I would like your honest opinions. I'm really upset about something. In fact, I spent hours crying about it last night. It all started over something so petty and stupid that I can't even believe adults would act like this, but in the end, I was accused of being a racist. I honestly don't know if what I did was wrong or not, and I'd like to know, from people who have nothing at stake and can tell me flat out whether I'm an insensitive, racist asshole or just getting all upset over something that isn't really that big of deal. I know it's easier to give and take criticism to and from anonymous people over a computer screen, so here goes...
I am an officer for the boosters club for a sport in our town's high school. The nuts and bolts of it is that the head boys coach wanted to control the money that the boosters raised (mostly from kids selling stuff, parents donating money, car washes, that sort of thing.) The coach is well known around town for being kind of a jerk. There were four of us moms as booster officers. Three resigned their positions because they had just had it. That left me to try to keep the thing together. The head boys coach got his own wife (who has no kids in the school system or the on the team), the JV boys coach and his wife (who have no kids), the girls coach (again, no kids) and a coach for a newly formed freshman team, along with that guy's wife, to try to stage a coup, for lack of a better term, to take over the boosters club and control the money. Like I said, this is pretty petty stuff.
They accidentaly forwarded an email to me where they call me all kinds of name, insulted the hell out me, blah blah blah, all of which I can take, but at the very bottom, there was outlined a scheme to print secret ballots for the officer positions for the boosters club, keep those ballots off the table at the annual meeting, hand them out only to their own supporters, and fill out more to "stuff the ballot box - Chicago style" (their exact words, I swear to you) in order to install their own slate of officers for the boosters club.
Well...you can imagine how I reacted. I basically let all the parents, the athletic director and the school board know about it. Fine. The conspiracy needed to be brought to light and a lot of grownups in our town were mighty humiliated and forced to apologize publicly to a lot of people.
That small group of conspirators received am email from me, not to anyone else - just those conspirators - lambasting them, which I probably shouldn't have done. I called them morons, stupid, etc., which I know I shouldn't have done but my temper got the better of me. At one point, I started a sentence with, "You people..."
Every single person on that email was white. The freshman coach's wife came back at with me a vitriolic diatribe about how I was racially insensitive for using the phrase "you people," which is "a well recognized racial slur in America" and declared that I am "unlearned in the lessons of the civil rights movement."
Anyone here on Kos who has read my diary knows where I was on election day and why. Anyone in my town who knows me knows I walked all over the place this past fall with a clipboard and Obama campaign materials, talking to people and trying to get votes. That's why I started crying when people started calling me a racist because this woman started going around telling people I was a racist.
My husband told me not to let it bother me. My husband said his father used the phrase "you people" all the time. He said his dad picked it up in the Marines, where Drill Sergeants yelled that phrase at underlings, as in "You people get in line." My husband, one of three kids, said his father was always yelling things to them, like "You people hurry up or you'll miss the bus" or "Can't you people give me five minutes peace" and other things parents say.
My husband and I agree that using the phrase "you people" or "those people" in reference to a racial or ethnic group is certainly rude and racially and ethnically insensitive, and I would never do that, and that's not what I was doing here. I was using the phrase "You people" in relation to a group of ... well ... assholes, and anybody can be an asshole, regardless of race, creed, color, or ethnic origin. It just so happened that all the people in this partiuclar group of assholes are white, or caucasion if you prefer. Being an asshole is an equal opportunity thing. Believe me, I wish there was some characteristic unique to asholes to easily indentify them by sight, but there isn't.
So, Kossacks, let me know. Is the phrase "you people" always improper, or is it okay when used in reference to a general group as opposed to a racial or ethnic group, or is it only okay in situations such as this where people really deserve to be told off?