WE SHOULD KNOW BETTER

No, I'm not talking about the primary or the results. Hell, I'm already tired, and it's just getting through New Hampshire. Barack Obama has already been somewhat slung under a bus and the MSM craps their pants because Hillary Clinton came back from the dead like Lazarus.

But, that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how those of us of ethnic background should know better to engage in racist or bigoted acts against people who don't look like us. The white guy isn't always out to get people of color - even though George Bush has succeeded in making it look so.

I want to share a little story, and then I'm cross posting a blog entry I read over at the Pesky Fly's place.

Last January, I went to Memphis to attend the Media Reform Conference. While there, I finally got a chance to meet the guys I blog with over at the Pesky Fly: you might know them as Pesky (of course) Autoegocrat, Jeff and Kibbiter. You may have even seen my screen name on the masthead, so I'm one of the bloggers, too.

Anyway, Pesky invites me and my colleague, Bruce Dixon, over to his house to break bread (actually smacking up some live ribs from a place called the Kozy Corner). While visiting, his two adorable little girls, were constantly vying for my attention and crawling into my lap to talk to me, or cuddle with me. Someone they just met, but because I was Daddy's colleague, they automatically considered me a friend. What pleased me was that these little girls are far advanced in their ability to interface with people of all ethncities and races, because that's how they were reared.

We African-Americans may think we're bringing up our children in similar fashion, but the following entry on the Fly's blog shamed me, and let me know, we're not there yet, and we can't demand that we be treated as equal to whites, if we're not going to return the demand:

Together We Learn to Read and Write

This morning while brushing our teeth and taking our Flintstone's one of the twins broke my heart. Although she said she was glad her holiday break was over, and she was excited about returning to kindergarden, something was weighing heavily on her mind. She told me there was a girl she wanted to be friends with but the girl wouldn't "be her friend back." You know, typical kid stuff, right? "I can't play with her because my skin's not brown," she said. The twins have grown up in an overwhelmingly brown skinned neighborhood. Their first Santa had gold teeth and many of their daycare teachers and most of their playmates have been African American. Until now, to my great delight, they thought living and playing with people who look different was perfectly normal. "Somebody needs to tell her daddy," my daughter said. "Then he could tell her a person's skin doesn't matter." Well, what can a parent do but tell the truth? I told her that nobody's born worrying about skin color. "It's something you have to learn," I said. "And she probably learned to act that way from her parents." Big brown eyes that look like smaller versions of my own welled up with tears. "That doesn't make sense," she wailed. And given her experience, how could it? "Don't let it get you down," I said, hugging her as tightly as I could. "You just keep on being her friend even if she won't be yours." "Will it ever change," she asked. "Maybe not," I said, unable to lie. "But let's hope." She cried until my shoulder was soaked. Not because she doesn't have plenty of friends at school, she does. But because she just couldn't wrap her sweet little head around something so totally foreign; so completely illogical.

We know we can use the excuse of our past treatment by whites to justify, but it doesn't make it right. In fact, those who fought the good fight in Civil Rights, constantly warned those who were coming after them, not to allow our anger to cause us to sin (translation: OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD).

So, why, in the 21st Century, we still hear of incidents of bigotry being taught by Black parents to their children? It makes us no better than any other ethnicity whose members are teaching their children how to feed from the poisionous well of hate and bigotry that we, as well as our forefathers, fought to eliminate. If you don't want your child coming home and sharing a similar story like Pesky's daughter did, you still have work to do to make sure your child is being raised in a way that makes you proud.

We could blow this off and say that's the dynamics of Memphis, Tennessee, but that would be too easy. The hard work is learning to facilitate and teach, love, tolerance and respect based on the content of character, as opposed to the physicalities of race.

Today, a little girl learned her first lesson about racism and bigotry, and it was not taught by her White parents; it was taught to her by her classmate, a little African-American girl, who was taught to shun white children by her African-American parents.

That's a shaming and damning way to begin 2008, especially since an African-American is making history by wininng a Presidential caucus and knocking out the pre-determined front runner for the job. If we can't set the example for tolerance and respect, at least, we should not contribute to the problem by being the problem.

BEING IN THE POSITION TO DO NOTHING

There has to be a reason why the Democratic Party won't stand up for basic civil liberties, freedoms and rights. There has to be a reason that they won't stand up to a President whose approval ratings are 25% (or less, depending on who you ask), with a VP whose ratings are so low they don't even register in polling.

When you see this Democratic Majority:

1. cave in to Bush on funding the Iraq quagmire
2. cave in on this wiretapping legislation that is so horrendous, Alberto Gonzales couldn't get then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to sign off on it because it violated the Constitution;
3. Threaten vetoes for legislation designed to help the working masses of people in America and have no back up plan
4. Get Pelosi and Reid to announce "Impeachement is off the table" and watch how this Administration continues to lie, cheat, steal and piss on the Constitution without impunity;

Then I think we have to look at other reasons why the Democrats are giving us, who elected them in 2006, the "finger".

If you're like me, you got pissed when Harry Reid said to the press on the Iraq authorization that "Americans had too high an expectation of the Democratic Majority" after hearing from constituents all over the United States about his piss-poor performance in "keeping his powder" dry.

Dammit, I'm choking on all that dry powder; how about you?

When there was a ReThug majority in both Houses of Congress, the Democrats had a ready-made excuse for doing nothing. Now that they're in charge, it is no different than when the ReThugs were running things; as a matter of fact, there is no difference between the ReThugs and the current Democratic Leadership.

When you want change, you go about effecting change. You create strategies for change, and you become responsive to the demand by the masses for change. I did not give up my hard-earned money, wear out shoe leather, monitor voting places for fraudulent turning away of voters, drive old people to polling places to vote, and everything else an activist citizen does, to get Democrats elected so they could piss on me and reprimand me for expecting them to do their jobs by challenging Bush on his BS legislation and running of this country. The fact that this current crop of Democrats are "all hat, no cattle" is pissing me off to heights of pissivity I've never imagined before now.

In pondering my frustration, it began to occur to me to ask what do certain Democrats gain by maintaining status quo? We see what it's getting faux-Democrat Joe Lieberman; a platform upon which to blackmail his Democratic colleagues in the Senate if he doesn't get what he wants. He always threatens to vote with the ReThugs - Reid pacifies him, and Holy Joe votes with the ReThugs, anyway.

So much for maintaining that majority. But when you see the obvious, and you have made your demand of those who you elected to public office, and they literally ignore your demand, for me, there is only one conclusion, and it's not about Reid and Pelosi being cowards.

I'm talking about liking the status quo and being unwilling to change it.

Most of you know that I've got this research project on accountability going with the Congressional Black Caucus because many African-Americans felt that for achieving the goal of getting 10% of Congressional Representation by African-Americans, we should have some bang for our buck. We couldn't figure out why we suddenly had a faction of that caucus voting directly in conflict with the long-held ideas and consensus of most African-Americans.

You know, stuff like quality education for our children, a safe and livable environment, jobs paying a living wage, universal healthcare.....STUFF LIKE THAT.

STUFF that is not unique to African-Americans, but is the desire of all Americans.

We wanted to know why there was a faction of that caucus that voted for Iraq war authorizations, knowing that money could have gone to fund all those things I listed in the above paragraphs; why they would vote for a bankruptcy bill that would worsen an already tanking economy; why they would vote to eviscerate our basic civil liberties and freedoms- many of which our ancestors fought and died for.

So, we began a project to start holding them accountable. While it's working, I find in my observations of Congress, that there may be an even bigger problem than demanding accountability on the part of our lawmakers. I think the Democratic Leadership actually likes being in this position of do-nothing. I think someone's benefitting from ReThug largesse, and to actually have to respond to the demand of the American people, would actually upset that largesse. What other explanation can there be of a Congress who still caves into a President that has no clothes on and the entire world knows it?

It is not about cowardice, or lack of spine or backbone. Plain and simple, there are some Democrats who actually like being in this position, because they have ready-made excuses for not listening to our demands, or for not representing our interests. Now the question is, who are they, and how do we go about getting rid of them?

You are not going to accept my vote and then piss on me and tell me it's raining. Those days are over - if they ever really got started. If you like being in this position, and you believe your constituents will understand, then dammit, switch parties. I would rather have a number of Democrats who walk their talk and who mean what they say, rather than a bunch of undercover ReThugs posing as Democrats, who spit on us every chance they get and tell us they're not spitting on us, despite evidence to the contrary.

If they like this status quo, let them "status" their "quo" somewhere else. They can enable the Bush Administration on their own dime and their own time, while someone else gets the actual job of legislating done.