Yesterday I read a statement by one of the terrorists who attacked Congress and the Capitol on January 6th that made me want to connect my fist to the man’s nose …
“This is not 1950. I’d say about 95, 96 percent of people are not the least bit racist.”
SAY WHAT????
The remark was made by a ‘man’ named John Hugo, president of a group called, believe it or not, Super Happy Fun America (SFHA) that bused some three hundred people to the Capitol on January 6th to create chaos, murder and mayhem, and first earned their claim to fame when they held a “Straight Pride Parade” in Boston in 2019. I guess this is what they call “Super Happy Fun”, eh? Let me tell you something, MR. HUGO … racism is alive and well in this nation … and YOU, sir, are part of the problem!
According to a PEW Research study … well, here … take a look for yourself …
Even without the Pew study, we can see with our own eyes that racism surely exists among the majority of people with pale skin in this country! I’m talking about the sort of racism whereby pale people believe … truly believe in their warped minds … that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
Case in point: There is overwhelming proof that white people use more illegal drugs. Yet, the only way anyone can explain why Black people are arrested for possession at three times the rate of whites is the racist belief that there is a huge drug use problem in Black communities. Racism is the only way to explain why the largest policing project in world history revealed “Black drivers were searched about 1.5 to 2 times as often as white drivers, while they were less likely to be carrying drugs, guns, or other illegal contraband compared to their white peers.” It is necessary to believe that race is a “fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities” if one wants to understand why Black men receive prison sentences that are, on average, nearly 20 percent longer than white men who commit the same crimes.
I have a Black friend who has been incarcerated for a crime he did not commit, that nobody, not even the police, thought he committed, and now his sons are stopped on average once or twice a month for the crime of “Driving While Black”. ‘Splain that one, Mr. Hugo!
It isn’t only Black people, it is Hispanics, Asians, and anybody who doesn’t have the physical traits of those pale people. WHY??? WHY, people … can somebody please explain to me why those pale-skinned people think they are somehow superior???
The PEW study goes on to show that most (65%) white Americans believe it has become more common for people to express racist or racially insensitive views since Trump was elected president …
And while I really don’t like tying such things as racism to one political party or the other, the proof, as it were, is in the pudding that overall, Republicans are the ones who think Black people actually have too many r ights!
DAMMIT!!! Could somebody give these nudniks a bit of education??? Eight-in-ten white Democrats – vs. 40% of white Republicans – say the legacy of slavery continues to have an impact on black people’s position in American society today. And when it comes to views about racial discrimination, 78% of white Democrats say the bigger problem is people not seeing it where it really does exist, while a similar share of white Republicans say people seeing racial discrimination where it really does not exist is the bigger problem. Tell me again that the Republican Party hasn’t turned into the party of racism and bigotry … go ahead, tell me!
All my life, since I was a small child, I have believed that someday racism and bigotry would end, that people would come to understand that the colour of a person’s skin, the homeland of his ancestors, do not change the fact that his heart and brain function just the same as anyone else’s and that there is nothing … NOTHING … that makes pale people superior. All my life … nearly 70 years now … I believed that people would eventually wake up and smell the goddamn coffee. Today, I no longer believe that. I have seen the human species as it is and I understand, after all these years, that some people are simply never, ever, going to give up their illusions of superiority and will continue to pass those heinous beliefs on to their children and grandchildren.
It doesn’t mean I will stop fighting, though in truth I am tempted, for I see all too clearly that humans are not going to change, that stupidity and cruelty is ingrained and passed on through the genes. But, what it does mean is that I have lost hope. I have lost the belief that people are basically good. I have stopped caring whether the human species survives or not.