by Cheryl Seal, July 8, 2002, www.unknownnews.net

So, looks like I offended some "progressive" white readers — white readers whose idea of being non-racist, apparently, is to jump down the throats of other liberal whites they perceive as having made a "politically incorrect faux pas." My take, after years of working with progressives is that the obsession many of them have with "political correctness" may well be America's downfall, not its salvation. A prime case in point is the Democratic party. It has so far been all but useless in fighting off the assault on civil rights by Bush and Co. (Cynthia McKinney, Barbara Lee, Henry Waxman and one or two others being the exceptions). Why? Because most of them spend all their time tiptoeing around in muffled ballet shoes filled with fear of committing political incorrectness. As a result, there has been no real concerted ACTION - like pulling on some hobnailed boots and kicking some butt. They are so consumed with wondering how each step they might offend that they have become like the centipede in the poem:

The centipede was happy, quite
Until a toad in fun,
Said "Pray, which leg goes after which?"
This worked her mind to such a pitch,
She lay distracted in a ditch,
Considering how to run.

I am neither sorry nor embarrassed about the photo lampooning J.C. Watts (see photos). I find Mr. Watts just as worthy of particularly barbed jokes as I would find a Jewish American whose biggest claim to fame was being the only Jew serving as an officer in a Neo-Nazi organization that claimed to be "reformed." Call it what you will, you can't wipe the blood off the Nazi record any more than you can wipe the racism off the Republican Record. Throughout the past 140 years or so, the party has systematically opposed real civil rights, be it for blacks, women, gays, workers, the poor, prisoners - in short anyone or any group not white, heterosexual male, and moneyed.

Today, the GOP administration and its GOP toadies in Congress - a group that includes Mr. Watts - is turning the bill of rights into its personal doormat. Did we hear Mr. Watts speak up, as a person of color when Ashcroft and his minions started rounding up "swarthy people," arresting them on little or no pretext, holding them without bail and right to counsel? When Bush was nominated as his party's candidate, did we hear Mr. Watts question his abysmal civil rights record in Texas? Have we heard Mr. Watts speak out against the "endless War on Terror" - even though, should a draft be instituted, a disproportionate number of those being shipped off as cannon fodder will be - as always - blacks, Hispanics and other nonwhite and/or economically challenged groups? Did we hear Mr. Watts speak out to call for an investigation of - or at the very least protest - the connections between two high-ranking members of the GOP and a white supremacist/anti-Semitic group (Trent Lott and Bob Barr)? If anyone is a racist - at the very least willing to ally himself with blatant racists - it is Mr. Watts. You may not agree with me, but many, many African Americans do. Check out this letter from the black caucus rebuking Mr. Watts for the growing evidence of pre-60s racism in the Republican Party.

So what if I called Watts an Uncle Tom? Here is the Webster Collegiate Dictionary definition of an "Uncle Tom" (as in the statement, not the Harriet Beecher Stowe character): "A black eager to win the approval of whites and willing to cooperate with them." I don't call that racist - I call that accuracy in "reporting!" The "massa" bit was a bitter parody on just how "eager to win the approval of whites" Watts has shown himself to be.

What's a real hoot to me is that these same "indignant readers" who were offended by the photo would undoubtedly have NO problem with cartoons/photos/jokes, etc lampooning someone like Ann Coulter - who is white, blond, and blue-eyed. But I bet these same "pious progressives" might be offended if a black satirist - say perhaps Aaron McGruder - mercilessly lampooned Ann Coulter! As far as I'm concerned, an asshole in any shade or flavor is an asshole and has thus made themselves fair game by satirists of all shades and flavors.

In any case, the word racist is thrown around like some worn out political football. No one seems to know what it really means - least of all those who have never experienced it. I have. In some of the small towns in rural northern Maine where I lived for a few years, there were no racial minorities, so the narrow-minded contingent in town focused their spite on poor people and single mothers. (I must point out that these places were NOT representative of most of Maine). Being both poor and a single mother, needless to say I was the recipient of plenty of injustice. Like the doctor who wanted to treat my son's bowed legs by waiting until he was five and breaking and resetting both his legs because he believed (as he told me to my face) poor mothers can't be trusted to use braces (I refused to accept this "diagnosis," thankfully, and the braces corrected the problem within a year). Or the time I bought a battered old Datsun from a middle-class man who had three other newer cars. I gave him my last $400 with the reassurance that the car ran great - only to find later that he had rigged the dying transmission to run for a short time y advancing the timing (an old rip-off car dealer trick). But he didn't care - I was just a poor woman. Or the time my son (who had been tested with an IQ of 141) was not put into a gifted program even after a recommendation because only kids from "better families" got the coveted slots, gifted or not. Or the time the same son, while in junior high school, was viciously attacked and beaten up (nose broken) because he had longish hair and "looked like a hippie." Or the time the guy who owned the land upon which my cabin sat, took me to court to reclaim the cabin because he wanted it for hunting season - he won not because it was fair (as a lawyer later told me) but because he knew the judge (wink wink). These are the sort of things that blacks and other minorities have been enduring continuously throughout most areas of the country, that poor people endure most intensely in areas where there are no racial minorities to dump on.

"Everyday racism" isn't about hauling someone out of their car and lynching them - it's the cutting, passive aggressive comment against which any real defense is impossible (see anecdote below), it's about never being sure when and where a run-in with bigotry will pop up, yet being 95% sure it will, about being racially profiled no matter where you are, about having limited choices and representation in TV, movies, books, and art. Its about being handed second hand opportunities -- a recent survey showed that blacks pay more on average for their houses than whites and receive less money when they sell them. In addition, blacks still make less money, on average for the same work, than do whites, attend schools that are consistently more poorly funded, poorly staffed, and poorly maintained than their white counterparts.

In short, everday racism is all about systematically thwarting the ability of another individual or group to better themselves and to cultivate a positive self image. What damn good is "affirmative action" when you must still put up with spirit-crunching psychological abuse?

Here's a case in point - both about everyday racism and the "spirit" of the GOP. This weekend, I rode the light rail from Baltimore's touristy, glitzy Inner Harbor area up through the city. On board were some white middle-aged, upper-class tourists riding the train up to where they had left their cars (or, more likely, SUVs) in the suburbs. As they rode, they gave a snide running commentary on the city and, in particular, its black residents. As they passed a hospital in a black area, one 60-something man snorted in disgust, "That place must be a real nightmare." As they passed a man who tossed his cigarette butt to the ground (yeah, like whites never do that!), the same arrogant man - a Republican, as he had announced earlier - said with contempt, "Look at that! And a trash can just down the block. These people don't known any better." Of course, it didn't phase him at all that nearly everyone in earshot except my husband and I were black. Then he launched into a long bragfest about his kids - or should I say, the degrees, incomes, and political affiliations (all GOP) of his kids. Not once did I hear any reference to what sort of people they were, how he felt about them, or whether or not they were happy. But then, it was also plain from his conversation that they only checked in on the holidays.

Meanwhile, sitting behind me, a much less prosperous looking black woman got a call on her cell phone from her daughter, who was having some minor crisis with her roommates in her apartment.. The woman talked her through it, reassuring, scolding, counseling - i.e., mothering. No talk of credentials, money, pedigree. But this woman obviously wasn't going to have to wait for the holidays to hear from her kids!

I live in Baltimore - and I mean IN Baltimore, inside the city, not in the suburbs. Half the residents of my building are black, most of the people I ride the bus with are black, most of the people behind the counters at the Post Office, public works office, etc are all black. I encounter plenty of reverse discrimination, believe me. But having walked a mile in their mocassins, euphemistically speaking, after my first inevitable wave of righteous indignation, I can understand where they are coming from. Real prejudice assaults the pride and self-respect and leaves deep wounds you don't just "get over" in a week or two - or maybe even in a generation or two.

What infuriates me about Mr. Watts is that he not only embraces the GOP - which stands for everything that has worked against REAL advancement for minorities - he cannot even find it in his conscience to speak up when the same civil rights Martin Luther King and others struggled and died to win just a short few decades ago are being trampled under the feet of the likes of Ashcroft, Delay, Lott, Bush, and his other bigoted cronies. This to me is a man who so hates his own race that he imagines that by identifying completely with GOP bigwigs that he will someday wake up white. It would be like a woman who decided that the best way to advance herself and women's rights was to change her name to Fred, join an old-boy's club, start chomping on cigars and pee standing up. Sure, the old boys in the club might use her as their "token female" to show how "open" they were, just to keep critics off their backs. But, one wonders, could they ever really respect her?

I wouldn't. And I don't respect J. C. Watts.

© 2002, Cheryl Seal

Reproduced from:
http://www.unknownnews.net/cdd070802.html