I like the argument here. Not, “We don’t want racists at our parties because racists are shitty, mean people who behave like dicks and treat others badly based on something beyond human control and that, in addition to being shitty all on its own, is usually an indicator of some other creepy power issues and stuff you just don’t want to mess with even if you’re also white.”
No, instead it’s, “We don’t want racists at our parties because that makes us look bad, and it makes us look bad not because being a racist is bad, but because liberal pussies have convinced America that being a racist is bad. We’re not debating the merits of racism, just saying it’s now socially unacceptable, and we make no moral judgments about this whatsoever.”
Being a racist is one of the worst things you can be in this society. No one wants to be labeled this.
If being a racist was acceptable in this society, you’d be okay with it? Back when you could make jokes about the coloreds, it was fine, but now?
You know, I keep thinking about my grandparents, who on occasion used a dated term or phrase but who never in my entire lifetime of knowing them would have dreamed of saying something as blatantly hateful as what you see on Tea Party signs no matter how many other people around them might have laughed. I think of the older folks I’ve known over the years, who were advocating civil rights well before the 1950s and 1960s, who were unacceptable to their peers for the radical notion that we shouldn’t walk all over others because of the color of their skin.
There is this perception that back in the good old days everybody white was openly in the KKK and it was fine, basically, so what is society’s damage now? And it’s important to remember that for many, many people in this country it was never, ever, ever okay to be labeled a racist.
Because it was never okay tobe a racist, ever, at all, no matter how “society” felt about the whole thing.
A.
Nope, they really believe that everybody is just like them, but they’re the only ones brave enough to buck the PC Police and call a spade a spade.
Or worse.
The idea that not only are most people not like them, but that most people have no desire to be anything like them, is more than their stunted worldview can process.
Gag me with a cancelled Wachovia credit card, being racist is like so two years ago and who would want to be seen in that?!
It’s all about appearance. Fucking idiots sound like pre-teen valley girls from the roaring 80s.
And when I look at all the hidden effects of racism has cost America, I can’t help but wonder what today’s tea baggers are going to cost the future.
Think of the cost of the civil strife in the 60s and how that gutted America. Think of all the talented blacks that were denied an opportunity to contribute to society…
but gays are worse, right? or is it illegals now? or muslim?
I dunno, I think the existence of lynching postcards pretty much conclusively demonstrates that it used to beperfectly okay tobe a racist, even if racism itself is a stupid, wrong-headed, harmful kind of thing.
Also, I’m not sure if my mother, the admitted white supremacist, has ever paid any sort of social penalty for being a racist, but at least here, racism isn’t aboutsaying, it’s aboutdoing.