Pardon this interruption. I want to let you know about the PBS website starring the bloggers that are participating in the Race 2012 project. Click the link and head on over, okay? Also, the special will air again October 19th. Check your listings, folks. You can also watch it online.
So. I’ve been studying up on this election and I’m not what you’d call a political kinda person. All I’d really like to do is write and paint. I may be prompted to become more engaged if the candidates were painting onstage and since they aren’t, I see this race to the White House grounded in two social wars, folks. Race and class. And with whites now being a minority, with all the immigrants here, it’s shifting to a class war ’cause folk who’ve always been in power are fighting to maintain that.
Before we get off into that, I know women folk, like those feminists (rolling my eyes), will insert some comment that pretty much goes, Well, what about me? We won’t get into that today. I’m unequivocally and proudly not a feminist. Okay? I don’t like groups all that much ’cause I’m liable to change my mind at any time. That’s just the nonconformist in me. And too, because I’ve had so many problems with women folk these last few years, I can’t do the feminist thing. I simply won’t. They will get on your last nerve. Even if you tell them, Go ‘head on, Bitch. I ain’t got but one nerve left, they’ll ride and wear it down anyhow. You hear me? But I won’t get into pissing women folk off about that today. Maybe some other time (wink, wink).
Anyhow, I watched the debate and the PBS special, Race 2012: A Conversation About Race & Politics in America. I look at this discussion from the foundation of being and doing what is humanly right. Somebody inserted a comment on my blog during our first race talk, “I think people who say they don’t see race or don’t think about people on the basis of their race are not being honest.” And they may or may not be. I don’t know.
I’m gonna break this down, folks. When I hear folk say “I don’t see color,” for me, it doesn’t mean literally. Not seeing color comes from a deeper place. We don’t live in a colorblind society, so no, let’s not pretend the pot’s melted and it’s all good. Not seeing color means I accept you because you’re a human being and I want you to do the same ’cause I am too. That I understand we have cultural differences and it’s cool. That I’m not departmentalizing what’s been exploited of your race or culture ’cause I need you to reciprocate that favor. That I’m not putting a lesser or heavier value on who you are ’cause of how you’re designed by nature. Nor am I’m hung up on artificial exteriors to define you. Your physical self is merely the house that holds, I hope, the substance.
It takes time to get to that place in a society that’s hung up on appearances and who’s inferior or superior based on those results. Like any other issue folk have that they’re working on, not seeing color is just another one of those things, if you deem it’s something you need to work on. It’s not rocket science. It’s humanities.
I'm an artist who's writing,mothering, blogging and doing a few other things under the sun. I buy toilet paper 99.9% of every trip I make to the grocery store. I'm a people watcher, so I know you're here but drop me a line anyway.
