The road to hell

Yesterday I responded to a post on my college alumni listserv. Now, I'm the first one to tell somebody not to be an ass and make some ignorant-ass comment about someone else's race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or what have you. I've been in fist fights because of shit like this. So when I read a letter from a freshman detailing an incident of racial profiling, I immediately responded that perhaps everyone at the school needed sensitivity traning, the cops who profiled, the Dean of Students who allowed the profile to be circulated, the Residential college advisers who didn't put things into perspective for the students, and most importantly, the unsocialized children who they are influencing with their own ignorance. Research has shown that Judgment is the last thing to develop in the human brain, not becoming fully developed until around 22 years. (To read more go here.) There's an intersection in this country between race, class and gender that places black men at the heavy end and white women at the light end of the scale. It ignores the individual's personality and circumstances and temperment. This is like damn sociology 101.

Imagine my anger, outrage and disgust when someone emailed me back and tried to get on my back because I "singled out" certain ethnic groups which showed two things

1. the jackass has poor reading comprehension because I clearly stated ALL NON-BLACK ETHNIC GROUPS AND BLACK FOLKS

and

2. the jackass has poor conflict resolution skills because when you talk to a stranger you don't ass-ume the worst. How about start out assuming your jack-ass misunderstood and then let the other person clarify whether it is their ignorance or yours before you try to read somebody. Shit, he's lucky I dont' trip on the listserv and ass him out. Like using the word "extirpating" in a sentence is going to impress me.

Every damn body in America needs help on this issue. Children are malleable. All children. Sensitivity training should not exclude anyone. Black children need to hear it to counter the images they see on television, the influence of damn lifestyle hip hop and all those freaking music videos with half-naked girls giving it up to some jackass with a little bling because American pop culture is DAMAGING to young psyches. Baby boomers dropped the ball. They were so repressed as children that they decided, fuck it, my kids are going to like me. Now there are millions of mixed up kids running around, acting up, having kids of their own. I'm definitely not saying things were better back in the 40's and the 50's. My family is black and Japanese so trust that I know all about how fucked up America is. What I'm saying is that we have to collectively figure out what the boundaries are going to be, stay in dialogue about them, and then enforce those motherfuckers. And it starts with people, individuals, learning how to act and how to treat one another with civility and hopefully respect. Because I can't keep bitch-slapping fools.