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TRUE BLUE REPORT: The DeVos cartoon, Ruby Bridges, unearned unhappiness, and childlike faith

by TrueBlueMajority for Black Star Resistance

Community

(This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017 Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017 at 8:58:11pm PST

I am a mild mannered person for whom swearing does not come naturally or easily.

I did not grow up around people who used that kind of language. Curse words were not commonplace in my family, in my neighborhood or among my friends.

I am also a little older, from the “expletive deleted” era, before certain words were commonplace on television, in movies and in print.

So I have never been comfortable with cursing myself or having others use it around me.

Until now.

My vocabulary has changed in recent months as I encounter one fresh Republicon outrage after another.

I am rarely at a loss for words, but lately there are times when I am so gobsmacked by the mind-boggling stupidity, hypocrisy and evil on display from the Red Team that spitting out the highly-satisfying fricatives of classic profanity is the only possible response.

That was how I reacted to the now-famous Betsy DeVos cartoon from (of course) Valentine’s Day:

This is not the language I usually use, but FUCK TO THE NO

If this cartoon does not automatically bring to mind a famous Norman Rockwell painting, if you do not know who Ruby Bridges is, and if you are able to look at this visual without screaming invective until steam comes out of your ears, that’s OK.

Rockwell’s “The Problem We All Live With” memorializes one of the most iconic moments in the Civil Rights Movement: when six-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first black child to integrate a school in New Orleans. November 14, 1960 was the court-ordered segregation date, and tensions were so high that little Ruby walked into the school accompanied by federal marshals for her own protection.

Apparently now The Problem We All Live With is white conservatives inexplicably walking around feeling like victims. So oppressed. So put-upon. So discriminated against. Everything is just so hard for them. How can they go on?

The facts are these: Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, the incomprehensibly unqualified billionaire whose generous gifts to the Republican Party apparently purchased her a cabinet appointment, went to visit a middle school in Washington, D.C. last Friday. A group of protesters met her there with signs and shouts.

Good. Every single person signing on to the DJT regime should expect to encounter resistance whenever they leave the comfort of their bubble. Wherever they go they will be reminded that the we do not approve of the antics of their leader and we outnumber them.

She was escorted back to her vehicle and left, as one man shouted “shame shame shame”.

She returned to the school later for her visit.

Video can be seen here:

YouTube Video

If you watch the video closely, you may notice a few differences between what happened to Secretary DeVos on February 10, 2017 and what happened to Ruby Bridges on November 14, 1960.

No one called DeVos by a racial slur (is there even one for her demographic?)

Neither she nor the people with her are afraid for their lives.

She is not a pioneer, not the first white administrator to enter a public school.

She was not in need of protection from an angry mob.

Nobody showed her a coffin with an effigy of herself in it.

No one threatened to poison her.

Her family is not going to suffer financially for her decision to walk into the school. None of her family members will lose their jobs or be turned off their land. Local stores will not refuse to serve her family.

She will not have to be in the building all by herself because no one else is willing to sit in the same room with her.

Oh, and she is not six years old.

Other than that, DeVos and Bridges had exactly the same experience.

And let’s talk about the cartoon itself. What is Glenn McCoy thinking? Oh my God, tear this dude apart.

Why is DeVos drawn so tiny in comparison to the men? Is she supposed to look like a little girl?

Is he trying to evoke the same sympathy for this grown-ass highly privileged wealthy woman, who just bought herself a gawd damned cabinet seat, that we felt for a tiny six year old who may not have even realized she was making history?

Does he effing seriously think that “conservative” is considered a parallel slur now with the same cultural impact as “nigger”?

Does he actually think that the NEA poses the same threat in the life of DeVos that the KKK posed in the lives of Ruby Bridges and all her family?

What is WRONG with these people?

I am fast losing patience with privileged white folks, angry that they can’t generate any compassion for their imaginary plight, appropriating words and images that have serious meaning for marginalized people so that they can bask in the reflected compassion.

It is almost enough to make me start cussing a blue streak.

I’d rather just force them to all sit in a Jane Elliot presentation until they come to their senses:

YouTube Video

I’ll give the last word to esteemed child psychiatrist Prof. Robert Coles, who kept expecting Ruby to show signs of psychological trauma, but she never did, not in the way he expected.

And as he talked with her, she told him some things that surprised him:

Vimeo Video

^_*

DeVos should have denounced this cartoon immediately. The fact that she hasn’t is one more proof that she is out of touch with a pretty large section of the population that depends on the public school system. She doesn’t feel the need to even pretend to show any sensitivity to the concerns of the black community and the history of educational discrimination they faced for generations.

And now she is the frakking Secretary of Education.

Because I have decided to hold my tongue and not respond to obscenity with obscenity, I am at a loss for words.

In her entire life DeVos will never do anything as important, face as much danger, inspire as many people or display as much physical, moral and spiritual courage as was shown by Ruby Bridges in the moment displayed in the Rockwell painting.