I haven’t blogged much over the past week. There has been lot’s I have wanted to say, but I have been busy. It just dawned on me though that there is something else too. I haven’t blogged much in the past week because I feel a little emotionally disconnected from the rest of the world. It is like I am living in a different reality.
Over the past week or two there have been a couple of stories that seemed to grip the hearts and minds of the entire country; the entire country except me that is.
First there was Don Imus. I just wasn’t outraged one way or the other. Ok, sure, Imus is an asshole, but I have known that for a long time. Was my lack of outrage an indication of my acceptance of continued racism? Could it be that I no longer care as much as I used to and am slipping into the comfort of white privilege? I think that my lack of outrage was surpassed by my awe of an entire country’s willingness to be outraged. It just seemed to me that everyone decided to agree to be pissed off. There was lots of grandstanding about how this was a monumental turning point for women. Excuse me, but I thought getting the right to vote was a monumental turning point; getting equal pay would be a monumental turning point. Getting some jackass fired for a while and flooding our news archives with the phrase ‘nappy headed hos’ doesn’t seem like a big win to me.
Then of course the Virginia Tech thing happened. It is too soon for me to be posting this, but…
I am sure it sucks for everyone who is directly involved. I just don’t feel personally touched by it. Once again it seems like a big case of Emotional Group Think. Does everyone else have some sort of visceral emotional reaction/connection to the senseless killing of 33 people? Why do I not feel the same thing?
The more important question to me is why does the country not have the same ’stop what you are doing and fly the flag at half mast’ sort of reaction when 33 people are senselessly murdered in Iraq. If you ask me, that is the real racism in today’s world.
Now I sort of see the whole Imus, Virginia Tech thing as related. America must have some special place in their hearts for college girls. It is like the entire country is saying “kill all the sand niggers you want, just don’t start fucking with next years Girls Gone Wild stars!”
Now, I know that last sentence was COMPLETELY over the top and unacceptable. It is just that there seems to be “moral outrage” in this country over molehills while we ignore the mountains of injustice locally and across the globe.
