8 Tips On How To Avoid...
1. Admit that poverty disproportionately affects Black people, but DO NOT think about why that is.
2. This is not the appropriate time for questions. The appropriate time for questions is when nobody cares anymore.
3. Take anything that has racial implications off the table (try saying something about "not playing the race card"), then make a big deal about how what remains is not racist.
4. All Black people are to be held accountable for the actions of all other Black people.
We White folks are reasonable people after all...If they want our help, all we ask in return is that no Black person ever do anything bad.
5. People who complain just want attention.
And even if they don’t, what’s important for us to talk about is the fact that they’re complaining. DO NOT think about whatever it is that they’re complaining about.
6. George Bush does so care about Black people; after all, he hired two of them!
I have actually heard people say this.
7. It’s their own fault for not leaving New Orleans.
Remember, most Black people in the urban South have cars, gas, large savings accounts, insurance, credit cards with high limits, places to go and several weeks of vacation time that they can take whenever they want.
8. Repeat after me: "I have NO IDEA why a Black person who grew up in an impoverished, segregated environment and had been left to starve to death for five days surrounded by dead bodies wouldn’t trust a white guy running towards him with a gun."
*By the way, did you notice that in his unscripted remarks on the Hurricane Benefit, Kanye West accidentally referred to "the TV" as the "the teacher" in this sentence: "And even for me to complain, I would be a hypocrite because I would turn away from the teach- …the TV because it's too hard to watch." Any thoughts, Freudians?
UPDATE - 9/8
Thought I was making this stuff up? This just came to my attention. Sound familiar? I do have to admit that, after reading numbers 1 through 4, I no longer believe that George Bush personally caused the hurricane. It's good to see that a fair-minded truth-seeker like Stein wouldn’t falsely attribute a totally crazy argument to his opponents just to discredit them. Bueler?
posted by Joe Twist at 10:50 AM
14 Comments:
don't forget to continually call them "refugees"... y'know, to conjure that stock news image of swarming problematic brown people around the globe - never mind that they're citizens within their own damn country.
This is great I'm going to link to it.
Rachel S
brilliant
I'm going to print it and make my students (in Intro to Sociology, Marriage and Family and Gender & Global Perspectives) read it. Also Rachel S.'s additions.
Excellent (but sad) observations.
Kate L.
Can someone post Rachel's additions or at least a URL for them? I'm really curious!
- Joe
ah, google:
http://www.rachelstavern.com/blog_comment.asp?bi=47&m=9&y=2005&d=1&s=
nice observations, joe, as usual.
didn't even notice that freudian slip, either. dude was clearly nervous and speaking extemporaneously, but that's an interesting--and apt--equation nonetheless.
on second view, scratch that "nervous" tag. "emotional" seems like a much better description.
Don't forget the corollary to number 4: We White folks will only help Black people when they ask for it, even if they have no phones, Internet, or passenger pigeons.
Justin that was a really good one.
Rachel S.
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
George Bush does so care about Black people; after all, he hired two of them!
And only one of them quit!
Great work...keep'em coming!
Just so y'all know, the comment I deleted was just spam.
-Joe
"His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile."
-- Umm, it does.
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