Take 1
An open fire. Hot dogs and sausages to roast. S'mores - or just the chocolate. Ice cream and homemade deserts. Tye dyed shirts - and then tye-dyed people. Card Games. Wii. "Oral S- .... - urgery!" Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein. Sir William Thatcher. "Hellen Keller always wins!" Michael Jackson and bleach - - - we can be ironic when we wanna be. 20-something friends dressed in black, crashing and leaving a pet mouse in their ninja-mysterious wake.
Take 2
An open fire. Every person in sight with a drink in hand. Every breeze a breath of stale alcohol. Unnecessary violence for unknown reasons. Boisterous talk of hypothetical sex-capades. Laughter. Cuddles. Lapses in memory and/or self. Sitting in the dark with good friends, listening to good music. Alcohol-induced petit mal siezures. Vomit. First-aid training first-hand.
Who is to be found wanting?
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
And people wonder why I want to leave the South
Ignorance abounds.
I am used to this. I have grown up with it, come to expect it.
In this place, African-Americans were oppressed, ridiculed, and generally hated as little as 50 years ago. Today I am still treated differently because of the color of my skin, only now, instead of blatant hatred and prejudice there is a timid, eggshell-lined path that most people feel the need to tip-toe through just to get near me.
"I saw this black girl the other day and, let me tell you, she was all kinds of ghetto...no offense, Amaris."
"He was this tall, scary, black man...no offense, Amaris."
"Negra is spanish for black...no offense, Amaris."
It's really ridiculous. I am not offended by the word black. It's a very general word used in everyday speech. But if you feel you need to apologize for it after you've said it, that's a pretty good indication the context in which you used it was negative, to say the least, and you shouldn't have said it in the first place.
It's one thing to be affronted with these people every hour of every day. It becomes a pattern and you get used to it. You learn to simply and suddenly become deaf when a comment comes up that elicits that "no offense" which is ten times more offensive than the comment itself.
It is another thing altogether to come across genuinely ignorant people who do not even see their lack. Granted, this does not happen all that often, but instances like today make me want to flee as far from this place and its skewed, if sometimes well-hidden, ideals as possible and never look back.
Today I sat in class and listened to a girl who has consistently proven her ignorance with every parting of her lips. She felt the need to open her mouth again - some urges are best left suppressed - and dug herself a nice little hole from which I don't think she'll be escaping any time soon.
We were on the topic of college football rivalries, discussing how volatile they can become and how senseless it sometimes seems. From this, we made it to the topic of high school football rivalries and how they can be much the same. Kitty felt the need to interject into the conversation her feelings on the dangers of wearing Ouachita gear to a Bastrop Rams home game. Her reasoning against such a faux pas, and this is from the mouth of the racist horse herself: "Those black people..." Here, she realized she'd done something wrong. She picked up the cue only from the wide-eyed and even wider-mouthed reactions of every face in the room - black, white and in between.
She tried to salvage her statement: "Well, I mean, there are different kinds of black people, you know. The black people in Bastrop are stupid!"
At this point, she turns to the only "spots" in the room, myself and a Navy-enlisted young woman, who, I can only conjecture, was about ready to put that 'kill a man with your pinky' rumor to test and continues: "Not like you two. Y'all are smart and good, but the black people in Bastrop are just stupid!"
At this point, I stopped listening. Not to be mean, but because it was necessary. It was imperative to that ignorant child's life that I become deaf quicker than any instance has ever called for, that I turn my face from her and try to forget she existed, that I keep my lips tightly sealed so as not to release the diatribe that would surely have spilled forth otherwise.
And this, in a classroom; a classroom on the campus of an integrated and equal-opportunity school; a school located smack in the midst of the Bible Belt, where "love your neighbor" is not a comandment, but a threat.
Is it any wonder I wish to leave this place behind?
I know I cannot fully escape this, wherever I may go. But since coming to school here I have encountered far too many Kittys. Granted, she is the only one, so far, to speak so bluntly, and that only thanks to her lack of a decency filter on her mouth. But she is there in every "no offense," in every sideways glance after a racial comment, in every observation of my "proper" way of speaking and in every comment made about my supposedly being "white" because I'm not "ghetto."
So yes, I wish to escape this place. I wish to escape being forced to deal with ignorance such as this on a daily basis. I wish to escape being followed around in nice stores. I wish to escape the looks, the whispers and the outright racism that explodes when I decide to date outside of my race. I wish to escape the genuine look of absolute shock when I don't chop the ends off my words or accentuate every syllable with a crick of the neck.
I wish to escape the falsity of the South and am prepared to travel as far north as necessary to do so.
Canada, here I come.
I am used to this. I have grown up with it, come to expect it.
In this place, African-Americans were oppressed, ridiculed, and generally hated as little as 50 years ago. Today I am still treated differently because of the color of my skin, only now, instead of blatant hatred and prejudice there is a timid, eggshell-lined path that most people feel the need to tip-toe through just to get near me.
"I saw this black girl the other day and, let me tell you, she was all kinds of ghetto...no offense, Amaris."
"He was this tall, scary, black man...no offense, Amaris."
"Negra is spanish for black...no offense, Amaris."
It's really ridiculous. I am not offended by the word black. It's a very general word used in everyday speech. But if you feel you need to apologize for it after you've said it, that's a pretty good indication the context in which you used it was negative, to say the least, and you shouldn't have said it in the first place.
It's one thing to be affronted with these people every hour of every day. It becomes a pattern and you get used to it. You learn to simply and suddenly become deaf when a comment comes up that elicits that "no offense" which is ten times more offensive than the comment itself.
It is another thing altogether to come across genuinely ignorant people who do not even see their lack. Granted, this does not happen all that often, but instances like today make me want to flee as far from this place and its skewed, if sometimes well-hidden, ideals as possible and never look back.
Today I sat in class and listened to a girl who has consistently proven her ignorance with every parting of her lips. She felt the need to open her mouth again - some urges are best left suppressed - and dug herself a nice little hole from which I don't think she'll be escaping any time soon.
We were on the topic of college football rivalries, discussing how volatile they can become and how senseless it sometimes seems. From this, we made it to the topic of high school football rivalries and how they can be much the same. Kitty felt the need to interject into the conversation her feelings on the dangers of wearing Ouachita gear to a Bastrop Rams home game. Her reasoning against such a faux pas, and this is from the mouth of the racist horse herself: "Those black people..." Here, she realized she'd done something wrong. She picked up the cue only from the wide-eyed and even wider-mouthed reactions of every face in the room - black, white and in between.
She tried to salvage her statement: "Well, I mean, there are different kinds of black people, you know. The black people in Bastrop are stupid!"
At this point, she turns to the only "spots" in the room, myself and a Navy-enlisted young woman, who, I can only conjecture, was about ready to put that 'kill a man with your pinky' rumor to test and continues: "Not like you two. Y'all are smart and good, but the black people in Bastrop are just stupid!"
At this point, I stopped listening. Not to be mean, but because it was necessary. It was imperative to that ignorant child's life that I become deaf quicker than any instance has ever called for, that I turn my face from her and try to forget she existed, that I keep my lips tightly sealed so as not to release the diatribe that would surely have spilled forth otherwise.
And this, in a classroom; a classroom on the campus of an integrated and equal-opportunity school; a school located smack in the midst of the Bible Belt, where "love your neighbor" is not a comandment, but a threat.
Is it any wonder I wish to leave this place behind?
I know I cannot fully escape this, wherever I may go. But since coming to school here I have encountered far too many Kittys. Granted, she is the only one, so far, to speak so bluntly, and that only thanks to her lack of a decency filter on her mouth. But she is there in every "no offense," in every sideways glance after a racial comment, in every observation of my "proper" way of speaking and in every comment made about my supposedly being "white" because I'm not "ghetto."
So yes, I wish to escape this place. I wish to escape being forced to deal with ignorance such as this on a daily basis. I wish to escape being followed around in nice stores. I wish to escape the looks, the whispers and the outright racism that explodes when I decide to date outside of my race. I wish to escape the genuine look of absolute shock when I don't chop the ends off my words or accentuate every syllable with a crick of the neck.
I wish to escape the falsity of the South and am prepared to travel as far north as necessary to do so.
Canada, here I come.
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