[doxy]

The following is a 3 minute intro to what this is about, I suggest watching it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuoiZnr4jLY

The below is just a story of my Friday night and how it relates to The Jena Six:

So there I am, enjoying my original martini (gin, sweet vermouth, a hit of orange bitters, lemon twist) and a bloke sits next to me at the bar. It's a hotel bar and so I'm figuring he isn't from here. I'm a social cat and so I ask what he's in town for. He says he came down for the Jena Six. I was immediately pleased to meet his aquaintance. I told him my roommates and neighbors went to the rally, and asked him what he thought of the turn-out for it. He was happy with it but emphasized there's still a ways to go. From then on we discussed my dissapointment with the majority of the white people who are actually from this state, especially those outside of New Orleans.
(yes, this email is politically motivated, you can delete it or email me one on one with your dissapointment in me sending it if you'd like, in the end this state has some serious problems)
The basis of my disspointment was how I felt the majority of this state's double standards that went on and go on in all the small parishes, and even the three bigger parishes, did nothing but leave us in 2007 by technicality alone...we're surprisingly behind the times...hate and ignorance has bred more hate and ignorance so much so I feel at times I'm living in Jim Crow's retirement home and it's quite simply the most backwards state in the union ...and I'm not talking just the continental United States either. (I seriously think we've got Mississippi beat--and that's just because their bigotry is more sophisticated)
Back to the main point of my tale.
So myself and the chap next to me are finding ourselves in good company. He told me I shouldn't just accept that I don't like the way things are here and have my views to just sit there at the bar drinking my original martini...that my lazy self should do something productive about it. True, but damn are those martini's tasty.
Then a couple people walk into the bar and they flip-out over my new friend. I asked him what was up? He told me he was sort of a celebrity. Really? Well who are you, I say. He said his name was Most Def. Later on I found out he spells it Mos Def. Either way I still didn't know who he was but said, "damn, that's cool...nice talking to you."
So yeah, I hang out with Mos Def. We have drinks together at the same bar, we're tight. Check me out.

In ending...god bless america.

[girltrouble]

pugs:

i should also mention, in your post you quote doxy quoting you, and i must correct an error in your reading of the gun situation in jena. the gun situation happened BEFORE the incedent that had the jena 6 charged. it was a one on one situation, where barker verbally harrased a black kid who had been assaulted earler. when the black kid refused to take barker's shit, and pushed barker back, barker went to his care, got a gun and threatened the black kid. the black kid took the gun away, taking the gun with him. the police officer who was called to the scene dismissed barker, but charged the black youth with theft, or some such.

the reason that i find this story so crucial, is that it goes to the UNEQUAL treatment of blacks in jena, and the reason why the jena six is a ralling point for black people. it's not that we condone the jena 6' act, we just want justice to be FAIR, EQUAL AND EVEN for whites and blacks.


oh, and mr.pugs...?


DOOD: YOU ARE A RACIST.

now before you go off in a huff, hear me out....

we all are. i am, you are, the priest at the corner church is. really, i don't care if you are married to a black woman, or you ARE a black woman. you're a racist. just as inspite of my being a male-to-female transexual, living as a female for more than 10 years-- i still have some sexism-- that i need to expunge. and' i'll work on that till the day i die, but i don't delude myself into thinking, i'm not still sexist. by the some token, you're a racist. as are your parents. please don't get all offended cos someone might call you on a racist point of view you might have. because it's not an insult. it's an opportunity for you to learn, for you to rise to the occasion. for you to grow into a slightly better mr. pugs. just as my friends call me on my sexism so i can be a slightly better gt. and incase you were wondering. i've had black friends point out that i've internalized some racism about black folk too. so if i, the trifecta of minority-ness, being a black transexual dyke, can be an occasional sexist, racist, queerphobe, how can you somehow be free of sin? you can't. we all swim in this rotten hateful sewer of american culture. but what we can do is try to grow a little, so that on the day we die, we are better versions of ourselves than were around the day before.

being a white male, your life and experiences have given you a view of the way the world works. can i suggest that that view works because you are a white male? it would not work if you were black, female, asian, or even visually handycapped. the way you have been treated, and how you perceive that treatment, the way you move thru the world are your "baseline." your view of what normal is. you assume that everyone is treated roughly as you are. this is not true. any one of those or any number of groups would get treated very differently based on the social perception in our culture (if you want to add another layer you can add class, but for simplicity's sake, i'll not).

i was listening to angela davis talking, and she ponted out that just because the visual cues of racism are gone, it doesn't mean that the racism is, but because of how we got rid of those visual cues, we have come to believe (wrongly), that the way to get rid of racism is to pretend it doesn't exist, dispite the FACT that the ACTIONS of racism still exist in abundance. racism isn't just nooses hanging from trees, it's opportunities denied, in housing, in occupations, in promotion. it's exclusion from social circles. it's denial of loans. it's house's value being appraised lower, because there is a picture of black folk on a desk. it's my communities being targeted for industrial dumping, because city governments all over this country value their lives less than. it's neighborhoods even here in yankee seattle divided by black businesses (and consumers) on one side of the street, white on the other. its road and electrical repairs being done in the north more quickly than in the south, because the black folk live in the south part of town. it's jacked up re-fi loans offered to black people at a higher rate, and those same black folk losing their houses at a greater rates. it's the way that people in the media infer the recipients of those loans were some how less fit to own homes. it's that banks are less willing to loan black folk money for houses, business, or anything else irregardless of credit history.

in other words: it's this american culture, and so many things that are invisable to you, because you never have to deal with these and other barriers, because you are a white male. and because you are a white male, there is not the social weight, social history, social signifigance of ANY words*, let alone, whitey, honky, wop, or cracker, that will give you an understanding of what the word nigger means when heard by a black ear. you will never know, or feel that pain, that goes thru not just my mind, but thru my bounes and back generations. you will never know the chill that the sight of a noose hung in hatred feels like in your veins. indeed, i am still revolted by the article that GGG posted, suggesting that black teens could be so ignorant of the nooses' implication that he believed they would play with them, as if they had no more significance than a jump rope. the simple assertion makes my blood boil.

but, don't give up. like patrice rushen said, "giving up is giving up."

*that said, calling a white person a racist does give them some measure of pause, for some odd reason



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