We're Not Post Racial By a Long Shot

I keep hearing about how "post racial" the US is, and I always shake my head. First of all, if people feel such a need to point it out, it probably isn't true. It's like going on and on about how much you don't care about your ex. Secondly, Obama is our first black President. He's also white, but he's our first black President, and you hear about it all the time. Not exactly post racial.

Anyway, my husband just related a story to me that made me sad, and showed how much of a lie "post racial America" really is. My husband has been making some money recording a local rapper*. (All the rappers in this story are black, just so I don't have to keep saying it.) It's a friend-of-a-friend situation, and my husband discovered that recording rappers is significantly easier than recording bands, and he gets to use the beats he likes to write so much but can't use in his own music.

Word of mouth has gotten my husband a few more rappers to record and they stopped by the house to meet him this morning. One of them stuck out his hand, and my husband automatically shook it. One of them said, "I was a little 'I dunno' about a white guy recording rap, but you're good people."

My husband couldn't figure out what he meant, so he asked.

"Oh, white people usually don't want to shake my hand. Like it's catching or something."

That's really sad. I can't imagine going through life with people refusing to touch you because of the colour of your skin. I was always taught that handshakes are irrefusable, though women don't get asked to shake hands as much as men do. I was taught, as was my husband, that even if you just watched the other person sneeze on that hand, you shake it. To do otherwise is to offer a level of contempt only applicable to Hitler or Stalin. Seriously, we tried to figure out whose hands we wouldn't shake and that's what we came up with.

A lot of people apparently add "black men" to that list.

*I'm not exactly certain if that's called "hip hop" or "rap" these days (get off my lawn!), but they refer to themselves as "rappers", so I'm going with it. They're also all my age, if that helps any.

MLK Day Race Fail

Racefails, aren't they awesome?

My 11 year old niece was aghast when she discovered that I was working on Martin Luther King Day. "How can you work on Martin Luther King Day?! He had a dream and then he gave a speech and that got rid of racism!" Yeah, so we need to have a talk* (with the school board about their curriculum), but at least she has a basic understanding of what MLK was about. Racism. Ending it. I'll take what I can get from 11 year olds.

C. Jane, however, is not 11. So this racefail is not excusable.

If this holiday is all about having a dream, I'd like to declare mine: I have a dream where I get a private audience with Mormon writer Emma Lou Thayne. We'd have tea and readings. Tea and readings--doesn't that sound nice?

No, Martin Luther King Day is not about having a dream. And even if it were, his dream was for equality and opportunity and an end to bigotry and racism. Your dream is to drink tea with someone. Martin Luther King, Jr. spent time in jail to achieve that dream. He suffered terribly, he sacrificed greatly and then he died for it.

And you fucking want tea.

Thus answering the question of how much of a self-indulgent spleen weasel one can be. From now on, we will refer to being truly self absorbed as cjane. As in, "Yeesh, what a cjane he is!" or "How cjane can you be?"

*I tried to explain about nonviolent resistance, but as she said, if that worked why are we always at war? I sputtered something about Ghandi and then went to cry for lost innocence somewhere private. (The bathroom.)