The Best Intentions in BookThree: Flight Log 2016

Set my alarm for 6 am this morning. Woke up, turned off the alarm… realized I was sweating and shivering. Not excellent. Went back to sleep hoping that I’d feel better. Woke up at 7:30 am and turned on the TV. “From the Hip” was playing. I’d never seen it but it was about lawyers. And again proved that I find Elizabeth Perkins very attractive. Which in itself seems odd. Not that I find her attractive, but in how I view “celebrity women.” Sofia Vergara… insanely attractive. Julie Bowen… amazingly attractive. Blake Lively… meh. Which, I think, boils down to where I came from. Hopefully this doesn’t offend anyone but… where I come from Blake Lively is a dollar a dozen. The “standard” cookie cutter “breeding and money” attractive that just seems so… boring… so average.

In other news…

University of Chicago announced to incoming students that college is not a place for trigger warnings or safe spaces. I’m actually somewhat conflicted. Primarily, GOOD FOR THEM. College requires an individual to be deeply personally challenged… you think that X is the only right way, think about Y… that’s college. However, I do appreciate trigger warnings in the broader sense. “Racial hostility” shouldn’t get trigger warnings. The fact that they’ve “purified” Mark Twain is offensive to the point of madness. But individuals recovering from the trauma of rape? Yeah, a graphic rape scene should CERTAINLY get a trigger warning before it emotionally and mentally cripples the student.

On the other side… RAs at Binghamton are being given a class called “Stop White People.” The faculty state (and the handbook state) that the course is “designed to encourage diverse thinking and foster new approaches to conversations on diversity and race relations.” And I have to sit here and swallow my anger. “Lessons on Diversity”.... “Conversations on Diversity”… “The Importance of Race”.... any of those Course Titles could have been substituted. You call a class “Stop White People” and… are you fucking kidding me? Insert ANY other descriptor… it would be offensive. “Stop Women,” “Stop Black People,” “Stop Intelligent People”… I’m just… baffled, angry, and dismayed that (1) This is considered acceptable; (2) this is controversial. The controversy is “the big question” as to whether the course title should be deemed offensive or “progressive.” WHAT?! In what way is “Stop White People” supposed to be inoffensive? And why are people so quick to say that it’s progressive and shouldn’t be considered offensive. What the shit?

But it does remind me of what a lot of my friends have told me over the years. Hell, friends and even my own mother. They have said, “(Name Redacted), you are a white male. You don’t get a voice in the debate because you can’t possibly understand.” Of course… that upsets me (denying my voice) and generalizes me on visual prejudices (I was bullied for being gay, even though I wasn’t gay, so I do have some insight on that; I technically could be considered physically disabled but I do my best to work around my chronic pain, so disability rights matter to me… White Male is such an inferior and condescending label as to be silly).

So then I read the following; which I can appreciate. But I recognize many may wish to reject:

As a Black Woman, I Think “White Male Bashing” Is Dangerous

By Nahema Marchal | 1:16 pm, May 16, 2016
In season 5’s second episode of Girls, Ray — who you’ll remember as the sardonic, socially awkward coffee shop owner — walks up to a rival café across the road to complain about their their lid policy.

The encounter doesn’t go down well, to say the least, not helped by the fact that Ray mistakenly addresses a gender-fluid barista as “sir,” before catching himself and launching a tentative: “Female?”

The offended barista then starts calling Ray “white man,” yelling the word in his face repeatedly until he decides to leave.

“White man. I think you need to go white man.” “White man, white man, WHITE MAN.”

It’s a bizarre scene that borders on the grotesque — yet it strikes a nerve. The purported irony, perhaps, is that while we’re meant to see it as Ray being insensitive towards a gender-fluid person, the barista’s reaction is totally disproportionate to the event: she’s the real crybully here.

This phenomenon — white male bashing — seems to be on the rise. Forty years since the end of the civil rights movement, concepts of race and ethnicity have evolved, our attitudes have shifted: it’s no longer acceptable to make jokes about women, mental ability or fatness. No gay jokes, no black jokes. The only demographic that has escaped this trend — being the only “non-minority” group, and therefore de facto oppressor in Western society — and for whom it’s okay to spit on if you’d like is the straight, able white man.

Nowadays, we see countless examples of white folks (mostly male) being degraded on television and in commercials, or being told to “shut up” in online conversations simply because they’re white. The Daily Show host Trevor Noah has made it its credo: take a social issue, throw in a couple of knowing jabs at racial clichés, finish on a joke about white people. The whole thing often comes across as deliberate race-baiting. Recently, he even managed to take a story about Google’s robotics division and shoehorn the words “fuck white people, imma right?”

Now, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of humor.

What’s problematic, however, is when these types of comments turn into gratuitous and resentful gibes. No one wants to be turned into an evil boogeyman, or told to deal with the burden of a “white privilege” they didn’t earn — especially when that notion is unknowingly superimposed on you. To use social justice terms, the only thing this does is essentialize and alienate an entire demographic to the point of harming the very cause of progress.

Indeed, the liberal penchant for fostering resentment and guilt — a byproduct of post colonial thinking — is exactly what propels movements like the alt right to the fore. People who are unfairly pigeonholed easily turn into reactionaries.

(Examples are shared of the twitter hashtag #FuckWhitePeople)

Similarly, all too often, well-intentioned white men who support progressive causes are unjustly excluded from conversations about racism. But telling these folks they can’t weigh in this issue (because they have no way of understanding what it feels like to be black, brown, female, bot, insert category ) or on the excesses of PC culture feels counterproductive at best and divisive at worst.

This unproductive defensiveness eliminates the possibility for democratic debate and precludes all the party involved from having an honest conversation about where privilege resides in their own lives, or from engaging with the experiences of others.

Social injustice is an emotional issue, which often calls for anger, rage even. There are plenty of ignorant and close-minded douchebags to be enraged at out there.

But spreading “white man guilt” with impunity is not an answer. If the bashing keeps getting worse and if politics of “difference” remain the norm, marginalized groups and the social activists supporting them might never be able to transcend their public standing as victims and do away with the very identities at the origin of their marginalization.

AUTHOR’s TWITTER: @nahema_marchal

Comments Section
1- The writer seems fairly sympathetic to progressives but I’ve long since left that behind. Anyone who threatens the safety of my beautiful white husband for things that happened so long ago in the past will find absolutely no sympathy from me. They’re crazy totalitarian bigots, and they deserve to be ridiculed.

– a very proud BW

2- As a black woman that’s married to a white man I am sick and tired of the WHITE MALE BASHING. And it’s a total fallacy that black people can’t be racists. Black people are becoming the biggest racists on planet earth.
The same bigotry that black people have been protesting against for decades they are now projecting that same bigotry unto another group of people (Straight White Men).
Tired of the BULLSHIT & DOUBLE STANDARDS!

3- Try going to dt Brooklyn as a white person. I am not saying it automatically makes it dangerous but I have had people passing me make nasty comments to me about being white when all I was doing was walking down the sidewalk. This is not the first time something like this has happened to me. True, it is only a few ignorant people. I do realize that but it happens more and more these days.

4- When MLK Jr. dropped the legendary line about his kids being judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, it could have ended right there. So simple, so profound. When I meet you on the street, at the store, in the park, or where ever, you and I are individuals, not the representative of a predefined group. When there are no prepackaged groups and expectations, a centralized power cannot get control of anyone. Be the character, not the color.

5- we have been Bombarded with all forms of oppression from physical to Racist Propaganda some of which they still advertise and I’m supposed to be empathetic toward the White Man and his minor issues when I’ve been ridiculed my whole life been called terms way worse than “Black Man” racist slurs I’ve never heard before, on and off social media and I’m supposed to show Sympathy to these “White Men” Who are not used to this kind of negative exposure when literally all my life I’ve endured way worse.WHERE IS THE EMPATHY IN OUR PAST AND CURRENT SITUATIONS. I have NO quarrel with White People but NO SYPMATHY WILL BE SHOWN OVER HERE #FUCKSYSTEMATICRACISM

Something completely different:

Now.... I am going to
- Read Prosebox Bookmarks
- Do my daily crossword puzzle
- Hit up my daily Marvel Check In
- Go Through my Work files
- Attempt to copy about a thousand pages for a discovery request
- Do some legitimate actual work
- Probably Write more on Prosebox, lol