Uncle Tom's Mansion

I'm so sick of people whining about institutional racism and the white man's out to get the black man and yaddah yaddah yaddah.  I'm not going to pretend racism no longer exists the way so many right wing white Tea Party nutjobs do because I'm not stupid.  I know racism is still very much alive.  Yet I'm also too intelligent to pretend that only white people are racist the way so many black people do.

Racism is not a whites only disease.  There are a great number of white people out there who aren't racist and there are a great number of black people who are.  There are also racist Latinos, racists Asians, racist Arabs....  EVERY ETHNIC GROUP ON THE PLANET HAS ITS FAIR SHARE OF RACISTS.

But society only calls out white people.  The media will crucify a white person for saying or doing anything that may be remotely considered racially offensive, but very rarely does anyone ever call out black people for doing the same thing.  And when someone does call out a black person, THEY'RE the ones who are racist.  Not the black person.

It doesn't matter what black people do wrong anymore.  It's always the white man's fault.  Blacks are forced to commit crimes because of institutional racism.  Black poverty is the white man's fault even though millions of white people are in the same poverty.  It isn't the lack of education and skills that keep black kids from having a successful career, it's the white man denying them the right to work.  Even though schools have been desegregated for decades.  Even though large portions of blacks have college degrees and successful careers.  It isn't black people's faults that predominantly black neighborhoods have such high crime rates or that black teens are so disrespectful they refuse to wear pants correctly or that so many blacks have so little consideration for their neighbors that they play loud music at all hours of the day. THEY can't help it.  The white man MAKES them behave that way.

Bullshit.  You  CHOOSE what kind of person you are and if you CHOOSE to act like trash, you ARE trash.  The white man isn't making the black man do anything the black man doesn't want to do.  All the anti discrimination laws on the books, affirmative action.  What have black people done with them?  Why don't black people want to be more active in politics or in the community?  Why don't black people want to be cops?  How can you expect your circumstances to change if you don't do anything to change them?

We never want to call black people out on their own bad behavior.  We never want to suggest that maybe things would change if more black people would just stop blaming their problems on their being black and started CORRECTING the things that cause those problems.

We feel so guilty of our past, we've lost all sense of fairness.

But we have come a long way since the 1960s and we've certainly come a long way from the days of slavery.  This continued blame everything on white people nonsense makes it sound like nothing's changed at all.  Even though white people marched during the Civil Rights movement and in Ferguson and Baltimore.  Even though whites are demanding the Confederate flag no longer be flown because even whites recognize that something racially offensive has no place in our society anymore.  To keep attacking whites isn't fair.

A handful of bad seeds can't speak for an entire people, but vilifying an entire people over a handful of bad seeds will make those people not like you very much and so racism will never die.

Stop demanding the equality you have no intention of giving to others.  That makes you a hypocrite.

The only way to end racism is for one side to be the better person and stop recognizing race as anything other than an ancillary issue.  Most white people are trying to do that and I commend them for it.  It's not ignoring the problem of racism.  It's acknowledging that giving racists attention only encourages them.  It's recognizing that someone's race isn't an issue anymore and we don't have to let it be.

The only people still hung up on race are the people using race as an excuse to either hate or to explain their own inaction.

It's time to move on if we're ever going to heal.

Does affirmative action promote racism?

I can get where they were coming from when they created affirmative action.  It was designed to force white business owners to hire black employees and colleges to accept black students at a time when it wasn't their intention to do so.  I get that in a segregated world that had just legalized civil rights, affirmative action was something we HAD to do in order to enforce the new anti discrimination laws and give black people the chance to finally get a leg up in the world.  And it did a lot of good.

But at some point,  probably in the 90s, affirmative action stopped being the thing that fought discrimination against black people and started being that thing that discriminated against white people.

This is where the trolls come out to tell me how racist I am for saying anything bad about black people, but I'm not.  I'm being honest about the modern concept of affirmative action and being critical of any system that's based on race doesn't make you racist.  It's not racist to condemn racism even when that racism benefits black people.

See, what affirmative action REALLY does is forces businesses and colleges to base their hiring and admissions on RACE rather than qualifications.  It forces them to meet a quota and, in doing that, forces them to NOT accept someone who may be more qualified for the job or have better grades and have worked harder for that scholarship BASED ON THEIR RACE.

So what is affirmative action except racism against non black people?  And does affirmative action really just keep racism alive?

Now black folks are not going to like this.  They're going to say I'm racist for thinking such a thing because blacks have had such a rough time and face racism every day and need things like affirmative action to protect themselves against the big bad white people who want to oppress them.

But how does that genius Asian kid feel who got overlooked for his place at his school of choice because the school needed more black students on campus?  How does the black girl feel when she didn't get her dream job because they needed someone more Hispanic for the position?

Affirmative action doesn't just affect whites and blacks.  It isn't just racist against whites even though whites are admittedly the intended target and reason affirmative action exists.  Affirmative action is a double edge sword that can help and hurt anyone of any color.

Except white people, actually.  There is no quota of white people to meet.  In fact, white people are specifically left out of the quota which is racist in itself, but hey.

The point is that affirmative action keeps racism alive by forcing race to be the deciding factor.  That shouldn't be an issue anymore.  A person's merits and abilities should mean more than their skin color.

We don't live in that world yet and I get why we need to pressure employers and colleges to be more diverse.  But in forcing that diversity against everyone's will, we may actually only be making the problem worse.

It's a vicious truth, isn't it?

The Coming Storm

If and when the apocalypse happens, kiss your ass goodbye.  Guns aren't going to save you.  Secret underground bunkers with years of food storage won't save you.  It will only prolong the inevitable.  You're going to die.

Why?  Because when the world falls apart, when you need those guns and secret bunkers, it'll be too late to save yourself.

If the world dies, life on it dies too.  It's not that complicated.

War kills the planet.  Pollution kills the planet.  I don't care if you believe in climate change,  if you don't understand the need to have a clean environment, you're a murderer.  I don't care how threatened you feel, if you think violence is your only option, you're a murderer.  And you're not a little murderer.  You're committing genocide.  You're killing our entire species the more you continue.

So go ahead and frack the earth to death.  Bomb it to death.  Cut down the trees and kill all the bees.  If that's the kind of species we are, we deserve extinction.

But if you want to live, if you want your children to live, you care about the earth.  You don't want to frack it to death or bomb it or cut down all the trees.  It doesn't matter if you're allergic.  You don't want to kill the bees.  You want to protect the environment regardless of whether or not you think climate change is real.

The only way to survive the apocalypse is to prevent it from happening in the first place.

Save the world, save yourself.

Do you believe we're on the way to extinction?  Here's a link to read:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/earth-is-entering-sixth-extinction-phase-with-many-species--including-our-own--labelled-the-walking-dead-10333608.html

Mckinney: the next Ferguson?

Is McKinney, Texas destined to be the next Ferguson?

So... some kids decided to sneak into someone's pool they didn't have permission to be in and have a loud party.  Someone called the cops.  All hell broke loose.  That's all we know right now, but that isn't stopping people who weren't even there from weighing in.

The peanut gallery has already started the race bashing.  See, the cops were white and some of the kids breaking the law were black.  So naturally the whole thing was racially motivated.  White folks being mean to black folks again.  But there's more to the story.  The comentators are just too racist to acknowledge it.

Yes.  The cops were too aggressive.  They manhandled these teenagers.  It was, in hindsight, an over reaction on their part and needs to be addressed.  I'm not going to defend the police.

But I'm not going to defend those hoodlum teens either.  They broke the law and when the police arrived to enforce the law, they were disrespectful and antagonizing.  They refused to disperse when told to and that's what led to an escalation in the situation.  Just because the brief part of the video going around social media shows a SINGLE incident, doesn't mean that's the whole story.  These kids are being held blameless but they aren't really, are they?

The neighborhood where this happened is an upscale, gated neighborhood.  Yes, predominantly white, but that's irrelevant in this case.   The pool in question is strictly for the residents in that neighborhood.  Most of the teens throwing the party were not residents of that neighborhood.  They didn't legally have a right to be there.  You can't have a free for all party even on semi public property without permission from someone.  Probably need a city permit.  But the teens behind this party didn't respect the law enough to bother with either.  It's not youthful indescretion.  There's too many resources for this sort of thing (Google, for example) and had they asked their parents, this could have all been avoided.

It's a party so there's loud music.  Most likely inappropriate music and even less appropriate behavior.  Been to any parties lately?  There's been several reports of inappropriate behavior but the media ignores that even reports made by BLACK witnesses because making this all about race is giving the people what they want. Neighbors took offense at their peace being violated and kind of had a right to do so.

Could a few of the complaints have been racially motivated?  How the hell should I know? I wasn't there and you probably weren't either, but it's a rich, predominately white neighborhood in a very Republican state so I wouldn't fault you for making that assumption.  I wouldn't say you were right either.  If the teens felt that threatened by the white neighbors, why didn't THEY call the cops or just leave?  Because they weren't supposed to be there.  It's almost as though they wanted a confrontation.

Were the cops wrong for breaking up the party?  No.  Because the teens had no right to be there.  End of.  It isn't segregation.  It's a matter of the pool being strictly for the people who pay the HOA fees to maintain the pool.  If black families live in that neighborhood and pay for the pool, I'm positive they'd have a legal right to use it. These teens didn't.  They certainly shouldn't have resisted the police when they were told to leave.  These teens are not innocent of wrong doing and no one wants to publicly acknowledge that.  Too scared people will think they're racist.

Was this just a political statement and the cops were baited into responding for the cameras?  Things that make you go huh.

But if the teens were innocent, why weren't their parents there and why didn't they get permission to use the pool?  Bad parenting may not excuse police brutality,  but it creates the situations that make confrontations with police possible.

Police brutality affects people of all colors.  Cops beat up white people all the time, but the media ignores that because it's only newsworthy when blacks are victims.  We only care when it involves black people.  Everyone knows only whites are racist, right?

And that kind of thinking is why racism will never die.

But no matter what new information comes out, people have already made up their minds based on what they WANT to believe regardless of the truth.

Watch the video for yourself.  Try to be objective.  Here's more info:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/07/us/mckinney-texas-pool-video-police/

Beauty matters

It's an ugly fact of life, but it is what it is.  How pretty you are matters.

Forget all that crap about how intelligence and integrity are more important.  Those are just comforting lies unpretty people make up to feel better about themselves.  It's never been about how good a person you are on the inside.  It's ALWAYS been about how you look.

It's an unpalatable thing to admit, but 99% of humans are vain.

And it isn't even our fault.  It isn't just the media telling us what's pretty.  It isn't peer pressure.  Think about what turns you on and ask yourself why?  You have no idea why.  What you're attracted to is written in your genes.  That's why you can't "convert" to a different sexual orientation just because a really old book tells you to.  You are what you are.  Some people like rapists and pedophiles are genetically impaired, but that just means they should be institutionalized for the good of society.

The truth is, you will always be judged by your looks.  It's the first thing people notice about you.  How they judge you will be based on what they find attractive.  Some of that judgement will be based on what we're told is pretty by society but a lot of it will come from our own animal instincts.  Because humans are animals, regardless of how you think we got here.

We see it every day.  Survival of the fittest.  The pretty people getting ahead in life while the rest of us struggle.  The pretty people getting the breaks while the rest of us are just broken.  It's not your imagination.  It really happens.  They have done scientific studies that prove pretty people are more successful.  It's that bad a problem.

And yes, if you dress and act like a stereotype,  you will be judged as being that stereotype.  So if you sag and wear a hoodie, people will think you're ghetto trash.  If you dress provocatively, people will think you're promiscuous.  It's not us. It's you.  If you don't want people thinking you're a thug or a slut, change your dress and mind the way you behave.

But is there anything we can do about this travesty?  Is there any way for not so pretty people to get ahead in life?

Sure.  Lots of unpretty get ahead.  They get money.  Money trumps looks every time.

But if you're not fated to ever be rich, don't waste your time trying to be prettier.  Plastic surgery, all the make up in the world, they may last a little while, but not forever.

See, that's the only good thing about pretty people.  They lose their looks eventually and then, if we're lucky, they're in the same boat as we.  That's karma.

You may never be pretty and you'll probably never be rich.  How do you survive?  By being ok with it.  By telling yourself you're fine the way you are and being happy with what you have.  By taking comfort in your intelligence and integrity and yes, you're being a good person.  By not letting pretty people get under your skin.

Pretty people hate being ignored.  That's the best revenge.

How the ghetto stereotype keeps you unemployed

It isn't being black that keeps you unemployed.  I know people don't want to hear that right now.  We just want to blame our problems on white people like we've always done.  If black people suffer, it's because of racism and not because they did anything wrong.   Blacks never do anything wrong.  It's always the white man's fault.

But we will never be able to address the plight of the black man without addressing his failings.  We can't keep making excuses or blaming white people.  Who lets white people be so privileged?  If you want a better life, you have to work for it.

The question today is, why are people in the ghetto having such a hard time finding work?  It can't be just because they're black.  Lots of black people have jobs.  How did millions of black folks pull one over on their white oppressors?

They didn't.  Black people can find work if they want it badly enough and they have the qualifications, but to help the job search, you have to know what employers WANT in employees and then make yourself appealing to them.

There is a stereotype that proliferates society about people who come from the ghetto.  Sadly, it's not necessarily a false one or it wouldn't be so prominent in our minds.  Ghetto-ites are known to be poor workers.  Lazy with bad attitudes.  That's what employers think of when they think of the ghetto and they don't want those kinds of employees.  Employees are an investment to them and the face of their business.  They need good employees to keep their customers happy so they can keep making profits.  The only employers who don't care about company image enough to not care what kind of employees they hire are employers with high turn over and those jobs mean low wages.

So what do employers with decent wages (white collar jobs) look for?  Someone well educated, well spoken, well dressed and who doesn't act ghetto.  If you're sagging, using bad grammar and didn't bother to finish high school, then you will never stand a chance.  But you're lack of education is due to your lack of desire.  Anyone who wants to learn, can.  There are so many other sources to learn from than school.  And, yes, appearance is everything.  Don't rock a grill and be covered in tattoos if you want to be taken seriously.  That's just the way it is.

Black people who take my advice get jobs. Those that don't, end up on welfare.

But you're the only one to blame if you do.

No more Indian call centers

I don't want to bash India, but if a company wants to sell their product in MY country, they need to hire WORKERS from my country.  End of.

I'm tired of every time I have an IT question, I end up with some guy in India who barely speaks english (or only knows enough english to read from a script) and I can't get the help I need because I can't understand most of what the guy says.  When you need help, you need someone who's fluent in your language, who can communicate beyond the script because most of what you need to know is not covered by the script anyway.  A machine can read a script.  I'm talking to a live person for a REASON.  And why do they think giving you a fake American name is going to fool us?  I know your real name is not Bob.  Why not just be honest and admit you're not an American and you're not in America?

But it's more aggravating than bad communication.  Those foreign call centers represent jobs that workers in my own country need.  People in the US are hurting for jobs, but there aren't any because corporations don't want to pay minimum wage.  Putting profits over people, corporations outsource our jobs overseas where they can pay slave wages.  We think minimum wage is bad.  Those people who don't speak your language and aren't much help at that call center are paid maybe $3 bucks an hour at most.  And corporations get away with it because that's capitalism and greed is NOT good, Gordon.

But if you want my business, you have to do right by me.  If you won't hire me, then you don't deserve my money.

If you get sent to a foreign call center, end your business with that company.  Be more patriotic, dammit.