Race in 2020 - RIP George Floyd

The country is on fire right now and...

We need to be part of something that happens, something that changes... there's something sick out there. There's something broken. There's something WRONG.

It's... I'm trying to figure out how to say it while I'm writing it instead of planning this out like I usually do. I'm sorry. (Also: Warning... will contain adult language and a link to a video that is definitely difficult to watch)

I grew up in the South. For my first few years of school, I was a minority, little toe-headed white boy. My best friend was Irna. She was black (I imagine she still is actually... it's not something that goes away). We moved to Germany and I went to High School on an army base there. The army is more racially diverse than a lot of America is, and less important than your color is your rank. Yeah, I know, it's elitist. But, hey, the Officer's Club had better video games. My best friend through high school was biracial, in Germany that definitely counted as black. It was pretty white over there then. I haven't been back for a while so I don't know what it's like now. Back in the thirties and forties they sort of got rid of the ones who didn't fit their interior decorating palette...

I went back to Alabama to go to college and Mom remembers me saying early in going back an observation about the cafeteria at the university. I was disappointed to note that there were clusters of colors. There wasn't a lot of mixing going on. That was in 1986. Everybody was self-segregating into black and white tables.

I got to be Supervisor down in Memphis years later, and I had no white employees for years. None, every employee I had was black. For about four hours I had a white lady working for me, but she went to lunch and never came back.

Something I've learned in all that time is that there are two worlds out there. There are two Americas. There's the one I live in where I and another white male middle-aged friend of mine can trespass, park a truck on someone's business property at night and watch fireworks and not get the cops called on us... and then there's the one where I could be on the news being killed because of what I look like.

That's not political. It's not hippie leftist thinking. It's a fact. And it's hard to watch. It's hard to see over and over again. And it doesn't have to be that way. It's a choice. It's a choice for those people who are doing the killing.

I see people saying, "BLUE LIVES MATTER!" during the conversation and I close my eyes and I close my mouth because there are no blue lives. Blue is a job. If you take off your blue shirt and go to the mall you're not blue anymore. You can live your life without being blue if you want to. You can't take off black. It's there. And it is such a different experience from being white.

Yes. It's better than it was. But that doesn't mean it's good. Better doesn't mean right. If you haven't eaten in 20 days and someone gives you a teaspoon of oatmeal a day, that's better... but it's not good. It's not enough.

Just because things are better doesn't mean it's good enough.

I KNOW you would never do something like this. If you would, you wouldn't be reading my blog. But there's more to it than that. I'm not telling myself "Well, I'd never do that so let's talk about the riots."

Fuck the riots. I could give two shits about the riots in this conversation. That's exactly what keeps happening. The trigger gets drowned out by the noise of what follows and we don't address the trigger. We address the noise.

What else can I do? What else can WE do, to help things continue to get better? Just waiting for the old racists who were raised to think "negro" was the good word so let's all just use that one and they can't complain to die isn't working. Our health care is getting too good. They're living too long. We can't wait for all the racists to die for things to get better. Because they're like gay people. Nobody knows why they keep happening but dammit! Every time I turn around there's another homo or racist sitting on the corner with some cause or another. What the hell man? Gimme a break. I just want to go to work, go to a restaurant once in a while, and go home and watch Survivor with my gay husband. Is that too much to ask? (He's the gay one, not me! Straight as hell! LoL)

The thing is, that's all the people who keep getting killed want. Maybe they want Skittles. Maybe they want help when their car breaks down. Maybe they want to go for a walk. Maybe they want to go for a jog. What they don't want is to live in fear of the police. They don't want to teach their kids to be afraid of the police. They don't want to be afraid they're going to be shot if they have a tail light out that they haven't fixed yet.

They don't want to lay on the ground while a police dog chews on them, LITERALLY CHEWS on them so afraid if they move at all WHILE THE DOG CHEWS THEM that they'll be shot. What world is it that we, you and I, have allowed to exist that they overcome literally every instinct to NOT BE EATEN because their fear of the police is worse than their fear of the dog that is literally chewing on them right then? How have you allowed that to happen? How have I? How have we? Because that's the reality for a black person in today's America.

So, what can we do to fix it? Literally, anybody who isn't trying to help in this situation, anybody who says, "Well, they just need to learn patience. Change takes time..." they're part of the problem.

If two poufs can get married when that was UNIMAGINABLE 30 years ago, then a black man should be able to interact with a law enforcement officer without being afraid he's going to die.

That's all I want. I want our police officers to be the good guys for ALL of us. Not just for my Aryan ass. ALL of us. Including my friends who have more melanin and less skin cancer than me and my family.

If you disagree with anything I've said, please unfollow me. I'm really distressed by all of this, more than I should be for as often as it happens. I should be numb to it by now but I'm not getting desensitized to it for some reason. I guess it's because I think it's important. I think it matters and I can't stop thinking about it.

Ducky Dynasty. Gays. Opinions. A&E. I'm all over the place with this one.

The Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson said things that has the LGBT community all up in arms.
A&E in response chucked him off the show for a while.
Everybody's outraged about something.

1) I'm ticked at A&E for making a ton of money off DD and acting all surprised when they found out this guy whose schtick is to be a conservative redneck espouses and verbalizes an opinion that is conservative and bible based (to his way of thinking.)
2) I'm ticked at the professional-offendees who I swear to God have NEVER watched the show or they'd KNOW he believed something like that from the first minute he opened his damned mouth. C'mon people. Why are you acting surprised? Don't be. You're not that stupid.
3) I'm ticked at all this social media rending of the clothes and putting ashes in the hair wailing about how they'll NEVER watch the show again... oh, bullshit. You never watched it in the first place. Shut up and sit down. You're annoying.

Me? I never watched the show. It looked like a show about rich rednecks pretending not to be rich rednecks so poor rednecks would buy their crap and make them richer rednecks. Not my thing. For what it's worth, it works. I see poor lazy rednecks these hard working conservative sons of bitches wouldn't give the time of day to buying their crap all day long at work.

But I think the guy should be allowed to speak his mind whenever he wants. How are we going to know who the assholes are if we don't let them show their ass-holery by talking? How would we know who to avoid? Vote with your dollars but don't act like his words hurt you. So, he thinks us gays are the same as terrorists and he can't figure out how dudes get it on because a vagina's more interesting? *shrug* Won't keep me up nights. I wonder if he likes lesbians. That's TWO vaginas slapping together in some sort of scissorfest of God knows how THAT works... no clue. Something tells me there's attachments involved or yoga, or hell, I don't know.

I'm a gay and seriously. I don't need the media, the LGBT community, liberal watch-dog groups, or any other professional-offendee running around talking about how hurt I am by this guy's opinion. Hell. I've got opinions that would offend if people got to know me well enough to find out what they are. *shrug* I don't particularly CARE if you're offended. You'll get over it. If you don't well... you probably won't die from me having a different opinion from you. If you do. Wow. Sucks to be you.

We're reaching a point I hate. Can't pick on the precious little super-sensitive gays or you're a gay hater. Can't talk about anybody any more without being some kind of -ist. That's bullshit. I talk about people all the time. Sometimes I even mention someone is black. Not kidding. I've said it. Sometimes it's pertinent. If it's not I leave it out. It doesn't make me a racist. It means I'm not blind. I'm pretty sure I'm described as white when the need arises to distinguish me from other people.

It doesn't make me a racist to recognize a person's color. It would make me a racist if I treated them differently because of their color. It would make me racist if I expected less out of a person because of their race. If I make a joke about a person and that joke is ONLY about their race... that's pretty racist. If I keep doing it, yeah. That's racist. If it happens once it's in bad taste but I don't think it's enough to add that ever important -ist on there.

So, when the DD guy says he saw black people being happy, that was his world view. You can't fault a guy for what he remembers. I grew up in the 70s in Alabama. I don't remember ANY racial tension. My memories of the time would be that there was no racial tension in the 70s in Southern Alabama. I suspect if I were famous and on a TV interview and said we all got along great and everybody was happy I'd be named a racist. I'm not. I just didn't see anything else at the time. Not really.

So, dear LGBT professional-offendees who seriously, are we to believe you've watched the show and your boycott means anything? Get over yourselves. You're annoying. You don't speak for me. You don't even KIND of speak for me. If I get offended I'll say so. Right now I'm offended you think I'm a delicate little flower that can't handle some bearded redneck asshole saying he thinks gay sex is a sin and that it's gross and a vagina is better. That's not offensive. What's offensive is acting like I need your protection. I don't. When I get offended I'll tell you, like I am now, that you're acting like jerks and you should shut the eff up and stop speaking for me. You don't. You never have and if you keep this crap up you never will.

We're called gay. That means happy. Start laughing at people who say things annoying instead of running crying to the boycott drama because seriously. Who cares if you boycott. I could do with a lot less of your whining cry-baby assed opinions anyway. Oh boo-hoo... he said gay sex was a sin! No shit. You've never heard that before? STFU. You have to. Get over yourselves. Lighten up. Laugh a little. BE Gay for crying out loud. You're the least gay gays I've ever had the miserable experience of listening to.