Now, this is just stupid.
by Gregory M. Ledet on Jan.12, 2010, under Rants and raves
I just read an article on Discovery.com about some people out there thinking the movie “Avatar” is racist. I believe it started with an article on Essence.com. I’m sorry, but this is just stupid. When are people going to stop looking for racial subtexts in everything? They are saying that because the movie involves a white man that saves the “colored” natives, that it’s racist. James Cameron said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that his film “asks us to open our eyes and truly see others, respecting them even though they are different, in the hope that we may find a way to prevent conflict and live more harmoniously on this world. I hardly think that is a racist message.”
It isn’t racist. The only thing that’s racist about this whole thing is the racist assholes who see it as racist because they can’t look beyond anything else. Annalee Newitz, who is editor for io9.com, has opened her mouth and came out to say “When will whites stop making these movies and start thinking about race in a new way?” Keep in mind that Annalee is white. She has also written a book called “White Trash: Race and Class in America”. Would someone like to explain to me what a lesbian Jew who grew up in California knows about race and racism? Antisemitism? Sure I’ll give her that. Homophobia? She gets that too. Racism? I think not…
Now, back on subject. I’m getting tired of all these people out there that want to say everything is racist. A white man can’t do anything in this day and age without being labeled a racist. I remember back before the Presidential election I was having a conversation with a woman in line at Walmart and the subject of the election came up. When I stated that I was voting for McCain, she immediately stopped talking to me. On my way to the car, the woman passed me in her SUV, rolled down the window, and shouted “RACIST” out the window at me before driving away. I was labeled a racist because of my vote. She never asked “why” I was voting for McCain, or what it was about Obama that I didn’t like, she just assumed that because I was white and I wasn’t voting for the black guy, I must be racist.
I’m not one of those people that have a lot of “white guilt”. In fact, I don’t have any “white guilt”. I never owned slaves. My parents didn’t either. Neither did my grandparents, their parents, or their parents. No one that is reading this was ever a slave. Neither were your parents or your grand parents. It’s time to get over this bullshit people. We are HUMAN BEINGS. Sure, we have out differences and sure, we say mean things about others at times, but why does it have to do with race? If I said “you know, Joe is a thief” and Joe was white, it would be fine. If Joe was black, I’d be making some sort of racist comment.
Over the weekend it came out that Harry Reid (D – Nevada), our Senate Majority Leader, said of then-candidate Obama that he “believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a ‘light-skinned’ African American with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one”. HOLY SHIT! The best part about it? Because he’s a liberal, no one cared. The Congressional Black Caucus laughed it off. If Mitch McConnell had said that, they would be asking not just for his resignation, but his head on a spike.
I don’t believe in these double standards, and I don’t believe that everything is racist. Hell, I bet some of you are reading this and thinking “Wow, Greg’s a racist!”. Well, I’m not. I’m human, and I don’t have to sit here and prove to you just how not-racist I am. Yes, there’s tons of racism in America today, but I want someone to admit that it goes both ways. Last year, 12 people were arrested in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana in connection with hate crimes that were committed in the local jail. These were black men committing a hate crime against white men. Around the same time, 2 white men in the neighboring Louisiana Parish (Terrebonne) had hate-crime charges against them resuscitated following pressure from the local NAACP. They had the charges dropped because the defendant didn’t show up in court for the trial, so the prosecution had no witness. But because the NAACP started shit, they DA filed the charges again, the case went to court, and they were found guilty. But that wasn’t good enough. Civil-rights groups protested because they said the judge was too lenient in his sentencing. That’s not why I brought this up though. The Southern Poverty Law Center keeps track of all hate incidents in the US. They didn’t post anything on the one about the 12 people arrested in Lafourche Parish, but gave the Terrebonne Parish case tons of publicity. I know they knew about the Lafourche parish case too, because I brought it to their attention on more than one occasion. The SPLC’s reply? There’s no such thing as a hate crime perpetrated by a black person against a white person. Ain’t that some shit? Oh, and don’t get me started on Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the Harvard professor that cried foul after he was arrested for suspicious behavior…
People, we’re all human beings. We all bleed red and we all die one day. Let’s get past this whole skin color issue and move on to more important things. There is way too much time and effort wasted on stupidity here.
