(this is at least a couple of months old. Just bear with me.)
A new term has come to my attention that describes the supposed unintentional bigotry by people who don’t know that they’re doing it. It’s called “unconscious racism,” and we need to nip this in the bud right now.
Don’t invent words to excuse people who get caught tucking in their Klan robes. I don’t know how long this term has been around, but it popped up in my life during “Paula Zahn Now,” while she was covering this mess at Clemson with that party with the white kids dressed like “black people.” This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of this happening, but there’s smoke in the city right now, mainly because white people are doing damage control before black people really get started.
The white kids claim that they didn’t know that they were offending anyone. I’ve tried to claim that I didn’t know that women don’t like to have their breasts fondled and called “chesticles” at work, but that doesn’t mean anyone believed it. It’s why I’m out of a job now. And if I had to go down for that, then some spoiled white kids should have to do the same for making elaborate black jokes when there are no black people around.
And that’s one of the reasons why I know that they knew what they were doing. They saw to it that there would be no black people there. Claiming ignorance is like claiming that you didn’t know that Indian people don’t like it when you push the red dot on their foreheads. Punjab isn’t going to be any happier with you than Leroy is.
If you didn’t know that you were going to offend someone, why did you do it on Martin Luther King’s birthday? You couldn’t have thought that we were going to be happy about the whole thing. And if you did, I guess Clemson has lower admissions standards than I thought. Only a person who regularly eats paste could be that stupid.
And even throwing all of that out of the window, let’s be real here. You are grown-ass college students. You go to a major university. There are black people there and chances are, these aren’t the first black people you’ve ever met. Some of you have caught the beating of a lifetime after saying the word “nigger.” So you know better. If you know why you shouldn’t say “nigger,” then you know not to dress up like that where they can see you. By planning, throwing, and attending that party, you have said more about who you really are than your half-ass apologies ever could. If you weren’t bigoted in some way, you wouldn’t have even been there. You would have thought to yourself, “this is some racist bullshit,” and stayed your ass at home.
But that’s not what you did. You and all your cracker-white friends got together, put on some “urban wear,” stuffed your flat-backsides with pillows to add some shape to your body, and one of you even had the nerve to dress up in blackface. You probably talked in slang and played rap music the whole night. And it was jolly good fun, wasn’t it?
The ironic part is, you really do listen to our music, wear our clothes, subvert our culture, wish that you had big dicks and shapely asses, full lips, curly hair, rhythm, and darker skin. You wish that your people were viewed as the purveyors of what is “cool.” You wish that your people weren’t viewed as the cause of all that’s wrong in this world. You wish that you could say the “n-word.”
Well, for one night, you got your wish. If there was any real justice, you’d get dealt with as harshly as we would if the shoe was on the other foot. If there was any real justice, you’d get the kind of punishment that a gang of us would have gotten if we had showed up at that party and saw what your asses were up to.
Here’s a tip for next time you want to express your “unconscious racism:” Don’t take pictures and post them on a website. That’s just asking for trouble.
“Unconscious racism.” That’s about as ridiculous as “trustworthy Catholic priest,” or “rock music that you can dance to.” Or, of course, “daylights.”
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