Mouse's Tarbrush

While I was sleeping soundly in the wee hours this morning, having done a little carbo-loading in advance of today's 5K-trot, Spartacus was keying out a response to Mouse's "Proud to Be White" email. As I mentioned not too long ago, Sparks cuts through most BS like… well, like a plow cuts through a line of BS and turns it into fertilizer for something much more tasty and far less objectionable. 

I'm not going to pass it along to Mouse (and Spart doesn't request it) for the very reason he gives in his first paragraph. Spartacus, you've got the soapbox: 

I also received that same POS white pride thingy you got from your mousey friend. I got it from an old(er) dear friend of mine, and I knew from past experience that getting into it with him would serve no useful purpose, so I just quietly trashed it. 

Re Mousy's use of her grandparents as an example--I love how many times that always gets trotted out to justify one's racism. Hey guess what--my grandparents (on both sides) were immigrants too. In spite of all the hardships they had to endure, they enjoyed the key and supreme advantage of being WHITE in a white society!!! They also had an intact (extended) family structure to help ease the transition (to a certain extent), and they came from a culture which was basically similar to the one they found in America. 

Let's contrast that with the blacks, whose families were torn apart by slavery, dragged here involuntarily to an entirely alien environment and culture from what they had known--and no matter how many generations they remain in this country they will always and forever be recognized immediately as DIFFERENT solely because of the color of their skin. Unfortunately nothing will really change until ALL people of all colors wake up to truly believe in their hearts, as MLK used to say, that what is important is not the color of a person's skin, but the "content of their character". 

The white master race has ghettoized blacks, demonized, marginalized, and humiliated them; cheated them at every turn, spat on them despite their every effort to assimilate (anyone remember the black volunteers from the Revolution, the Civil War, WWI, WWII. etc? How about the Tuskegee Airmen?). Were their efforts appreciated? Were white minds changed? No, instead they were segregated, lynched and exploited. 

Millions of blacks, starting from even before this country became the USA and continuing right on through today, managed to live productive, crime free lives, many enduring the most grinding and hopeless poverty imaginable (through no fault of their own other than having a dark skin color), and yet it is so easy for even supposedly educated intelligent white people to characterize the entire race as lazy, shiftless, amoral criminals--and they do it with a straight face!!! And they defend themselves!!!!! 

Is the white race really so morally perfect? Weren't some of the greatest murderers of all time white? Hitler and Stalin come immediately to mind--between just the 2 of them we are talking somewhere on the order of 40 MILLION or more dead! Any comparable black mass murderers? Well, there was Idi Amin, some other two-bit African dictators, Duvalier & son in Haiti, and some lesser known tribal elements including the Hutus of Rwanda--collectively, their scores come nowhere near our two paragons of white pride, der Fuehrer and good ol' Uncle Joe! 

Some may say, "Hey, that's not fair, you're talking about nationwide events and war!". OK, how about individual murderers? Let's see, virtually all American serial killers have been white. I can only recall one black serial killer, though I can't remember his name, he was convicted for a bunch of child murders in Atlanta back in the '70s or '80s. Anyway, he was strictly penny-ante compared to that shining example of white patriotism, Timothy McVeigh, let alone the legions of other sick, white, mass murdering bastards. 

Moving on from murder, how about robbery, and/or murder committed during robbery? All the famous vicious robber/murderers of the Great Depression were white--Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, Ma Barker and her family, Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger. I thought whites had a work ethic and knew how to hunker down and thrive during economic adversity…? 

The white race doesn't have to take a back seat to anyone when it comes to criminality. There was also the virtual genocide of the so-called "Indians" (the indigenous people of America) at the hands of white folk, and the Ku Klux Klan, the Mafia--do I really have to go on?! When will racists see how ridiculous their prejudices are--just as the "white race" did not commit all the above listed crimes, but rather white individuals and groups, so it is with the "black race"--condemn the individual who is guilty of the crime, not an entire race for the crimes of the individual. Why is that such a hard concept to understand? 

I also find it paradoxical that white American culture, which has so universally condemned the black race, has also almost equally universally embraced (and co-opted) other elements of black culture. For instance, virtually the entire past 100 years of popular music in America is the history of black-originated music--blues, ragtime, jazz, gospel, R&B, soul, even rock & roll (don't believe that one--go listen to some Big Joe Turner and then tell me otherwise--let alone Jimi Hendrix being the greatest electric rock guitarist who ever lived!). 

There's no more I can add here. For those who feel similarly, there's no need to say more. And for those who don't, there's nothing I (or Spartacus, or the ghosts of Martin, Booker, or Jimi) could possibly go on with that would make the least part of difference. It might help to buy a copy of "Crash", and watch it… though I doubt even that would be much of step in turning the shameful numbers around. 

Let me close with Spartacus's final word; he generally signs off his email with a great (and generally previously unknown) quote; this one's by Amos Bronson Alcott: "Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few." 

Amen, brother. Let me hear you say Yeah!