If there’s an upside to the recent troubles in Baltimore, Ferguson, New York, Cleveland, and, yes, North Charleston, it’s that these matters embolden the I’m-Not-Racists to freely and publicly let their true feelings be known. During times like these we learn that some of our co-workers (Jake in accounting), Facebook friends (really, Annabelle, really), and family members (so Uncle Bill just dropped the N-word) are racist choads. Sometimes this surprises us. Sometimes it doesn’t. I mean, Jake did vote for Newt Gingrich in 2008.
But the point is this: We now know how they really feel, and as a result, our feelings about them change forever. Seriously, fuck you, Jake, fuck you.
Recently, the City Paper site has been inundated with this brand of basement-dwelling skidmarketing. I wrote a bit about that yesterday.
Today, though, I found another common I’m-Not-Racist comment section bon mot. It goes like this: How many years after slavery (and/or the Civil Rights Movement) does it take for the black community to, you know, just move on?
Now, the person who asks this question is almost always the type of older white dude who actually clicks on the broken-dick herbal supplement ads on the Fox News website. They’re scared and confused and lonely because they’re getting older and the world doesn’t look the same as it once did and they don’t really have a purpose since they retired and/or got laid off and, well, there’s a reason they just clicked on that ad. The wife is into that 50 Shades thing and Mr. John Thomas has morphed into a frightened turtle.
Well, I’ve come up with a way to find an answer to their question, a scientific experiment if you will. And if we as a society agree to engage in this little exercise, we’ll know definitively how long is the proper among of time to grumble about your country’s legacy of racial subjugation.
Ready?
All right then.
First, we’ll round up a demographically diverse group of test subjects, strip them of their freedom, separate them from their families, forbid them to read or write, give them new names, force them to speak a new language, make them work in the fields from morning to night, lash them when they get out of line, and rape them whenever we get the urge. Of course, we’ll keep this going for a couple hundred years before entering the second phase of the experiment, the part where the test subjects technically have their freedom but society itself largely prevents them from fully exercising their rights through Jim Crow-esque laws and periodic lynchings from terrorist groups. Then there’s phase three where you’re seemingly trapped in a never-ending cycle of poverty brought on by the previous centuries of dehumanization.
Sounds reasonable right?
That said, I seriously doubt we’ll be getting any volunteers from the I’m-Not-Racist crowd.
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