Another Reason Why You're Racist

You gotta love the Daily Kos, where all the liberal fruitcakes find a welcome environment. Recently they ran a post entitled "You might be a racist if....." and compiled a list of indicators that proves people dislike non-whites. The sad thing is, they're serious. As a heart attack.

Some examples from the post--my own parenthetic snark has been added for comedic relief:

You are oblivious to "white privilege". (Because all whites are born rich and get everything handed to them. I'm proof.)

You have to build your own compound in North Idaho because the rest of North Idaho is not "White" enough for you. (A true racist would live in South Idaho.)

You still insist president Obama is from Kenya. (This has not been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It says so on the Internet.)

You still refer to Mexicans as beaners. (I prefer wetbacks, actually.)

You think racism is a thing of the past OR that any brown person who objects to your lovely unkind generalization about brown people is themselves racist against white people -- because unfortunately you are not sure what racism is. (Wow. That's a lot of words in one sentence. You must have gone to college.)

You indicate "some of my best friends are . . ." (Retarded? Indian? Republican? This means nothing.)

You continually say, "I hate rap and hip hop. It's not music." (Oh, so if dislike something mainly performed by black people, that means I hate black people? This argument makes no sense.)

And now let's add one more item to the list. If you enjoy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, you might be a racist.

Some wetback school principal in Oregon--ooops, I'm sorry, a Mexican-American school principal in Oregon--came up with this one.

I'll tell ya....I cannot put into my own words what Verenice Gutierrez, the principal at Harvey Scott K-8 School, says, so I'm just going to quote a chunk of the article. To wit:


"Verenice Gutierrez picks up on the subtle language of racism every day.

Take the peanut butter sandwich, a seemingly innocent example a teacher used in a lesson last school year. 'What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?' says Gutierrez, principal at Harvey Scott K-8 School, a diverse school of 500 students in Northeast Portland’s Cully neighborhood. 'Another way would be to say: "Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?" Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.'

Guitierrez, along with all of Portland Public Schools’ principals, will start the new school year off this week by drilling in on the language of 'Courageous Conversations,' the district-wide equity training being implemented in every building in phases during the past few years. Through intensive staff trainings, frequent staff meetings, classroom observations and other initiatives, the premise is that if educators can understand their own “white privilege,” then they can change their teaching practices to boost minority students’ performance."

In other words, what you eat, whether you realize it or not, makes you a racist, and makes children cry.

(Also, in a continuing example of our crumbling education system, teachers have to learn how they themselves are awful for being white in order to properly teach the non-white. The future is in good hands!)

Now you know, you racist, peanut-butter eating cracker. Shame on you for being alive. I bet you use white bread, too. Typical. You should only use wheat bread to prove your racial sensitivity; either that or use torta. Or pita.

I'm not sure how much racism still exists in our country. The left keeps racism alive by telling us how racist we are depending on how we think or act, and there's something wrong with that. Is it part of a thought-control effort, do they hate America, or are they just trying to get stuff?

So remember this list as you prepare for your day, and for God's sake pack your peanut butter and jelly sandwich in a racially non-specific carrying container. Do not use a brown paper bag.

Richard Nixon, Jack Benny, and Barrack Obama Walk into a Bar

It's hard not to chuckle when Greg Gutfeld and his Fox News Red Eye team flash "Obama-geddon-care-o-gate" on the TV when the president's health law comes up for discussion. I'm frankly surprised that the right wing hasn't officially added the suffix "Gate" to Obamacare by now, considering the lies upon lies, the incompetence, and the overall disaster of the ACA.

I've been a student of the original "gate" scandal, Water, for some time. The reveal of Deep Throat was a Watergate fan's Superbowl--finally, we knew the whole story. I'm also a collector of old time radio shows from the Golden Age of broadcasting, and many of my recordings were taken from broadcast replays in the 1970s. So what does Obamacare, Richard Nixon, and old time radio have in common?

I was listening to an episode of the Jack Benny show the other night, and often with those '70s replays, whoever recorded the show let the tape run longer than the actual problem, and the station went into a top-of-the-hour news update after the show ended. The reporter read a set of headlines, mostly concerning Watergate, which was exploding. Among the breaking news, the reporter quoted experts who said the fate of the country hinged on the outcome of the scandal. We had never faced anything like it. Did the Constitution properly detail how such a situation should be handled, or would we have to create new rules to deal with the aftermath? Would Nixon resign or be impeached? You could cut the uncertainty and fear with a knife. Thirty years later, listening to this in my bedroom, it added a dimension to the Nixon scandal that shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. I can tell you the facts of the Watergate scandal and how it ended, but I could never fill the in-between real-time gaps where the country, at the height of the scandal, had no idea what would happen, or how we would carry on.

As I watch the continuing developments of Obamacare and the seemingly dismantling of the U.S.A.; listen to the nail-chewing worry of the right wing; the pessimism of my friends; my own thoughts about how we're finished; I find myself listening again and again to that news broadcast. The fear is the same.

I can't see thirty years in the future, but I know one thing: we've survived The Worst before. Like Gerald Ford said, the system works. There are other non-political elements that suggest, to me, it's a harder battle this time (that's another column) but the system indeed worked, and, in an ironic twist, Nixon lived long enough to become a respected elder statesman, and the nation mourned his passing as if Watergate had never happened (which shocked liberals from one end of the country to another). Back in 1992 my high school Republican buddies and I had a joke: "He's tanned, rested, and ready--Nixon in '92!" We were criticized by one of our older teachers of making light of a horrible period in this nation's history, and I can only imagine that thirty years from now I might say the same thing to a kid who makes an Obama joke, and he's going to wonder why I'm making such a fuss.

Some of you are going to say that I don't get it. This is the Last Stand. If we fail here, we're history. I'm not saying you're wrong, and I don't mean we should stop fighting because "it's all going to work out" or some "hopeful" garbage like that. What I mean is we need to consider history in how we approach the battle, and we need the confidence of history as we press our counterattack. Chicken Little need not be a part of the team. We have enough trouble with John Boner (ooops, I mean Boehner), John McCain, Karl Rove, and the rest of the GOP Establishment who have no interest in fighting, and are actually working against us. We may be surrounded, but at least we know where the enemy is. That narrows things down a bit.