Reading While Black

ATTN: Bill O’Reilly

Open mouth. Insert foot. Choke on it.

WAITER: GOOD EVENING, MY NAME IS TYRONE & I’LL BE YOUR WAITER THIS EVENING. MAY I START YOU OFF WITH A BEVERAGE, SIR?

BILL: UM TYRESE. I DON’T SEE 40′S LISTED ON THE MENU. ISN’T THAT WHAT YOU BLACK PPL DRINK?

WAITER: SIR, MY NAME IS TYRONE & SORRY BUT WE DON’T SERVE 40′S HERE. BUT IF YOUR INTERESTED IN BEER WE HAVE…

BILL: HEY ! DOES SNOOPY DOG OR LITTLE WAYNE OR ANY OF THEM RAPPERS COME IN HERE??

WAITER: SIR, WOULD YOU LIKE AN APPETIZER? A DRINK TO START OFF WITH?

BILL: YOU DON’T HAVE ANY PIG KNUCKLES?? NEVERMIND. WHY IS YOUR PEOPLE SO QUIET? WHERE ARE ALL THE GOLD TEETH, GOLD CHAINS & BLING BLING YOU PEOPLE ARE SO PROUD OF?? WHAT IS THAT MUSIC YOUR PLAYING??

WAITER: THAT’S CALLED JAZZ.

BILL: JAZZ?? WHERE IS THE SNAP YOUR LEAN WITH IT & DROP IT SONGS? YOU GUYS DISAPPOINT ME. WOW LOOK AT THESE BLACK FELLERS IN SUITS. I DIDN’T KNOW THEY SELL SUITS IN THE GHETTO, TERRELL. HOW MANY CHILDREN DO YOU HAVE? PROBABLY 5 BABIES & 4 MOMMAS.

WAITER: *SIGH* I’LL GIVE YOU A FEW MORE MINUTES, SIR.

Quote of the day

Another one

Source

Good article

I haven’t been posting lately because of the reading slump as well as being sucked back into the time-warp that is the AAR message boards. Over the past week this country has been rocked by the Jena Six, OJ Simpson’s arrest, the kidnapping and torture of a black woman in West Virginia and most recently, Adrienne Curry’s extremely ignorant and insensitive blog on myspace. As I sit in my little corner of the web I ponder more and more on how race relations in America have never healed; they’ve just been scabbed over. Which each event, each day the passes by with the ignorance of justice, the scab is being picked at. It really puts everything in perspective. How am I to blog about romance novels written by African-American writers with African-American characters when the reasons for their position at the bottom of the totem pole (if not the complete absence of non-stereotypical Asians, Middle Easterners, Africans, and Latino/Hispanics as leads) are much deeper than what a particular reader considers to be romantic.

It just irritates me to no end when blanket statements, such as the one Adrienne made, about “we all are one” or “I don’t care if you’re blue, black, white, or purple” or that having niches dependent upon a particular ethnicity is “racist” or “segregationalist” when, if these authors of color didn’t exist, or caucuses didn’t raise cain, the television, movie and print media would be even “whiter” than it is now. I’ve seen so many people say “blacks should assimilate into American culture if they don’t want to be treated the way they do”–with that mindset, we end up with the incredibly offensive statements made by that unnamed Glamour editor. It’s all really disheartening to me and makes me wonder why when Dr. King died no one picked up the gauntlet to continue his work to this day. Back in the 60s and 70s we had everyone marching for equality: blacks and whites, Latinos and Asians, women and men, and now it seems that we’re back where we started or perhaps even worse, because no one wants to ‘fess up to the turmoil, pain and rage de facto discrimination wreaked upon minorities in America and help everyone heal. Sometimes I wonder if my voice and the voices online even matter in the scheme of things if no one wants to listen.

Jena Six Petition

Another Noose incident

Idiot O’Reilly

Carving Jena into Anti-Racist History