… wait, that's not a stick, it's an olive branch! Imagine that. I have a crazy idea. Bear with me, I have had a lot of changes in my life, mostly good but some bad, there was some personal growth, I just shuttered a business I started last summer and took a new day-to-day office job and am trying to get used to sitting and focusing for eight hours a day (minus lunch). But I digress, we can talk a bit more about me, and you, in a minute.
In the spirit of comity, I'd like to extend an olive branch to everyone at DKOS. Some of you will accept it with grace and with the healing spirit with which I offer it, others will sneer, and even some others will think I've gone crazy. But let me be clear, just because I think it's important for Democrats and left-leaning Independents and others of our ilk to stand together against the encroaching host-eating parasites that are the 1%, I'm still not going to put up with bullshit. I'm just not going to get nasty about it anymore. I'm so tired.
This is going to be a long read. Hopefully it won't be a Palinesque word salad, but I've been so busy, and I'm so tired, and all I really want is for us to not fight anymore.
I've been posting here a long time, since 2007 or so, and lurked since the 2004 election. Actually, that's when I found this site, was in 2004 a few days before election time. I've made a lot of friends, some of these relationships have flourished outside of this orange thing, and I've made a few enemies and even a couple of frenemies.
We've all been so tense lately. Really, way too tense. Let's just take a moment to breathe, and have a group a hug, okay? Let's learn more about each other, what excites us, what makes us happy, what makes us cry, what makes us puke. Let's try to find common ground, but without tearing each other down. If only in the comment thread of this one diary, let's LISTEN to those who we think are yelling at us, let's really try to understand the other side's POV. Let's not fight.
Getting to know you, getting to know all about you ...
Okay, I'll start. My name is angel d, which is short for Angelina de ___. I'm a Mexican-American-Canadian Catholic Jew with a Punjabi Muslim kid. It sounds confusing, but it's not, really. My ancestors came from Spain, from a town whose name is alive in my own last name. In the 1300s, that town was burned to the ground for being too Jewish. I always forget details, my uncle did all the background work on our family tree and sent me volumes of notes so I could write our history.
I come from Spanish Sephardim, both along my mom's patrilineal and matrilineal lines, but during the explusion, my ancestors had to choose between leaving or conversion, so we became crypto-Jews, until my foremothers and forefathers moved to the new world, were they intermarried with the indigenous peoples, and we became Catholics for real, and Mexican too!
My mom was born and raised in El Paso, Texas, in a small house with 9 brothers and sisters, opted to escape the crushing poverty by joining the Navy. She was stationed at Great Lakes, where she met my dad, and they were then stationed in Newfoundland, where I was born. Hence, when I'm in Canada, I'm a dual citizen, but over here, I'm American.
Back in the 90s when I was just a wild and crazy thing, I met my (now ex) husband, a Pakistani cab driver in Chicago, who drove me home after flamenco dance class one night. I glanced in his rearview mirror at the very moment he did and our eyes met, we went out for a milkshake and a child was born. You know why I named my boy Haroun? Because my ex had a knee jerk hatred of Salman Rushdie because of "Satanic Verses," and so I named my boy after another Rushdie novel, "Haroun and theSea of Stories." Plus, I really do love the name -- it is the Muslim equivalent of a solid Jewish name, Aaron -- and it when I was choosing a middle name for my baby boy, the first time I said "Haroun Miguel," I got goose bumps. So he's got the whole Mexijabi/Punjexican thing going for him.
Hello, my name is Angelina, and I enjoy WHITE PRIVILEGE.
Fast forward to today. Believe it or not, the recent BLM actions at NN and the Seattle Social Security celebration, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement, generally, has planted a little seed inside of me that is growing a little sprout.
Back when the rox/sux factions were forming, when there were discussions of race, I was dismissive. I always felt left out. I'm light skinned for a Mexican, but I certainly don't identify as white. But I finally recognize that I have privilege that other persons of color don't.
Until recently, "white privilege" felt like white peoples' problem, not mine. At DailyKos, when we spoke of race, everyone seemed to pretty much be yelling at each other for slights both real and imagined. The dialogue became constipated, people doubled-down, I just stopped participating altogether in those discussions. One white person wrote a whole diary about white privilege and even though I had no reason to doubt his sincerity, I made a snarky comment something like: BREAKING NEWS! White, affluent, straight male pulls lint out of his white privileged belly button and examines it on internet! Yes, that was rude of me. But that's how I felt at the time.
Neither burdened nor offended by other peoples' privileges, I thought the whole discussion was just cover to hate on each other. I felt like an outsider, I didn't belong with the white folks, even those that accept me as though I were, and I didn't belong with the black folks because I'm too pale and anyway, this is the 21st Century, why are we still talking about this stuff?
Alas, I'm moving along in this regard. I see what's in the news, I see kids of color getting gunned down by cops and paranoid vigilantes, or getting thrown into a for-profit prison because some judge took kick backs, and that corrupt judge's money was apparently paramount to a young person's life. I'm not stupid. Look at my kid, he gets darker every year, you don't think I worry about the cops pounding in his little head? I do all the time!
One of my earliest memories of my young uncles were all the posters and stickers with the brown fist that said CHICANO POWER. My grandmother told me to NEVER FORGET I was Mexican. Being a Navy brat, I didn't have a "home," or a place in the world, I didn't belong like my cousins did, I didn't speak Spanish fluently and effortless, but I latched on to that brown fist like my life depended on it, I was Mexican, and I to a tribe, even if I didn't have a place (now I do, Seattle and Chicago).
But you know what? I am, at least in terms of outward appearances, white. I look white. People interacting with me on the street or on the bus think I'm white. I kind of feel like I've gone to my first 12-step meeting and announced for the first time: Hi, I'm Angelina, and I enjoy white privilege.
Here's my white ass making BBQ in Lahore, Pakistan back in 1998:
Recognizing that privilege wasn't all that difficult. I didn't suddenly lose my identity and go out and buy a minivan and a tennis racket. I'm still dusky and I'm STILL MEXICAN! And I still love pozole and enchiladas! I am so relieved I didn't actually have to turn myself into a white person by admitting my white privilege.
Sadly, it wasn't any of you at DKOS that nurtured this growth (which admittedly is just beginning, but I'm stubborn). Mostly, I ignored the discussions of race here because frankly, they are insane, from all sides. I'm not pointing the finger at any one particular group, I don't have to, because everybody here goes a little crazy when this topic is being discussed. And plus, the discussions were between white people and black people, and I didn't have much to add. If there was ever an opportunity for people to evolve on this issue, it will never be nurtured here at DKOS unless we all stop and get to know each other. No one likes to get talked AT, no one likes to be told STFU. I suggest we do the opposite and to WITH each other, and listen to one another, but with the advance notion that we're not going to be dicks about it. Let's lift one another out of our entrenched opinions of one another, raise each other's level of vibration, and elevate our discourse.
All of us have a lot of room to evolve on how to discuss this issue, and we should be here for each other when we do.
My son is much darker than I am, but he is respectful when talking about white people, but if we go somewhere for dinner, for example, he immediately notices he's the only non-white in the room and he feels uncomfortable, different, and othered. It wouldn't occur to him to be racist, his friends go from milk to honey to chocolate and every flavor in between. He is a role model for me as well. He's smart, wise, responsible, mature for his age, but he's still a kid and thinks farts are funny. He's what makes me happy.
Here is my most handsome son back in 2010. We are at hemp fest registering young folks so they could vote in the upcoming mid-terms.
I really wish that I can be a Sanders supporter, and you can be an O'Malley or Clinton or Biden supporter, and we can compare and contrast without using divisive tactics like BERNIE HAS A RACE PROBLEM! And GOLDWATER GIRL! None of those have any bearing on the reality of either of the candidates right now. To be bluntly honest, I will have a very hard time voting for HRC should she win the nomination, but none of the reasons have anything to do with how her supporters on this site behave. None of my opinions about Clinton's ability to be a good president have anything to do with ANYTHING people on this site say about her, good or bad. I would never be so shallow as to hinge my support of a candidate based on what people on a blog say.
Likewise, I would hope that if you've chosen Clinton over Sanders, it's for good reasons and not because a few people on a blog were insufferable -- ergo, he's not a good candidate! Waaaay too much of that goes on here.
Let us, you, me, us, them – even Armando, no especially Armando -- let's all of us try to reach at least a scintilla of consensus and how to move forwad without destroying each other on a daily basis, and so that each day is not a desperate battle of ideological dominance even at the risk of our own dignity. Let's at LEAST agree to not lie about candidates or take their words out of context. Let's not go into each other's diaries and concern troll by saying vapid things like "You're not doing [your candidate] any favors!" and claiming that you simply WON'T vote for [the other candidate] because her/his supporters are "insufferable." Let's stop calling Clinton a "warmonger." We can express our displeasure of her support for the Iraq war without hyperbole. Even if you believe in your heart of hearts that she is, just don't write it in words on the orange.
I KNOW I can be insufferable. And I sure as hell know that YOU can be insufferable too. We are passionate politics geeks, we're going to get excited, but let's also try to at least hear what the other side is saying.
Henceforth, I shall refrain from saying that Hillary Clinton is a neocon and a warmonger. I never latched on to that Goldwater Girl thing, but I have said – and ONLY in response to people who say "Sanders isn't even a democrat!" – "At least he was never a Republican." I'll even stop saying that. Okay? I have never and won't ever take something she said out of context, give it the opposite meaning, or in anyway unjustly tarnish her image. When people assail Sanders' record on civil rights by twisting his words or blowing things out of proportionate, I will call people on it, but in the kindest way I can muster. People double down in the face of smears and lies, it's what we do. So let's just not do it.
Most of all, this division that exists between us WASTES TIME. Think of all the wonderful things we could have done with the minutes and hours we spend yelling at strangers on the internet. Are you here to hate fuck, or to make love? I'm kind of a late-blooming hippie (in my punk rock days, I thought hippies were boring old farts) so I'm going to go with love. You?
Your turn. Tell us about you, share as much as you are comfortable sharing, post some photos, let's talk, let's get to know each other. Maybe if we weren't strangers, we would be so rude and awful to one another.
CHALLENGE: Let's not use HRs in this diary either, unless they are truly warranted; even then, let's talk about it first.
Are you game???? Take my olive branch and let the consensus building begin!
AND MAY THE BEST CANDIDATE WIN!