Empty Mind


So, I'm supposed to guest post today. And I'm totally psyched, don't get me wrong, but for some reason for the past week my brain hasn't been functioning.

I think maybe I got too much sun at French Quarter Fest (face painting + hulahoops + face painting + gator sausage = intense joy). Or maybe I'm just falling into highschool/college drop out syndrome (alas, I am no G-Fry. Also, I've had other things on my mind: among them finding employment and a place to live. All in all, I just don't think blogging has been up there in the priority list.

Still, I've got to make this little guest post at least a little more content driven than the babble that's going on at Not So Saucy lately.

Maybe I can talk about affirmative action. I was thinking about it yesterday, and I'm really not sure how I feel about it. Don't get me wrong, as a {quasi}black person, I do see racism alive and well and feel negative effects of it, but affirmative action just seems like it's doing nothing more than breed a culture that expect handouts. And if history is to be trusted, niggas can't expect anything from whitey except a chain around the neck (and not in a blingin' way).

Really, I just wish p.c. had never happened. I want to walk in to a job interview and have The Suit say to me "Yes, Ms. Simon, you are greatly qualified and we'd love to have you work for us here at ______. However, you're a nigger, and we don't hire those." I'm so racially paranoid that I figure that's what going on behind the closed doors anyway, and I'd just rather it happen in front of me.

What ever happened to you-call-me-nigger-I-call-you-cracka and we go along our separate ways? Now white people are nice to my face and then still call me nigger when I'm not around.

Or maybe it's just a New Orleans thing. We have an extremely stressed racial situation in this city. All because of integration. During segregation (which didn't even end here until the mid to late 70s) whites and blacks lived together, ate together, worked together. They had to because our city is so geographically small and because our economy is so tied to tourists and trade that everyone works in the same fields. That was fine because there were rules. Racist whites knew that even in the Blacks and Creoles were richer and better educated and had better jobs, they were still just niggers. And Blacks and Creoles knew that no matter how low they were on the social totem pole in the rest of the country, in New Orleans city limits they weren't obliged to fail. But when integration left, so did the rules. The rich whites freaked out (as did the rich creoles) and they left. They moved to Metairie and Jefferson Parish and The North Shore. And they took their tax dollars. And the ones who stayed in the city isolated themselves. They made their own private schools. They started their own social clubs. They became a world within a world and watched the rest of the city crumble around them.

It's the same thing you see in the South Side of Chicago or East St. Louis. Even Detroit. When business leaves, when money leaves, all that left is a people who are bound to implode.

Where was I going with this? I really don't know. It's just been on my mind recently. A lot. A whole lot.

I just don't see why race has to be such a big issue, but at the same time I see race in everything. And it makes me angry when I see rich kids or white kids my age who live a life where they don't need to see race in things.

I'd love to be colour blind, I really would. But really, I'm a huge bigot. And I think I am because all my life I've seen people's reactions to me change when they realize what race I am.

Babble babble babble.
And continue the babbling.

That's it. I'm going to Africa. They may not have fried-chicken and watermelons, but at least I won't have to hang around with Whitey all day.

~T

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