Do you know what I discovered? Can we all agree that it is time for us to stop pretending, that since electing a black president, we are living in a post-racial era? We’ve come a long way as a nation (hallelujah!), but between the virulent racist attacks against Cheerios recently for producing a commercial featuring an interracial family and the Paula Deen debacle, it is painfully clear that we’ve still got a long way to go because this shit is centuries old and layers deep.
Little girl from Cheerios’ interracial family commercial
Personally, I would like to recommend a country-wide field trip to see the musical: Avenue Q. We need only stay for the one song sung by the Asian character and then go immediately to our churches, synagogues, mosques, or therapists to repent of the fact that no one amongst us can afford to throw stones because we all live in glass houses which cover a history of saying racist things at one time or another about each other (either cluelessly or with full-blown hatred—yeah, I’m talking to you my ex-friend with your Tea Party bias who claims you don’t have a racist bone in your body, but who called a certain race “diaper heads” that you regularly work with and expected me to chuckle over it as if doing so gave us a common bond of disdain as your one black friend with your Tea Party bias).
“Everyone’s a little bit racist sometimes.
Doesn’t mean we go around committing hate crimes.
Look around and you will find no one’s really color blind.
Maybe it’s a fact we all should face
Everyone makes judgments based on race.”
By Lyricists: Robert Lopez, Jeff Marx from Avenue Q
You see, even though I despise what Paula Deen has been accused of, I’ve been wrestling with my own racist demons just this past few months. Without making matters worse by naming the people group I’m currently having issues with, let’s just say that I have managed to rid myself of most of my prejudices (knocked out my bigotry toward white people by marrying one thirty-four years ago—nothing solves racial ignorance like getting to know, love, and understand the people you were stupid about in the first place). But there is one race that drives me nuts and partially because I know they have horrid prejudices towards African-Americans of which I’m constantly running into. Unfortunately, I’m very much in love with my white man so I can’t divorce him and marry one of them just to get over my budding racial ugliness.
“Can’t we all just get along” from shelversanon.blogspot.com
The stereotype of the people group that I’m struggling with think I’m stupid, that my skin color is a curse from God, and that I’m going to rob their businesses on any given Sunday. My stereotype of them is that they’re cheap; they hate black people, and many of them have bought up all the dry cleaners in America giving me no other tetrachloroethylene (dry-cleaning fluid) alternatives but theirs. My stereotypes are trying to take anchor because I’ve had to change dry cleaners three times in the last ten years and I’m pissed. The first dry cleaners lost my designer jacket and refused to pay up until I threatened to call the po-po, the second one shrank my silk blouse down to the size of a Barbie doll and refused to be accountable, telling me “it because you get fat—that why garment no fit” (oh, no she didn’t!), and the third one overcharged me four times the amount for a hemming job and hoped I wouldn’t notice (as if!).
I’m now on my fourth dry cleaner and in my effort to not let these ugly stereotype take up residence in my head and heart, I’ve gone out of my way to befriend the owners (a young couple) and their seamstress mother when I pick up WW’s shirts every week. It is working. We engage in delightful chit-chat and the service they provide is excellent. I’ve got no complaints. In fact everything was great for 18 months until a new relative came to America and started working in the store. I could tell by the way she greeted me, that she did not like black people. She wouldn’t even look me in the eyes or speak to me even after my many effusive greetings. I know that she can make eye-contact, smile, and speak English because she does so to the white customers who come in behind me. (I’ve tested my theory several times by sending WW in my place and she has been quite pleasant with him.)
After putting up with this ‘tude for three months, I confronted the new dry-cleaner assistant: “What is your problem? You are refusing to understand and follow my instructions, and you’re costing me time and money! I keep getting my dry cleaning back with stains on them because you don’t mark them as per my instructions in the beginning. You skimp on the laundry marking tape. Stop being so cheap with the god-damn laundry tape!” At that point, she looked and me and rolled her eyes and said: “No, you no understand; this is process—you get one tiny piece of sticky tape (about an eighth of an inch) for entire garment—no more for you!” Then she said something in her language that could not have been good given the intensity, walked back to her station, and angrily sorted through clothes.
(Jesus, please help my sorry-ass. I’m getting ready to declare war over sticky laundry-marking tape.)
There you have it—my own laundry soup-Nazi. I suffer the same angst as Jerry Seinfeld and Elaine did in their soup-Nazi episodes every time I enter that dry cleaning establishment, and I’ve tried to solve the situation by still being nice as possible—plus I only go to the dry cleaners at the times of the day I know the owners will be there to wait on me. They still treat me with great respect and give me plenty of laundry marking tape. I’m making a choice to see my nemesis as a “one-off” rude person—no more representative of her race as a black person robbing her store is of mine.
***
But how am I to solve the problem I have with Paula Deen whom I really liked and was so proud of her accomplishments as a woman. Oh Paula, Paula, Paula . . .
PAULA DEEN’S ALLEGED SINS: “For instance: admitting that she has used ‘the N word’ (in her and the lawyer’s words)–‘of course,’ and probably on more than one occasion. Defending telling racial and ethnic jokes: ‘it’s just what they are—they’re jokes.’ And wishing she could plan a “Southern plantation wedding” for her brother, with African American servers in the part of antebellum slaves. (Deen reportedly didn’t go through with that idea because, you know, ‘the media’ would have twisted it into something. Those media! Always turning folks’ innocent plantation-slave parties into something racist!*)”—By James Poniewozik||Less Than Accidental Racist: Why Paula Deen’s Comments Insult Her Fans Too||Times Entertainment
*PAULA DEEN’S ALLEGED COMMENT ABOUT THE PLANTATION WEDDING: “Well what I would really like is a bunch of little n!**ers to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties, you know in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around,” the lawsuit claims Deen said. “Now that would be a true southern wedding, wouldn’t it? But we can’t do that because the media would be on me about that.”—by breakingbrown.com
…then again sometimes it is not!
I am discovering (surprisingly so) that I think The Food Network jumped the gun by firing Paula Deen without letting the court case play out until the end. My husband, who is white, thinks they didn’t fire her fast enough. WW says:
“In this day and age, whether you’re twenty or ninety, you should have gotten the memo, and you should know the answer as to whether to use the ‘N’ word or not. (And don’t get me started on Hollywood, comics, rappers/hip-hoppers—because they don’t get a pass for artistic license in my book.) Given the disdain, contempt, and degradation associated with that word, I think it should be eradicated from our vocabulary—period!) If I were on the board of directors of The Food Network, I’d have no choice but to fire her butter-laden ass. Anyway, she has already used up two strikes with me by hiding the fact that her recipes allegedly caused her Type II Diabetes while still peddling her recipes of butter on butter topped off by butter.”—by “WW” Tomczyk
Cartoonist: Mike Luckovich
***
I am also discovering that I think we should forgive Paula Deen because she has repented (albeit, extremely clumsily) and “to err is human, to forgive, divine.” And even though I don’t consider myself to be a racist, I know that I fall short of the glory of God to love my neighbors as myself on a consistent basis, and I’m really, really trying! Can you imagine how many trip-wires this old woman, who still thinks the Civil War was the “war of Northern aggression,” must be stumbling over? I don’t mean that Paula shouldn’t suffer the consequences. We all have to take responsibility for our actions. I suggest that the Food Network and other corporations suspend Paula for a season until she understands that she was supposed to be representing the “new South” and part of her charm was to comfort us with her fatty-ass foods while letting go of the shitty hatred cloaked in cluelessness and racial stupidity (Don’t you just love Paula’s alleged answer as to the reasoning for using the ‘N’ word throughout the years: “. . . it was sometimes used with affection”—please Paula, don’t love me so much, you’re killing me!”).
Next, I’d make Paula go on Oprah and let Oprah act as our national conscience and walk her over spiritual “hot coals” like she did to James Frey for lying to her. (By the way, this is how I know that Paula knows that her use of the ‘N’ word is wrong: she never used it publicly about Oprah and to Oprah and Oprah’s best friend, Gail, when they visited Paula at her home and helped make Paula and her enterprise a household word. I know this because Oprah and Gail would have bitch-slapped Paula into the 7th level of Dante’s Inferno and we’d all be saying—“Paula? Paula who?” right now.) Finally, after due season, I’d let her return to her TV show(s) with new low-calorie recipes and a new serving up of southern charm and grace without hidden ugliness. We all have a God-given destiny, Paula, and part of it is to spread the true love of God around like thick butter on homemade biscuits but not spread the sins of our fathers. This is your wake-up call, girlfriend.
“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”—John Stuart Mill
“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”—Bell Hooks
“He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.”—Thomas Fuller
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