As in,
we most certainly are NOT. I saw a disturbing headline from
TPM about a recent defacement of a statue in Missisippi - the statue of James Meredith, the first black student to attend the University of Mississippi, was found with a noose around its neck and an old Georgian state flag (one with the Confederacy's old "stars and bars" symbology) draped around its shoulders.
Yeah, we're living in a post-racial world...if you take "post-racial" to mean "we don't want to acknowledge ongoing & increasing levels of racism because then we'd have to act responsibly in order to address it" or something like that.
Heft over the orange omnilepticon for more...
Modern Iconology
There are, still, constant reminders of the myopic, pithy inanity which others live and judge by. Fortunately, there are also constant reminders that real people can, and do, often speak up & speak out - not as often as would be useful, and not as often without repercussions.
When we do find examples of people who speak clearly, who speak openly and who articulate the reality in direct, easy to understand ways, we should thank them and do what we can to either help shield them from repercussions or to help them navigate through the damage caused by negative repercussions suffered because they dared to speak the truth, dared to speak with intelligence and dared to set an example.
The Maddening Whitewashing
The lunatics who cry out that we live in a "Christian Nation" and who decry an imagined "War on Christmas" depicting both a white Jesus and a white Santa Clause completely ignore the fact that neither of their whitewashed icons were actually white - after all, they're depicted as white in the popular (dominant) culture, so they must have been (read: ARE) white. It's a continuing dialogue that ignores the fact that - while yes, we ARE a Christian nation - we're also a Buddhist, Muslim (Oh noes! Sharia law!) nation, an agnostic and athiest nation, an animist nation and a myriad of other elements. It's willful, malicious and often malignant ignorance.
And, realistically, it's the inability of the media to present reality to them ("No, Virginia, Santa and Jesus weren't white. They looked like Mr. X and Mr. Y from down the street...yes, those two married guys with the adopted children who help out at the neighborhood watch and who teach self-defense & fitness courses at the local shelter where they volunteer on weekends.") which compounds and extends the problem, enabling it to span years, terms and even generations.1
Community
We can, do, and - best of all - are building communities that are creating an infrastructure to be proud of. Working together with others, all of us - from lurker to ranter, from activist to Diva - set new lines of communication, help educate (instead of "edumacate") each other about our personal lives, our experiences, our hopes & dreams, and we also help set the stage for a progressively improving society as a whole. We have some great community builders here, who have also spoken passionately about issues of race2...we need more people to join in, raise their voices and their glasses, and join the chorus.
History
We can't forget, ignore or let others rewrite history. Too often, spin & propaganda go into the history books, and from there to the upcoming generations - if we want to have a future where we don't have provide a fact-based reality after each generation grows up, progressively less informed than the previous ones, we have to prevent the re-writing and whitewashing of history.
We have to include less mainstream works & references - perhaps like bound editions of Ojibwa's Indians 101 (and other works by him), or electronic archives with pieces from Dee Oliver Velez, Meteor Blades, navajo - and many others, not simply Kossacks but you can make and add a list of works and events that should be included. Gulf of Tonkin? BushCheney's lies about Afghanistan, Iraq, their torture and surveillance programs, their "imperial presidency" policies? Sure. The greenwashing, astroturfing and propagandizing of clean energy, climate change and economic topics? Why not? It's all important, applicable, and historical...even as it continues in many forms.
And the importance of including the history, not simply the spin, is growing even as our school systems, methods and resources are being cut.
It's bloody depressing.
We need to do what we can to clear the air, to clean the slate and to expose the hypocrisy.
We need to loudly and persistently decry foul acts of stupidity, hate and hypocrisy.
It's tiring - but it has to be done. We can't let our vigilance slip, and we can't allow the haters to win simply through attrition. Hell, they're doing everything they can to legalize shooting people now - if that isn't a prime motivator, I don't know what is.
Namaste. Thanks for reading through the rant.
Footnotes
1 Heh - yeah, that would be a more-often-occurring reality in today's world. I hope it irritates any hapless morans who accidentally wander across the diary and read it.
2 Pictured: Shannika, Neeta, HawkWife.