Poor Whites and Woke America's Caste System

 

Source

I wended my way up the Walgreens greeting card aisle. I stopped dead in my tracks. A card featured a cartoon image of a white man with a mullet haircut. This cartoon character wore a baseball or seed cap and a sleeveless t-shirt,  a so-called "guinea T," "dago T" or "wifebeater." The very names convey class and ethnic contempt, as the New York Times points out. "Is the vilification of working-class men fair?" The Times laments, in an op-ed entitled "Are We Really Still Calling This Shirt a 'Wife Beater'?"

 

Over the sleeveless t-shirt, the character on the card was wearing a red plaid shirt with cut-off sleeves. Red plaid is associated with men who work outdoors and require warm, sturdy clothing. This is a shirt you could wear while working as a janitor, a plumber, a mechanic, or a landscaper. Even such relatively low status jobs as golf caddy or busboy would not allow this shirt. Behind the man is his home, and, if you are paying attention, you know exactly what his home is. It's a trailer, one of the declassee models that would not be allowed into the better campgrounds.

 

His mouth is open. He has one tooth. His chin is weak. He has no neck. Necklessness is a quality associated with sub-humans. Orangutans, as well as some weightlifters, can appear to have no neck. An elegant neck is a sign of evolution; necklessness is the sign of a throwback. He has a hairy chin, a hairy chest, and hairy elbows.

 

The caption on the front of the card reads, "How about some redneck fireworks for your birthday?" Inside, the white trash man is bending over. His buttocks are exposed, as often happens when a working class man, a plumber, say, bends over. He is holding a lit match to his anus. Smoke appears. He is lighting a fart.

 

Search Google for "toothless" and "white trash." You will find almost a million results. Perhaps the most sickening detail of this search is the many porn pages that offer "toothless white trash" as a sexual fantasy. You will see poor white people depicted as among the ugliest, most repulsive creatures on earth, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

 

Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. collects race antiques. Such collectors are on the prowl for any product, no matter how obscure, that depicts African Americans in a stereotypical way. They cite the lawn jockey or the four-piece kitchen canister set shaped like a plump black woman in "Mammy" attire, and declare, "See? America is systemically racist."

 

I'm throwing the gauntlet down. Tell me that "toothless white trash" images are any less contemptuous, hostile, and repugnant, any less saturated with the superior's hatred for the inferior, than any given image of a Mammy sugar canister. Be sure to switch off safe search so you can see the hideous porn. Sights that, once seen, can't be unseen. And then there are the captions, like "Donald Trump supporters are all toothless, inbred, white trash."

 

My search for batteries in Walgreens came to a dead halt. I froze up. My mind was erased. I was trying really hard not to feel what I was feeling. A voice inside my head was saying, "Don't get upset. Don't take it seriously. It's just a joke. Move on." I asked where they keep the batteries. Behind the counter, I was told. The store didn't have the kind I need – rechargeable. I moved toward the exit.

 

"Damnit."

 

I turned around and photographed the card. I just didn't want to pretend that this isn't happening.

 

What is the "this" that is happening?

I Made a Mistake and I Can't Stop Thinking about Death

 

I made a mistake last night and I can't stop thinking about death.

Last night before I went to bed I heard a strange sound. I could not identify or locate it. I am hearing impaired. I went to bed.

 

This morning I realized, with real horror, what the strange sound was.

 

I immediately, and intensely, hated myself.

 

My body was wracked with fear. I can feel that fear in every cell right now, hours later.

 

Last night, I made a terrible mistake. I don't want to go into details, but my mistake was the source of the sound. I'm going to have to pay for this, with real dollars, and, what's worse, my mistake could have resulted in a fire.

 

Yesterday, the same day I made the terrible mistake that made a lot of noise, noise I so stupidly could not identify, I forgot a prayer. I was praying my rosary – and I pray the rosary *every day* – I totally forgot the words to one of the prayers. My mind was a blank.

 

My father died of Alzheimer's. His sister had it, too. None of my siblings has had it, but my siblings have a habit of dying very young. Very few twenty-three or thirty-four year olds with Alzheimer's.

 

I don't know if I made the mistake because of Alzheimer's. The sad truth is, I've been "cognitively different" my entire life. That being the case, the mistake I made last night might have been just me being me.

 

I am dyslexic and ADHD. When I was in school, there were no terms for this, at least not known to the nuns. I was possessed, obstreperous, obnoxious, defiant … in fact I was none of those things. I really couldn't tell why my work so enraged my teachers. So I divorced myself from people. I also divorced myself from people because of the beatings and the abuse. Who wants to be connected to people who call you fat pig retard bitch?

 

Being divorced from people cocooned me from the abuse, but it also advanced my cluelessness. It took me forever to learn how to operate a washing machine, how to write a check, how to drive a car.

 

I live in an era of rapid technological advances. I don't even know what most of the gadgets I hear people talk about are. I've never played a video game and I have no idea what such games entail. I don't know what the word "Pacman" refers to. I don't want to know. Two people were kind enough to give me I-Pod shuffles. I never learned to use them. I tried to give them away but now I understand no one uses them any more.

 

We live in an era of grievance. Everyone is a victim or victimizer. I'm supposed to feel pissed off because I am a woman. I am not pissed off because I am a woman.

 

If I were going to start screaming and punching and rioting, it would be over how cognitively different people are treated. With contempt. Sneered at, laughed at, pushed past. I've never had the teacher I've needed. In fact I've had very few teachers at all, and most were not in the so-called "schools." Nepali peasant women and my peasant Uncle John in Slovakia taught me more than many a "teacher."

 

And no it's not funny when you laugh at me when I can't differentiate between left and right. It's not cute when you get angry at me because it takes me two minutes longer than it takes you to read a restaurant menu. You aren't being helpful when you rush me to leave the house before I've done the little ritual that assures me that everything that is supposed to be turned off is turned off, and everything that is supposed to be in my backpack is in my backpack.

 

No justice, no peace. Nah. No rioting for me. But yeah, I am angry. At all of you.

 

I am alone. If I lived with someone else, that someone else would have noticed my big, potentially disastrous blunder yesterday that left me in danger of starting a fire. Especially if that person has normal hearing.

 

But there is no such person. I am alone.

 

Mindful of my father's decline, and how he relied on my mother to shepherd him to his final days, and how alone I am, I have promised myself: If I see the signs that I can't function cognitively any more, I need to leave.

 

Forgetting my prayer yesterday, and making that big mistake that could have resulted in a fire, but, blessedly, didn't, I wonder if that day is drawing near.

 

I think, right now, about all the other old, alone, people out there thinking the same thoughts, making the same plans.

 

There will never be a march for us. We just slip away, quietly.

Do Democrats Understand What They Are Supporting?

Leftist friends shared a meme on Facebook during the August 24-27 Republican National Convention. The meme appears on many Facebook pages, including that of "Will and Grace" actress Debra Messing, here. It's also on various websites, for example here, and at the Democratic Underground, here.

The meme is rife with grammatical and punctuation errors, but, more importantly, it is a pack of lies. Perhaps the thousands who shared it think that their party is the party of the working man, of patriotism and fair play.

There is another, more diabolical possibility: those who shared this meme are consciously participating in Orwellian brainwashing attempts. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Today's Democratic Party is not extreme.

This meme doesn't just try to hoodwink the reader; it scapegoats Republicans. The bad things you are hearing about Democrats? It's all lies, cooked up by those nasty Republicans. Refusing personal responsibility and agency eliminates morality and hope for progress. As long as Democrats refuse to look, hard and long, in the mirror, and address their own faults, their denial will hurt the party and the country, and their extremism will be but a pendulum swing that inevitably produces extremism in the opposite direction. I'm a lifelong registered Democrat. I want the best for my party and my country. That's why this meme breaks my heart.

Let's take the meme point by point.

"THEY SAY WE WANT TO DISBAND POLICE DEPARTMENTS … THAT'S A LIE."