This is a response to the article Diversity In Blogosphere? which is presently on the rec list here. I am sure that the writer of this article, Forgiven, meant well when writing it. But it is a PRIME example of the attitudes to which the wonderful social critic Joe Bageant once referred in the following passage. (Which can be found here in the interview piece Joe Bageant Speaks Out along with the rest of his truly brilliant writing.)
Yup.
The article that I am answering strikes me as precisely “more of an intellectual concept than a reality” to the writer, who also sounds suspiciously like one of the “soft, moody, self-absorbed American lefties” that Mr. Bageant references.
YOU know…the ones who have managed to create an almost totally failed Democratic Party over the last 60 years or so?
So read on if you so desire.
People who truly want change…who want to change themselves…might find something of interest below.
And for those of you who get off on a good whuppin’…why, ah am sho’ glad to oblige, suh or madam.
Mah PLEASURE.
Bet on it.
Forgiven wrote:
Bullshit. Sheer bullshit on the face of it.
I am white.
My “agenda” is definitely different than, say George Bush’s.
End of story.
Sheer bullshit.
Any “voices” that say this can profitably be either ignored or blown right out of the water.
More bullshit.
I am white.
I was RAISED to feel superior to people of color. It didn’t take.
I am a musician. I have spent my life from the teen years right on up to full maturity sitting at the feet of black, latino AND white masters of my craft. My art. And I use the word “art” in its all-inclusive meaning. An artist is one who understands all of life on some level. So what I have really been studying from these men and women is not just notes or music, but LIFE.
ALL of it.
I know personally literally HUNDREDS of others who share my position.
There must be millions world-wide when you include students of the athletic arts.
And if someone were to say to my face something like “Awwwww…that’s because them people kin sing an’ dance real good. And they’re great athletes, too”, after figuratively or otherwise rapping the motherfucker upside the head I would lean down to the ground where he was lying and whisper in his ear “Bullshit, motherfucker. Sheer bullshit. DNA cannot be changed. Go read Langston Hughes and Frederick Douglass. Go listen to Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. speak. Go read fucking Othello. Asshole. Will Shakespeare knew better 400 fucking YEARS ago.”
As long as the first two sets of voices are given any credence whatsoever, this is quite likely true.
More bullshit.
Not even worth the time to refute.
Why diversity?
Let us exclude “morality” from the equation and stick with common sense. (Morality actually BEING common sense at its highest level, of course.)
Why diversity?
In the ALREADY diverse US?
Or for that matter, in that which is the very definition of “diversity”?
The whole world.
Why?
Because we cannot any longer afford to waste our human resources.
Duh.
Too many of us to feed, house and clothe now. EVERYBODY must be used to their maximum potential, or we will ALL founder.
Or of course…we will all eventually be crispy crittered or otherwise neutered in a nuclear/environmental holocaust of some sort.
Duh TWICE!!!
It’s the easiest thing to do. The path of least resistance. The deadly sin of sloth.
Only if you ascribe to the above concepts.
Who says?
SURE it can.
Today.
Right now.
All it would take would be a revolution of common sense in this country.
AIN’T no “reparations”.
Just inclusion.
A flat playing field.
I got yer “reparations”, right HERE!!!
Give us all a truly flat playing field…right from grammar school… and in about 15 years the whole thing would sort itself right out.
Some of those same “voices” referenced above say that people of color in this country have been so injured physically, emotionally, mentally and financially by the injustices that have been heaped upon them over the past 400 years or so that they need “help” to get over it.
I cry bullshit once again.
On the strength of my own extensive experience in the non-white worlds of the Americas.
ALL of the Americas.
North, South, Central and Caribbean.
If anything, those people are STRONGER because of what has happened to them. The ones that survived certainly are, by some large percentages at the very least. Smarter (in a survival mode anyway, and in whatever OTHER modes they can access as well) more centered emotionally, and…as can be plainly seen in the one area of this country that DOES offer a more or less even playing field, athletics…in better overall fucking physical shape as well.
Level the playing fields…ALL playing fields…and the financial problems would sort out in about a generation as well.
Bet on it.
Well…
GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM YOUR COMPUTERS AND SAFE WHITE HAVENS AND DO SOMETHING!!!
Duh thrice!!!
As I have written many times here and elsewhere in Left Blogoslobovia…go volunteer to help. In a non-supervisory manner. ANYWHERE THAT WILL HAVE YOU. Shut the fuck up, do your job, listen and learn.
You will be amazed at what you find. Guaranteed.
The rest of this “Diversity In Blogosphere?” post…more white self-flagellation.
Get over it.
And then go out and do it.
Or…go out and do it and you WILL get over it.
Don’t feel guilty.
(The eighth deadly sin. Self-recrimination.)
You didn’t found the system that created racial discrimination. You did not ask to be raised in a racist society. And you still have enough native sense left to know that something is terribly wrong with it.
You can end this problem, you know. In the society AND within your own being.
We are ALL of us potentially an army of one.
Just go out and do it.
What?
You think that ravening hordes of savages are gonna come GETCHA if you trespass on their sacred ghetto turf?
Please.
Turn off the TV.
Put down the newspapers and magazines.
Step away from the hype, with your brains in the air.
And DO SOMETHING.
You be bettah off.
Bet on it.
Peace…
AG
