APM Blogger and Radio Host Kira Davis is inspired by President Obama’s apology to President Karzai. If an Obama apology is a dime a dozen then this one is priceless.
Archive for Kira Davis
Message from an Oreo – The Game Has Changed, Part One
Race has been a huge issue in my life. The daughter of a white mother and a black father, I was born and raised (mostly) on Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province, several miles off the East Coast. I was the darkest person most of the island’s inhabitants had ever seen.
Between the ages of six and fifteen, I heard the word “nigger” every school day. My classmates threatened and beat me, but administrators told my parents there was nothing they could do because they were not present when these incidents occurred. I assume things would be much different today, but those were the ‘80s and no one in that area had had much experience dealing with that sort of thing.
I was very excited when, at the age of fifteen, I moved to Washington, D.C. I looked forward to living among other Black people. But on my first day of school, my middle school classmates accused me of trying to be White! In their defense, I was pretty “white” in my speech and skin coloring and I wasn’t at all familiar with inner city life. To them, I was an “Oreo” or worse, a “wanna be-White girl.” I was shocked and disappointed. I hadn’t prepared for that.
It was confusing. I wasn’t sure where I belonged and there weren’t many people offering to help me figure that out. I knew I couldn’t live as a White person, even if I wanted to. My skin wasn’t the right color for that and anyway, a lifetime of being called the “n-word” pretty much ruled that out. My response, like that of many Black people in my situation, was to become almost militant in my “Blackness”. I took every opportunity to cry about the injustice of racism. I was angry and I made sure White people knew that. Luckily, most of my young adult life was spent around other liberal Black people and Caucasians trying to expiate for their society’s sins towards Blacks. My near-daily pronouncements of institutional racism and a society rigged for rich White Republicans was always met with enthusiastic agreement.
When I became a conservative and began to embrace a philosophy of self-determination and individual responsibility, everything changed. I realized that the race issue had been my crutch, that the giant chip on my shoulder from my childhood experiences had crippled me. I refused to let the kids I tutored after school use their circumstances as an excuse for failure, how could I allow the same for myself? It was at that time that I finally shrugged off those chains of victim hood and really embraced the totality of my experience, my race and what my race meant for my life. I concluded that it didn’t really mean as much as I originally thought it did. Because race had played such a huge part in my daily existence for so long, I thought it was all that really mattered.
I was married around the same time. I began to see myself as a wife and then a mother, and race no longer seemed so important. I was not a Black mother, I was a mother. I was not a White woman, I was a woman. I was not a biracial wife, I was a wife. I decided to not allow race to be a part of my every day life. I decided to be proud of who I was in that moment, how I talked, who and where I came from – all of it. And what freedom that brought! I was suddenly free to be myself, unapologetically, and I found (surprisingly, to me) that most people found that an attractive quality. I drew more people to me as a confident young woman than as an angry young BLACK woman. I made a pact with myself to never “prove” myself as a Black woman again. I would simply reject those games, and I have for a very long time now. I have been happy to be me, finally. I have been content with this package. When I am challenged as to how I conduct myself racially, I simply say, “This is me. All day long. Deal with it.”
Dear Janeane Garofalo
Dear Janeane,
I saw you on Keith Olbermann’s “show” last week, which airs on Al Gore’s “network”. While I normally don’t directly address the subjects of my conservative ire, I’m making an exception for you, because you said some truly ignorant and hateful things, and I can’t let that type of hate go unchallenged.
The most difficult part of sitting through that gross out fest was watching the conceited look on your face as you accused Clarence Thomas, a SUPREME COURT JUSTICE, of having Stockholm Syndrome because he has ties to the Tea Party and conservative values in general. Do you seriously believe SUPREME COURT JUSTICE Clarence Thomas is so stupid as to be brainwashed by white people? Think about that for a minute. Are you the person to judge his intelligence? Clarence Thomas is a SUPREME COURT JUSTICE. You are an actress (sort of). Last time I checked the requirements for employment at the Supreme Court were pretty stringent. Requirements for mediocre Hollywood actress, not so much. SUPREME COURT JUSTICE Clarence Thomas is a Yale graduate. He has served in legislative positions at both the state and federal level and was Chairman of the EEOC. No offense Janeane, but your experience doing voiceovers for an MTV cartoon doesn’t exactly qualify you as an intellectual powerhouse (and I saw The Matchmaker, so ‘nuff said).
It’s almost as if your sense of moral superiority as a white woman makes you think its okay to label black folks as sellouts or idiots if they dare to stray off the intellectual plantation, even a bit. I bet you think Booker T. Washington was a moron too, don’t you?
You have no idea how racist you sound. You don’t even see the irony of you, a
WEALTHY, WHITE WOMAN telling Keith Olbermann, a WEALTHY WHITE MAN
that black people are essentially morons. Oh, I know, you were only talking about a
specific type of black person, as exemplified by SUPREME COURT JUSTICE Clarence Thomas, but the sentiment is just as insulting. You think black people only count as intelligent when they think like you.
I must say the very worst part was how smug and sickeningly proud you looked as you told Olbermann “I don’t think I should have to feel bad for calling racists racists”. Sorry Janeane, but you are not the arbiter of all that is good and intelligent. We don’t need you to come to our rescue on your white horse. We’ve been dealing with racism for centuries. We broke the back of Jim Crow and wrestled our leaders into recognizing our right vote. We fought in wars to secure our freedom and we’ve created schools to educate ourselves when no one else would. We know what racism looks like. We don’t need you, oh wonderful white lady, to tell us when and where racism dwells, as if we are to stupid to decide for ourselves what it looks like. You claim to be standing up to defend us against racism, and yet you fail to see your own glaring, disgusting racism as you judge black intelligence. Perhaps you’ve noticed (or maybe you haven’t) that not all black people look alike. Just like we don’t all look alike, we don’t all think alike either. Yet you see us as one a group, a category, a mass that moves and thinks as one giant herd of animals. When one of us sheep moves away from the fold it can’t possibly be because
we have come to our own thought out, considered conclusions about a subject. Oh no, black people aren’t smart enough for that. We must have been duped, hoodwinked, brainwashed because black people aren’t naturally intellectually curious beings.
By the way, how is being a white woman who is calling black citizens idiots any less racist than what you accuse the Tea Party of doing to President Obama? I do believe that is the pot calling the kettle Angry Rich White Lady. Excuse you, but you don’t get to speak for us. You don’t get to tell me how I should think based on the color of my skin. How dare you? How insulting and implicitly racist.
One last thing – as a tea partier, I have encountered much more tolerance at Tea Party events than I ever have from any leftist, and certainly more than I would ever find from you. I’m not sure if your face is just frozen that way from years of bitterness, but just in case its not, please make an effort to wipe the smug, self satisfied look off your face as you insult the intelligence of black people everywhere in the name of “justice”. It doesn’t become you, darling.
