Are there certain conversations and observations that are off limits for certain people? Take this thing here, below. Is it racist, if I, a white girl, say it?
There is a crisis, to understate the matter, in the black community. About 75 percent (more in some cities) of black babies in the U.S. are born out-of-wedlock. That women should keep their legs closed until marriage is considered a naïve notion at best and a sexist/oppressive one at worst. Subversive is what it is.
Some people are offended by the expression “keep your legs closed.” Is it vulgar? Perhaps, but so is having babies with several different men without being married to any of them.
Confession: I actually didn’t say the above. LaShawn Barber, who is not an “African-American” woman, but a BLACK woman, did. I’ve read her stuff over the years, and I thought I would link to/post some of it — after the 600ish comments I had around midnight Tuesday night, accusing me of being a racist for suggesting that black leaders should condemn the behavior of women like Tarika Wilson, and for my suggestion that being around drug dealers puts oneself and one’s children at risk.
Wilson, for the uninitiated, is the Ohio woman who was accidentally shot in a police raid on her house. At 26, she’d already had six children in eight years with five different drug dealer “daddies,” and had taken up with yet another drug dealer boyfriend.
Do you have a problem with that behavior? If not, why not?
Let me ask a different question. Do you have a problem with that behavior? If so, SO WHAT? Do you want a medal for your righteous moral stand? Do you want someone to nod his or her head vigorously and give you a round of applause? Seriously, gentlemen, what is our objective at this juncture?
Increasingly I find the neediness of conservatives so intensely tiresome. I find myself wanting to ask if what they’re really after, what they really, really need, is some kind of document stipulating that they are the most moral, upright, righteous human beings on the planet, that we all bask and wonder in their glory, look up to them, and acknowledge their superiority. At this point, I’m willing to print something out that says YOU ARE THE BESTEST OKAY and sign it, so that they can hang it on their walls and look lovingly at it, and so thatthe rest of us can get fucking back to work.
Because until we have repaired all the potholes in all the roads leading to all the cities everywhere, until we have patched the holes in the roofs of all the schools in the country, until we have fed and housed and clothed and healed every person in need in this entire fucking God Bless America nation of ours, you will pardon me if I have things on my list slightly — just slightly — above making a dead woman who already sounds like she had a pretty rough time of it feel retroactively bad about how many kids she had with whom, just so that you can see from my remarks what a superior person I am.
A.