Anyway, I may have nodded off from boredom. Or maybe it was because you were sucking both the oxygen and the sense out of the room. Whatever.

You owe an apology to those kids for misinforming them and for cutting into their fun time. Sheesh, man, don't you remember what it was like to go to those conferences?

I'm writing to you today, Rich Lowry, to let you know, in case you hadn't noticed, anyone who would have identified as a Southern Democrat in 1860 would now identify as a Republican. You failed to mention that.

You're welcome,

Lisa

Dear Rush Limbaugh,

My mother took me to see the re-release of Disney's Song of the South in 1972. I was seven years old. Even at that tender age, I understood that Tar Baby had a racial meaning and was a phrase I should not repeat if I didn't want my butt blistered.

Zip-A-Dee-Do-Da,

Lisa

Terrorist Training Activities in the Front Seat of My Car

Here are the youthful terrorists plotting their next caper

Newsflash: I Am Raising the Next Crop of Domestic Terrorists

About that fist bump.....The Actor and I did the fist bump nearly every morning as I dropped him off for school. It was a very brief moment we shared before I sent him into his middle school to blow up toilets. Now our secret is out. (Will someone please make sure I have 600 thread count sheets on my bed in Gitmo? Thanks.)

Originally posted June 10, 2008

The Rascist in Me

Ah, my racist roots. Where shall I begin?

I grew up in a white working/middle class family in Southeastern Indiana. Need I say more?

My dad, a forklift driver for Monsanto (again, please forgive me) for over thirty-five years was a hereditary racist. Not outwardly hateful, but basic, a black person is different and therefore less racist. He, a man with high school education and a solid hold smack dab in the middle class via his factory job, considered himself better than anyone of color. Or at least that's the impression he gave us through his words.

I later understood that part of what we heard was fear. He feared that his place in the middle class was threatened by the encroachment of minorities which were, in his world, African Americans. That fear mirrors the fear and racism now being displayed towards Latinos, especially in places like where we live here in Georgia. Factory jobs have all but disappeared and the sames kinds of jobs at in that pay range are scarce. Blame the Mexicans. It's easier to do that to rail at the powers that be who made the financial decisions to close the factories and outsource the jobs.

What uneducated people understand better maybe than educated people do is the law of resources. They understand that if there are people on top, they are supported by lots of people down below. They also understand that when things are limited, it's a fight for survival to hold on to what you've got and it's an even greater struggle to obtain more. That was my dad. He understand in a very basic way that there were only so many jobs to go around in that factory on the Ohio River bend in Addiston. And if all the sudden a lot of "them" were getting those jobs, then a lot of "him" would be losing theirs. The jobs were not limitless. Quotas became a buzzword. Reverse discrimination was murmured. Rumors were rampant about how "things were shifting" in that factory and many others.

To be honest, I never saw my father be disrespectful to anyone of color. In my mind's eye, I can see him, like most white people I knew (and even now, know), treating people of color with a "certain kind" of respect, a careful respect, a subtle arm's length approach that said "let's just get through this with these fake smiles as quickly as possible because, dammit, my cheeks are starting to hurt." That kind of respect. Not exactly grudging. Not exactly sincere.

But the words. Oh my. My own cheeks burn a little when I think of the string of epithets we kids used to hear coming from our dad's straight-toothed grin. Holy cats, some of those phrases would peel your skin off, leaving you there a strung together diagram of sinewy flesh and moist bones like a picture in an anatomy text book.

I won't list those words and phrases here. But there were plenty of them and they were quite colorful. To my child's ear, some of them were funny and lyrical, comical really. Some referred to continent of origin, I suppose. Others were based, naturally, on darkness of skin. My father didn't make up those words, of course. He learned them from his parents and the other superior, but poor, whites he grew up around in that small Ohio River town.

I remember once riding my bike down to see if Dad was at my grandparents' house. He wasn't there, but Grandma was. She was sitting on the back porch snapping green beans from her garden.

"Do you know where Daddy is?" I asked, leaning my bike into the grass and hopping up the cement step onto the porch.

"Well, I think he went out to help the ni**ers with something," she answered in her crackly grandma voice.

I did not bat an eye at this. I was probably ten years old or so. It was nothing for my grandma to point out my summer color. "You're getting brown as a berry," she'd say, adjusting her whistling hearing aid. "Better watch it or people will mistake you for a picaninny."

Let me just tell you right here and now if anyone spoke that way in front of me now, I would make such a nuisance of myself explaining why that is unacceptable.

When I hear racist language from unrelated adults, I don't call them out. I hate to admit it, but if an adult uses that kind of language in front of me, I leave, I don't school them. I figure they know that they are doing something wrong and choose to behave that way anyway. If they say something racist in front of my kids, I leave, taking my kids with me and I explain why that language is unacceptable.

Believe me when I tell you that this is not a defense of my father's racism, but back when he used those words, it was more common, even in "polite" society. How horrifying. My mother, once distressed that I used the N word, instructed Dad to talk to me and make sure that I never said that word again. I'll never forget the day he told me that if I even thought that word, the nearest ni**, he stopped himself, the nearest black person would come and cut my ears off. Thanks, Dad. That was brilliant. Make me afraid of black people.

But that is how racism is. It's part of who we are. Some of us are raised with it. It comes in different varieties - mild to scorching, but it's there. It's what we do with it that defines us. See, it would have been very easy for me to simply absorb my father's attitude about African Americans and to go through my life assuming superiority to people of color simply because I'm white and of European descent.

Never mind that most of my ancestors were extraordinarily poor, one was brought to Virginia as a criminal/slave for fighting against the British in Scotland. When the lady on the rock invited other countries to send their poor, my ancestors were pushed onto the damn boats - steerage, of course. Even so, we were taught that we were superior somehow.

Instead I chose to reject my family's racism. When Mathman and I started our family, I informed my father that racial slurs would not be tolerated in front of our kids. He has complied. I once got into an ugly shouting match with my paternal grandfather in our front yard because upon learning that I was dating a Moroccan while in France, he had the nerve to ask me why I just couldn't date nice American guys?

Nice American guys is code for white, of course.

There's my proof that I will call my family out on their racism. I may share the DNA, but I do not share their views. I wish I had the spine to be just as forceful with unrelated racists, but I don't. I'm quite convinced that nothing I could say would change their behavior if they're an adult in 2008 and still using racial slurs.

Now that we're about to see racism of all varieties on the most public display since the Civil Rights Era, I'm curious to see just what kind of character America has.

Let's just say, I'm not terribly optimistic.

Originally posted June 13, 2008