racism

So here I am sitting on the ferry,
I'm super tired and I just got off from work from NARAL (which has my feminist blood pumping and fully pissed off at how little rights we have) and some guy sits behind me and then his friends join him. I tend to listen in to peoples conversations, I see nothing wrong with this. But this guys conversation just made me mad.

It went like this "Oh you know *name withheld* just got out of jail again" says Jerk #1....His buddy responds "For what?"...Jerk #1 responds with "domestic violence....But she deserved it she was a bitch..." Says the jerk # 1....They both laugh....Cause obviously a woman getting beat is nothing but shits and giggles for them. Then the buddy says "wasn't she black anyway?" and Jerk #1 says "yeah" and they laugh more.

My moms are going on a trip to Virginia for the annual Civil War Preservation something or another. They wen't with my mommy Loraine's mother, Heather, and stepfather, Thom. Thom has Alzeheimers (sp?) and is obsessed with the Civil War to the extent he has a cannon in his garage. Not to mention he's filthy rich. But, anyway. My mom told me about last year's trip. They were served dinners in expensive hotels and restaurants. Served by people of "color," as they call them. They talk nonstop about how the South was right, making racist comments in the presence of the different races and not caring about offending others, because their opinions are always right, and if they aren't then the money makes them right.

When Don Imus, a popular radio shock-jock host, called the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos", did they wave it off?

Absolutely not. They fought his racism and sexism tooth and nail because it was unacceptable- specifically, "racist and sexist remarks that are deplorable, despicable and unconscionable," according to their coach, a black woman herself. Advertisers began to pull out of the show, and finally, both of his major hosts have fired him.

I find it rather ironic that while men's college basketball has recently been a celebrated event during March Madness, a women's team plays and enjoys great success as athletes and gets put down as "nappy-headed hos." As if those comments had anything to do with their achievements on the court or how they played the game. One of the players, Heather Zurich, felt vindicated of their athletic victory and said, "We were stripped of this moment by the degrading comments made by Mr. Imus. My team did nothing to deserve Mr. Imus’s, nor Mr. McGuirk’s , deplorable comments."

For those of us in or who have been in the collegiate environment, ambivalence toward the Greek system, especially the female end of it, is a fact of life. Sisterhood? Sign us up! Dressing alike, sounding alike, having all the same friends (forgive the stereotype)? Eh, not so much.

But the DePauw University Delta Zetas (known familiarly as DZ) have gone a step too far in their pursuit of the ideal sorority. When a psych professor surveyed students on the impressions they got from certain sororities, the response for DePauw DZ was "socially awkward." The result was the eviction of 23 overweight women and women of color from the DZ house under the guise of "lack of commitment". Six of their appropriately committed sisters also left the sorority but in protest, which is perhaps the best indicator that something was wrong here. Altogether more than half of the sorority was gone after the purge.

So last night as I was sitting in front of my TV, Eating some popcorn and watching the red carpet pre-show before the Oscars started; I realized how much everyone who talks about the Oscars judge people. I’m not talking about the dresses, hair styles or that weird bow that Nicole Kidman wore on her dress.

I’m talking about how everyone talked about people by the color of their skin or their orientation. Instead of everyone talking about how Ellen was as a comedian and judging her before the show by her skills as a comedian…. It was all about her being a lesbian. Come on now! Who cares! I don’t care if she is an alien as long as she’s a funny comedian that’s all that matters to me cause I’m not judging her by her orientation I'm judging her by her work.

Bad news comes in threes every time.

A fond farewell to our dear Molly Ivins, calling 'em out and putting 'em down every time.

I'm sure you've all heard about the young woman who survived a rape and then was jailed without being given her second dose of EC. Her rape took place in the middle of the afternoon at a popular and widely-regarded as dangerous street festival near Tampa, Florida. She is 21, pre-med, and had the forethought to go straight to police to make her report. Later after most of her assault treatment, police found out she had an open warrant for a juvenile charge. The investigation of her claim was abandoned, and the medical examiner at the jail where she was taken refused to allow her after-24-hours dose of EC. The examiner claimed it would be against her religion to do so.

My high school is doing a play our director has been writing for four years, called "The Unsafe star: The Emmett Till Story" I believe that feminism is only one part of a larger push for equality for all, so the civil rights movement is just as important to me as pro-choice rallies. For those of you who do not know the story of Emmett Till, and many people don't, Till was a 14 year-old boy from Chicago, who went to Mississippi to visit family. It is said he whistled at a white woman, and her husband and her husband's half brother beat the boy for five hours before shooting him and tying a cotton-gin fan to his body, before throwing the body in the Tallahassee. Rosa Parks said she did not leave her seat because she was thinking of Emmett.

Well… I’m back! I sincerely apologize for the long delay since I last wrote. A lot has been happening in my life, and I have a lot to tell you and catch up on. It’s almost the end of September. Custody arrangements and scheduling has kept me away from the Internet and without any time to spare for the past month or two, so I am very sorry. I guess this post will just be something general, and I apologize in advance if I go on and on about something… but I have a lot I want to say to make up for the past two months.