I was at a wedding reception when I saw her — a blonde woman trying in vain to get down with Kool & the Gang’s Jungle Boogie. A man seated near me gestured to the woman and pronounced her, “the whitest person I’ve ever seen.”
We all knew what he meant, of course. She couldn’t dance. She was awkward. She was way uncool. And he summed up all that negativity with the single word “white.”
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Let’s be clear. Nothing is funnier than Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The combination of the surreal, the obtuse, and the plain vulgar is still hilarious decades later.
The Python comedy troupe was well-known for skewering religion, social class, and other touchy subjects. But even these brilliant Brits had an Achilles’ heel. Python’s few forays into racial humor were uninspired, coming across more as juvenile than biting.
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Every time I write about the GOP’s image problem with Latino voters, some conservative sends me an angry missive insisting that it’s all the liberal media spreading lies. I discover that not only does the Republican Party respect Hispanics, but it has their best interests at heart. The missive usually ends by telling me that Republicans are actually the most open-minded and tolerant of Americans.
And then approximately fourteen minutes later, a GOP leader will say something like this:
“My father had a ranch. We used to have fifty to sixty wetbacks to pick tomatoes.
That’s Alaska Representative Don Young, a Republican, who recently said this during a radio interview. Honestly, I don’t know what point he was trying to make, because I can’t get past the casual use of the term “wetback.”
Of course, Young’s fellow Republicans were quick to distance themselves from his offhanded bigotry, while stressing, “Hey, hey, we’re crazy about Latinos.” But this was not some risqué joke or harmless gaffe. This was an elected official resorting to slurs when referring to the fastest-growing ethnicity in America.
Now, I’m not saying that the Democratic Party is immune to racism, but honestly, when was the last time you heard of a Democrat saying something so prima facie bigoted? Yes, I know all about Biden’s “back in chains” comment — something that is not even in the same universe as far as offensive language.
So I have to wonder why wildly derogatory and/or lunatic statements seem to spring solely from the mouths of Republicans.
Sure, such comments are not as egregious as the GOP tendency — even eagerness — to excuse rape. As such, perhaps misogyny is still the Republicans’ number-one issue. But you would think a political movement that, by its own admission, has an image problem with ethnic minorities would take just the smallest care not to fling around racial epithets like its 1950.
So let’s go ahead and accept the congressman’s apology that “there was no malice in my heart or intent to offend,” while dismissing his slur as a simple “poor choice of words.”
But just this once, will you conservatives spare me the corrective email insisting that I have it all wrong? Can you just drop the denial about the white-hot strain of racism in your party that you have allowed to fester and grow? Instead, spend that energy by actually trying to drag your GOP brethren into the twenty-first century.
Or just keep doing what you’re doing. Then sit back and wait from that big group hug from Latinos, because deep down we know that you really, really love us.
There’s a new horrifying sign that America is on the decline.
I’m not talking about the chaotic state of our politics, or the struggling economy, or even the fact that half of us refuse to acknowledge basic scientific facts.
I’m referring to the recent implication that white conservative guys can’t casually throw around racial slurs anymore. Truly, it’s a sign of the apocalypse.
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All residents of Los Angeles spend an inordinate amount of time waiting for our cars. This is because the gods who devised our car culture decreed that, throughout the land, valet parking shall be the law. It’s not a question of choice.
One of my favorite restaurants makes you hand over your keys, and then watch as the valet moves your car about six feet from where you pulled into the lot. The IHOP in West Hollywood has valet parking (think about that; an IHOP…). And the parking garage where I waited for my car just yesterday had mandatory valet service, even though I could have easily parked it myself.
In any case, I was standing at the counter, claim ticket in hand, when I heard a voice behind me.
“Excuse me.”
Let me thank Macon D, Profe, Xey, Mimpiku, and Carolina, all of whom have recently commented on some of my posts. I also want to acknowledge Che, who disagreed with several of my posts (I assume he recently found the blog and read a bunch of pieces at once). But he kept the tone respectful. I thank him for that and for contributing to the site.
But others do not share the approach of these readers. Some people are determined to prove that the internet is where hate-filled wackjobs spew vitriol that they would never even whisper if they could be identified.
Specifically a reader, whose name I don’t want to publicize, responded to my post “The Most Perverse Kind of Pride.” The piece was about Hispanic gang members who targeted African Americans.
Rather than condemn the actions of the gang members, this reader praised them. The reason he endorses murder is because he hates blacks more than he does Hispanics. And yes, the n-word was unapologetically placed front and center in his tirade.
I have deleted his comment and, in a first for the Fanatic, banned him from the site.
I hesitated to give the idiot even this level of attention. But I decided to write about it just to point out that – despite the wishes, pleas, and outright demands of many people – we do not live in a postracial, harmonious world where ethnicity no longer matters.
There’s still a little way to go.
