I figure if I can’t do anything else, we’ll always have Tuesdays.

First off, two assignments, for anyone desiring a heaping spoonful of my undying love.
1. Make my computer automatically download the free iTunes Single of the Week. (my Automator skillz are weak, but it’s probably possible for a non-dummy)
2. Make me a portable media device speaker that looks like a freaking boombox. I want to put my player in the part where a cassette tape would be and put it on my shoulder and stroll through the hood b-girl syle. Eff that, I want it to play tapes too. And want it to have an aux. in, and I want it to run on D-cells or and AC adapter or a DC adapter… then I can play it out of the trunk of my nonexistent car for impromptu breakdance and/or cipher sessions. And I want it to charge said player while plugged in. Those are my specs. Now get on it.

Now, let me preface the following by saying that I love my people, but sometimes I hate watching my people on the news. I can’t completely discount the theory that newscasters deliberately seek out the most foolish looking characters to interview and put on TV, even if it is generally the foolish ones that hang around when stuff is going down. That being said, this cat has a blog dedicated to capturing these moments in one location for the world to browse. There are only two up right now, the infamous Bubb Rubb and my new favorite, the Alabama Leprechaun. When I say the Alabama Leprechaun is my favorite, I mean this is the funniest shit I have ever seen in my entire life. I thought it was a lost Chappelle episode or something.

Black People in the News

Last but not least, XtremeMac has produced a very familiar-looking speaker system, the Tango. Fast, aren’t they? It also looks like XtremeMac is the first to make a voice recorder for 5Gs. If only they’d come out two weeks sooner, I could have made someone’s life a little easier. Oh well. Maybe she’ll stumble across my blog.

FYI: As of 6:30 this evening, internet service at my apartment was turned back on. I’m still writing my feature in the paper, though.

Right about now I suppose Tuesday’s edition of the University Times is rolling off the presses and onto campus… with my first published article inside! It’s a Viewpoint article for the pro side of priority registration. Having spent every semester prior to this one registering like, a day before 2nd semester seniors (man, I miss the Park), it’s a topic that I felt I could speak on with some expertise.

So Creative Loafing has the honor of hosting my first published anything ever (a letter to the editor in response to an article) and the UT has my first real article. I know that this is an awfully late start for someone who claims to want to be a writer, but I’m just a late bloomer, that’s all.

White People’s Burden Robert Jensen, Alternet.com

I don’t really have a comment on the article; it very eloquently and succinctly says everything that needs to be said. I do have comments on the 500-odd comments that have already been posted to the article. It’s just sad and funny to me. What some people refuse to admit is that there exist (or they may be) “semi-racists.” They might not burn crosses in my front lawn, but they’ll tell a racist joke. They’re the frat guys who study with you for a Psych test, but have a “Dirty Mexican” party at their house on the weekend. The guy who has a black buddy at work, but see how quick he’ll call his daughter’s black boyfriend a nigger. They are the reason why my grandfather would rather deal with the most racist of southern Rednecks before putting too much confidence in your typical liberal yuppie, because at least you KNOW what the redneck is thinking.

But white Americans have a problem with that, presumably because the majority of them enjoy their white privilege very much and don’t want the uncomfortable guilty feelings of knowing that the profits of subjugation and slavery didn’t just vanish in the sixties. I mean, think about it: the people who grew up in Jim Crow are our parents. Do you really think the playing field has been leveled that quickly?

Of course not, but that is what the majority of whites would rather believe, because they have the luxury of being able to. Condoleeza Rice may be the only black person of note in this country with the (lack of) balls to regurgitate that line. On to the commentary:

“Mentioning race doesn’t mean you’re racist!”

No, it does not. Trust, if anyone knows this, I do, and I’ve already covered it in a previous post. However, when you are telling a story or whatever and introduce people’s ethnicities, although they have nothing to do with the context of the story, it means something. It means that you want your audience to know the races of the people in the story because you want them to bring their predefined sterotypes with them in painting that mental picture you’re trying to make. If I were to say, “I was in the grocery store and this lady with three kids tried to bogard in front of me in line…” You would see it one way. If I said, “this Mexican lady with three kids…” that adds a whole other layer of meaning, because why would I have to point out that the lady was Mexican, unless there was some sort of a background there? How do I know that the lady is Mexican anyway (as opposed to Puerto Rican, Panamanian…)?

Which brings up our next point: I get so irritated hearing people call each and every hispanic person they see “Mexican.” It’s stupid. It shows a complete lack of respect for a person’s origins. I hate to say it, but it’s also derogatory in the context in which many people use it, because our racist-ass American POV says Mexicans are lazy and dirty and can’t speak English and are over here illegally anyway. So that’s the brush with which not only all Mexican people, but all hispanic people in general, are painted. If someone repeatedly referred to me as Trini, and I know my butt has never seen Trinidad, I’d be annoyed. I’d be especially annoyed if the stereotype was that all Trinidadians steal and lie. Maybe I’ll start calling random white people Slavs. Or Ruskies.

“But why should minorities get first dibs on jobs and scholarships? That’s not equality!”

Okay… how did George Bush get into Yale? Not on his academic merit, I’m sure. He was a legacy. How many black, hispanic, Asian, or Native American legacies are there at… most universities? Hell, minorities couldn’t piss at most universities until a generation ago. Affirmative action negates the unfair advantage that white people have (by virtue of their simply being white) by forcing minorities into certain slots. A black person who made a 700 on the SAT is not going to get into college above a white person’s 1500, but a black person with a 1500 might. Is that fair? Arguably no, but it’s definitely not fair that the white kid got an automatic subconscious bonus point when he walked through the door. Affirmative action gives minorities that same bonus point, both figuratively and quite literally. Last year, the Young Republicans on UNCC’s campus had an “affirmative action” bake sale, where they sold cookies to white people for $1, and to minorites for 50, 25 cent, or for free. The NAACP or the BSU had a rebuttal sale, but they didn’t do it right, either. A REAL affirmative action bake sale would be for the NAACP to buy the flour, sugar, chocolate chips, the stove, and everything else out of their budget, spend all night baking all the cookies, put them in bags, and then give them to the white kids to sell at 100% profit. That’s how the world gets down.

So I’ve wasted about an hour of work time, talking to the air on topics of nothingness, because no one who needs to wake the heck up ever will. Racists and their undercover brothers will continue to rampage on the defense and make excused for themselves, and those who demand better will continue to be accused of “playing the race card.” What can I say? I’m a feminist and a black advocate… best of both worlds, huh?

I skipped class this morning, and I feel antsy. Just some thoughts.

From Sheehan Arrested During Anti-War Protest (San Francisco Chronicle)

“I would like to say to Cindy Sheehan and her supporters: Don’t be a group of unthinking lemmings,” said Mitzy Kenny of Ridgeley, W.Va., whose husband died in Iraq last year. She said the anti-war demonstrations “can affect the war in a really negative way. It gives the enemy hope.”

Bitch, shut up. Are you being an unthinking lemming with your support of the war, tagging the bullshit line of voicing discontent “gives the enemy hope?” Why is it so difficult for some people to have a difference of opinion without denigrating those they disagree with? I mean, I’ve been holding back in saying that people who still support the war are somehow dumb or just unwilling to admit that they’re wrong (although they are) and considering that maybe they just see things a different way. Other people should do the same. Or the… contrapositive of that.

D’Angelo Critically Injured in Car Crash (Rolling stone)

The heck? Didn’t he just get his sentence suspended last week? What sad irony. I don’t know what Angie Stone did to turn him out to crack in the first place, but I hope he survives and is okay… maybe he’ll have a “Through the Wire” life-changing experience a’la Kanye.

So Nip/Tuck comes on tonight. Spectacular yes.

Well, at least we know now where Little Georgie gets it from.

“In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: ‘Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we’re going to move to Houston.’

‘And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this—this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.’

I think I should stop reading Susan’s blog because clearly I get way too riled up. It’s not that I’m surprised at what people say; I’m just surprised at what some people have the balls to say in public. I suppose it only illustrates how classist and inconsiderate a lot of people must be, when these kinds of comments aren’t even criticized or given a second thought before or after being said.

What I really don’t get is how dumb the American people must be that we allow politicians to “spin” this kind of crap in another direction. There are still people who won’t admit that this devastating non-response isn’t in any way connected to class or race. How can you ignore that? If we as a nation would simply admit our faults and failures, we could at least begin to try to work on them. But everyone wants to sweep that kind of unpleasantness under the rug. Sometimes I feel like I’d rather us just go back to the overt discrimination of the pre-Civil Rights Era, because at least then you knew who your enemies were, and you couldn’t fool yourself into believing that you had none. At least then the little people knew that we had to stick together and support each other because no one else would.

Maybe that’s the lesson that we can take out of this whole ordeal: we’ve let ourselves be misled into thinking that we actually have a seat at the great American table, when all along we’ve only been getting glorified table scraps. People get a little something and move on up and out of the community, leaving the masses behind. What happened to the systems we created for ourselves? What happened to the communities we built to sustain us when the powers that be were fully against us? Why did all of that go away? Sometimes I feel that honestly that the race I’m a part of, that the class I’m a part of, are no better off today than we were 20, 30 years ago. Black is still black and the working middle class still gets fucked.

God Bless the USA.