I feel like I owe my white allies an apology or some kind of explanation for some of the things I said in that last post, or at least what can be read as an anti-white bias, or even bigotry on my part. I want you to understand that what I hate is willful ignorance. I see it every day on the part of white people, even liberal white people, who are determined to believe their preconceived notions without getting any input from the actual people who are living with prejudice. It's the idiot who says there is no racism in America/Canada anymore. Or who says that bringing up racism ends all discussion (or at BFP's place, when Heart said that bringing up trans-hatred ends the discussion.) If you are here, or at BFP's place, or at Kai's place, or many of the other POC sites reading and commenting then you are NOT willfully ignorant. You are making the effort to be informed, so please, please, please feel free to assume I am NOT ever speaking of you when I am angry with some monolithic group of "white people".
I want to also take the time to explain why I keep coming back to liberal racist episodes, like over at FireDogLake. I do not hate them over there, and think they do alot of great work for liberal causes. But I do not view them as allies to people of color, and if any good for us comes out of the things they do, it is incidental. When they blog about racial issues it tends to be lip service, just like what we get from the Democratic party in general.
This is very frustrating for POC, because we know we aren't going to do better with the Republicans, so we belong nowhere with no one to push for our interests. Democrats also know this, and that's why they take us for granted. But what they don't understand is that it is demotivating an important voter block. Why can't they see this? They already see that the fundamentalist Christian block is becoming disillusioned with the Republicans, very little has been done on their issues even though Republicans controlled all branches of government. I've seen posts/comments crowing about this on liberal blogs, so why can't they also see that nothing gets done through Democrats on POC issues, class issues, labor issues, womens issues, things that might motivate these key blocks AND ACTUALLY BE THE RIGHT THING TO DO DAMMIT! On the other hand, I think there are alot of Republicans who know in their hearts that taking rights away from women is not the right thing to do but their voters are mouth breathing bigots so they have to pretend that this is what they want to do.
One of the best examples of liberal racist thought comes from Maha at the time of the Clinton blogger lunch on this thread, My Cause Is My Country. I was Donna in WI over there. I haven't commented on that blog since that thread. Check my comment at 11 and her complete dismissal of me at 13. And how about at 23, since she knows oppression through sexism that qualifies her to speak to the oppression of racism, and my response at 31. (There is another Donna there, that isn't me, just Donna in WI is my comments.) Oh hell, just read the whole thing, and while you're at it also read her post Naughty Words and Pictures and the comments there too.
She just doesn't get it and she refuses to understand. She refuses to hear the voices of those who are oppressed by racism, but asks us to trust her to speak to our issues. How can she speak to those issues if she won't even listen??? This is willful ignorance. That fact that she comes back time and again to womens issues, but at the same time dismisses those of POC says alot to me about how her understanding of her own oppression does NOT mean that she understands that of POC at all. And she absolutely refused to answer my question about whether she would have been angry to see a table of all men, because I know she would! And it also makes her pleas about being a battered woman meaningless, because those issues could have been addressed by her sitting at that table. She had someone there to speak to that issue, and there were several other women at that table. There were NO POC at that table! And I suspect that the whites there cared about POC issues as much as Maha herself does, which means not at all!
I'm still taking vicodin for pain and it really frustrates me. I am trying to tie all these paragraphs together meaningfully and am not sure if I succeeded. They are interconnected and interrelated and speak to the anger and frustration we feel about not only blatant racism, but when liberals turn a blind eye to it or contribute to it. It isn't just the KKK style racism we deal with but much more subtle things that dig at us daily through people who we thought were our friends. So if I blow up in anger, understand that. Just look at the things justme and optional say in that first thread, these are liberals? But there is also whig, now that's an ally who understands.
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