Please excuse any mistake I may make - typos ect. while writing this. I just got this new computer and I am not use to the keyboard and have not found out how to do alot of things yet.
My computer was a desktop piece of crap that made things hard. I just got this HP Pavilion dv4 laptop with Windows 7. So many new things on here and I am learning how to do stuff on it. everything is soooo differnt.
Anyway, I was reading this very cool article by Tim Wise on alternet.
He wrote about what if african americans were the tea party and I found it amazing...
http://www.alternet.org/...
Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protesters — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans
Now just imagine how the right, our mainstream news media and average white people in America would take that sight in???
What if Hispanics in Arizona decided to mimic the Tea party and not just protest, but act just like the teabaggers...quiet the thought.
Not only would we have a glaring example of the double standard in this country, how misplaced these tea baggers victim posture is and how ridiculous it is but, how things are covered when it is the rightwing v. the left. Afterall, remember how all those white people on the left were treated by the country and the news media when they protested during the Bush years.
About the same as when Gore spoke out on the war v. Cheney's crude behavior since leaving office.
Mr. Wise goes on to pose a bunch of 'imagines'. Like if a group of white lawmakers on their way to the House floor were surrounded by screaming, ugly dark others who hurled racial slurs and spit at them.
Or said the kind of things that the tea party regularly says, or the right wing leaders like Limbaugh have said since Obama took office.
What about states making laws requiring a white president having to show his birth certificate and proved he was born in this country???
To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark "other" does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and "American-ness" of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.
In closing, I think it would be an interesting experiment in how the whtie right is treated in this country v. the dark other.
It would be interesting to organize a protest against the hate of conservative media, or the republicans obstruction on some legislation in DC and have it done by those on the left who are not white.
Act exactly like the teabaggers with their signs and guns but, call themselves patriots who are concetrned for our country and constitution.
Then make sure how the media covers it right back in their face.
But, that is just a fun thought because we all know what would happen. Remember the latinos beaten in that park in LA during a peaceful protest a couple years ago.
I am just very sick and disgusted by the double standard in this country with how the white right is feted.
and this is from a middle aged white woman in the mid-west!