Best Not to Say It

When I wrote the entry on racism and double-standards earlier, it was in response to a piece I'd read in The Comics Journal about the Muslim outrage over the cartoons which ran in some Danish newspapers a while back. I had not seen tonight's Scarborough Country, where they tackled the JV and Elvis firings.

He had one black man, John Ridley - whom I think is another news personality - and one white man who was a media analyst.

And it hit the fan.

Now, I want to go through this to make the finer points that almost no one but me will actually stand up and make:

Notice, first off, that regardless of whatever position, job, or qualifications this young, black man has to be a spokesperson on this issue, he doesn't really need it/them. Every last one of us read that last sentence and thought: "Who the hell is the white guy?" In other words, this young, black man is qualified to speak on racism because he is black; he needs no further qualifications.

But I liked most of what the guy had to say until the obvious came out toward the end - and no, he wasn't led into it, nor was he baited - read on. He openly dismissed Al Sharpton completely, and made a good point about how JV and Elvis went on what amounted to a four-minute attack against a real, regular, working person, where Don Imus and some of the others mentioned (including Rosie O'Donnell, who made even more racially-insensitive comments against Asians than Tha Doghouse and apologized profusely for having done so a few days later) were talking in general or to people who did not exist or could not hear them, such as the female basketball players who were on tape.

But then we got to Oprah Winfrey. I hadn't heard about this one: Oprah said her grandmother told her she hoped one day Oprah would have "some good white people working for her," and Oprah said that even though she died in 1963, her grandmother would have been proud to know that she eventually did get some good white people to work for her. And the white guy said he felt that Oprah gets away with a lot of stuff others don't just because she's Oprah - not because she's black - because she's the daytime talk show queen.

And John Ridley disagreed. Stringently.

Shock and awe!

John Ridley did not feel Oprah was talking about racial issues (REALLY?), but about how much she has accomplished. He then noted that the only people who were offended by her remarks were "a bunch of white guys who could see their lily-white empire crumbling." REALLY, John Ridley? REALLY? He then said that - and these are my words and not his, even though this is exactly what he was saying - it was fair for her to say these things because she's black and black people can say things like that because of all the suffering they have been through with slavery.

Now, I'm no more proud of slavery in our nation's history than anyone else is or should be, but let's be honest: slavery was an issue before America was even discovered. Rome was built by slave labor, as was Greece. Slaves were taken since the Dawn of Man - they were taken as prisoners of war, forced into service as indentured servants for owed money, and so on and so forth.

That black people were enslaved had almost nothing to do with the color of their skin - it had to do with their African culture. They had no written language, they had no written history, they had never conquered any other peoples or lands outside their own; other, primarily white, cultures did not respect them as a people, not because they were black. They thought of them as barbaric and were able to enslave them because they possessed greater technology (ships and firearms, to be precise).

Further, some African tribes sold their slaves to white men, That's a very important point to make because it says that Africans took slaves of their conquered enemies, just like the Greeks did, just as the Romans did - just as... well, we'd best not say that.

That they were dark-skinned only made them easier to identify, but there were other dark-skinned peoples in those times - even black people from Africa - who attained rather high stations in "white" society, notably Moors.

The American black community is woefully uninformed as to the history of their own race and culture, yet they use a very limited piece of it to justify all sorts of discriminatory and openly racist practices against others in America. Black people in other countries generally do not do this, not because they are any less black, but because they do not share the American historical association with slavery. And again, I'm taking nothing away from America's history of slavery: it was a bad thing and a dark period in our shared history.

But it is a shared history.

For instance, my people were eradicated - a near total genocide. A very few of them still live on government reservations, where the "foreigners who built this land" graciously sent them when they, you know, built this land. Wasn't that good of them?

The way I see it, some 150 years later, there are still a whole lot of black Americans around and none of them work on plantations. There are far fewer American Indians and almost all of them live on reservations. Both are tragedies, but one group made out slightly better than the other.

Too bad no one has the balls to say it...

Once again, all I'm suggesting is that it's a bad - and very American - thing to be biased against anyone for the color of their skin or race, no matter what that color or race may be. What black Americans are saying is that it's okay for them to be dismissive of others' race, culture, and heritage because they are "owed" that privilege.

So what privilege are the American Indians owed? How about all the Irish and Chinese who built the railroads across this nation that helped make us a world power? What about the French who helped us defend this land against the British during the Revolutionary War - aren't they owed something? Let's go a little further back: aren't the Chinese owed something for the first written history, for pottery and ceramics? The Greeks for Astronomy, Democracy, and Philosophy? I mean, how far back do we go before we finally get to the point where we don't owe someone something for some contribution they made to the betterment of the world as a whole?

American slavery was a terrible period in our shared history, but we don't owe black Americans anything for it anymore than we owe the Greeks for their contributions to society, or the French for their help in defending our independence, or anyone else for anything else. What we owe one another is simple respect. And don't even lean back on the old, "Respect is earned," saw because that's not the kind of respect I'm talking about: I mean the basic, human respect everyone deserves: the right to not be worried about being offended by someone else every time we turn on the TV, radio, or walk down the street.

No, it isn't cut-and-dried, and yes, it is very easy to take it too far and end up flying right in the face of Democracy and individual freedom, but there is some pleasant medium somewhere. We just have to be willing to look for it. And we are not going to find it by giving some groups the rights to oppress and offend others, nor by "just letting it all hang out."