“If you live in such a racist world, why is your Blog devoid of racial incidents?”
This is a great question. And I don’t mean that the previous sentence is a part of seductive rhetoric of the art of persuasion. This is a great rarely asked question. Before I go on to answer this question, let me first extend my appreciation for those of you who have this question and read my Blog, the rasx() context, regularly. Since this Blog is not about mobile phones, retractable tables or of other journalistic disciplines of corporate obsequiousness, rasx() reserves the right to Blog about “race.” For my definition of race, dig into “the rasx big lex’” here at kintespace.com.
First of all this question has two major implications for you, the would-be inquisitor: (i) you know what a “racist world” is and (ii) you know what a “racial incident” is. Both of these implications mean that you know what racism is. For many I daresay this is like being a pet goldfish that knows what a fish bowl is. I put it to you without any attempts of persuasion that there is no world other than a racist world—as long as you resemble a pet goldfish. This means that far too many incidents will necessarily be racial.
I’m not going to waste my time telling you how many times I am directed to get off the corporate elevator first because the so-called “white” male is very likely uncomfortable with me walking behind him. I’m not going to count how many times the soccer mom’s child is pulled away from me in the grocery store when I am not walking with my children. It was my older brother that was arrested for jay walking in his own neighborhood—it was he that was later beaten in the back seat of the squad car because he tried to run away from home during our parent’s divorce and the LAPD “found” him. I learned from the racial incidents of my older brother. I learned from the racial incidents of my father—and he told me about my grandfather’s. This is the way toward the ancestors. Get stepping.
I’m not going to waste my time telling you how careful I have to be with every move. In fact, I actually prefer to be this careful in a world of patriarchal, warlike people. My situation forced me to realize that we live in a world dominated by patriarchal, warlike people that eat of the knowledge of good and evil. I find that functioning in this world based on these “bizarre assumptions” is quite successful. I have learned that only the children of the wealthy and those dreamy dreamers of six degrees of separation can really afford to be so careless.
And this leads to larger issue: class. I can’t tell you how many books contain the phrase “race and class”—and it is this combination of words that leads me to what one might ask in response to this rarely asked question, “If you are so lower middle class, why is your Blog so devoid of class incidents?” Before we speculate about how silly this question is, let’s try to see that the price you pay for automobile gasoline sets the stage for a class incident the next time you run out of gas. Very rarely does a person that is independently wealthy actively seek you out to spit in your face because they find you “un-favored” by the blessings of the Lord, a divinely preordained inferior person without portfolio. The people who do not really have to get up and go to work everyday—the people who do not have to sit in gridlock everyday burning toxic petrochemicals—they take advantage of a system set in place that keeps you out of their face. In fact, it keeps you dreaming that one day you will be like them. It keeps you Hollywood swinging.