One day I hope that we get to the point in politics where our elected (Or aspiring to be elected) officials can hold a press conference and just admit when they did or said something ridiculous.  You know, come to the mic saying “Yeah for a minute there I was suffering from Shitmouthism where I was spewing feces uncontrollably out of my mouth.  I’m here to say I’m sorry for that and that the Doctor has given me some antibiotics and I’m going to make a full recovery.  Sorry for sounding like such an idiot.  Please forgive me.”  I know it will never happen but I just don’t understand why it’s that hard.  Like when Pat Buchanan can’t figure out why black people might be upset when he said that this country was built by white males.  I refuse to believe he’s that stupid that he can’t see the error in that statement, so why not just admit that you caught a case of “feces of the tongue” and move on?

But alas, that’s not what happens.  It’s much easier to blame the people offended by the outrageous comment than to admit that at the very least you didn’t make your point in a clear, concise and articulate way.  Take Kentucky US Senate hopeful Rand Paul.  You’ll remember him from the mind boggling way he stumbled over Rachel Maddow asking him simply whether he would support the Civil Rights Act.  It’s a simple question that anyone hoping to run for anything outside of Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan would know to answer simply with a “Yes”.  But not Paul.  Instead he foolishly tried to take an academic approach to answering this question suggesting that states should decide themselves and for some reason comparing human civil rights to the rights of people to go into a restaurant with guns.  Completely idiot.  And when called on this BS instead of just admitting his wording was not only ill advised but just flat out stupid, Paul pulled out a trick from the Mitt Romney playbook with the “I would have marched with MLK.”  Obviously you don’t get it man.

But it gets better.

After blowing off Meet the Press and several other media outlets by putting himself on a self imposed media hiatus, Rand Paul did what most wayward sons do after blowing all their money and he went home to momma:  Fox News.  Instead of making a simple mea culpa for his mistake of going on a show with a liberal (but extremely fair and patience) Rachel Maddow and answering a simple question in such a convoluted and idiotic way, Paul blamed liberals.  Liberals?  Dude, Koko the gotdamn gorilla would have given a better answer in sign language than you did.  And Rachel Maddow, while liberal, was almost painfully fair with you.  She gave you plenty of opportunities to dig yourself out of your self made hole but each time she reached down to pull you up, you knocked her hand away and then pulled more dirt over top of yourself.  Here’s part of what Paul said on Fox News.

“I would vote for the Civil Rights Act,” Paul responded. “I think the Civil Rights Act was necessary to right a great wrong, and yet I’m vilified for even having any kind of audacity to at least discuss any of it. I think that’s really — it gets away from having any kind of, you know, any kind of real discussion on television. You know the most common answer I’ve been told to give when I’m on national TV now is, ‘don’t answer the question, keep repeating some answer you want to give.’”

I’m sorry but people get a little sensitive when the topic of Civil Rights gets discussed.  You want to have a discussion about how in some cases  States and private businesses have a right to discriminate and I’m sorry, while it is your right to want to have that discussion, its my right and the right of many other people to tell you to go to Hell.  See I know the real issue here.  The real issue here is you and your father have built political careers on “less government” and things like the Civil Rights Act throw a wrench in that.  You want to pretend that the Federal Government doesn’t have to step in sometimes to right wrongs done by states and corporations.  Part of the problem is that as a white male in a situation like this, you know that the type of discrimination covered in the Civil Rights Act would never happen to you and so honestly you don’t care.  You’re not a racist Paul.  No calling you a racist would be letting you off the hook.  No, you’re just that guy who sees discrimination happening but won’t step out of your own comfort zone or risk political capital to fight it.  And that’s why you answered the question the way you did on Rachel Maddow’s show.  It wasn’t that a “liberal tried to trap” you.  It’s not the “Liberal Media” trying to destroy you.  This was just you expressing that you’d put political aspirations and ideology over Civil Rights and common sense.  Some of us think that’s horrible and we let you know.  Now I just wish you would admit that instead of pretending the liberal media is out to get you.  Own up to it.  It’s not like you’d lose.  You’re in Kentucky for Godsake.  They’d probably give you a medal.

I recently got an email from a reader about an interesting topic.  He’s a white guy and his question was how come when a white person makes a joke black people find it inappropriate but if a black person makes the same joke, they find it funny.

I actually think this is the wrong question ask.  See, the answer to that question is very simple.  The reason Black people react differently is because we are overly sensitive to things white people say, especially when it comes to “jokes.”  The real question should be, “Why are we overly sensitive?”  I don’t think anyone has really done a good job explaining it.  Usually when a white person tries to explain it they come off as having “white guilt” and when a black person tries to explain it they simply say “Because of slavery you racist asshole” without really explaining what that means.  The short and simple answer to the question is that white people can’t make those kinds of statements and jokes because black people are extremely distrustful of the context behind what they are saying.  In order to answer this question we need to take care of some history first that, thanks to our shitty public education system, seems to be either not taught or misconstrued.

The first thing we need to address is the fact that Lincoln didn’t free the slaves.  Actually let’s take it a step back further.  The Civil War wasn’t about slavery or freeing slaves.  That is a myth that seems to be taught to young kids in public, private and home schools these days and now these kids grow up really believing the North was fighting “The good fight” of freeing slaves.  This is false.  The making slaves free men wasa useful by product of the Civil War, much like horse byproduct (feces) makes good fertilizer.  The Civil War was about what all wars are about, money.  The North couldn’t afford to have the South break off as its own country (with all the agriculture? Please).Lincoln’s speech which “Freed the slaves” was about healing the country, not giving equal rights to all.  Plus, when they say Lincoln “Freed” the slaves, its not like he went around plantation to plantation saying “Thou Art Free”.  A lot of people, particularly white people, forget that ending 400 years of slavery didn’t mean much back then.  What they neglect to realize is that even though slavery ended, black people still weren’t treated as equal human beings.  From the time Lincoln outlawed slavery to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, black people had to deal with blatant systemic racism (Don’t get it twisted, its still going on, just round the clock blatant).  Jim Crow laws where enacted from 1876 to 1965.  From using ridiculous grandfather clauses and violent intimidation to keep blacks from voting, to segregating schools, buses and lunch counters, black people were still not treated as equals after the Emancipation Proclamation.  I need to reiterate that these egregious acts of racism not only were accepted by society as a whole, but that they occurred in relatively recent memory.  Not only were these just tough emotionally…but people where killed simply because they wanted equal rights.  These are things that happened IN OUR LIFETIME.  I love hearing white people say things like “But my family didn’t own slaves.”  Okay, but you and your family benefited, whether you agreed with it or not, from rules and laws that severely limited what blacks were allowed to do.  We have family members we can still talk to that will tell us what it was like to have to sit at the back of the bus, drink from the colored water fountain and what it was like being “separate but equal.”  See, what white people see as an ugly scar that happened “a long time ago”, we black people see as a fresh wound.

In addition to that history, it’s also the dismissal of that history by white people that makes blacks so sensitive.  Just think about the different ways people react to Jewish people taking offense to something as opposed to a black person.  No one tells a Jewish person to “Get over” the Holocaust.  But when a black person says something is crossing the line, we’re told that “slavery happened a long time ago. Get over it.”  Never mind the fact that the Holocaust occurred in the 1940’s and in 1960 black people were still sipping from different water fountains.

There’s also one other factor I want to throw in real quick and that’s the “Denial Syndrome”.  This is when a white person does something bigoted or racist and instead of apologizing for it, they act like they can’t possibly see why people are offended.  This adds to the distrust of the context of a white person’s joke.  In our mind we’re thinking “Are they just telling a joke or are they mocking us.”  Take the instance where those teens in Louisiana mocked the Jena 6 incident by covering themselves in mud and shouting “niggers put the noose on.”  Yeah, instead of just apologizing for racist behavior, they tried to claim they were just “joking.”  Then there are cases like the Don Imus case.  On face the Don Imus comments could be seen as just a joke from shock jock.  But when you dig a little and see that his producer has made racists comments before, as a black person, you then have to question the context behind the “joke.” And no…just because a black person makes a stupid, retarded joke or comment, it doesn’t make it okay for you to do it too. We’re adults. The “But they did it too excuse” doesn’t work.

So that is why the same joke told by a black person is found funny by blacks and is viewed as crossing the line if told by a white person.  There are ways to make racial jokes and not be labeled a bigot.  I say all the time “White people can’t use the word nigga.”  But I’ve been in the audience of a comedy show before, heard a white guy use the word…and laughed my ass off.  Why?  Because he was able to do so in a context that made it clear there was no malicious attempt (Warning:  Using the “N-Word” as a white person can be very detrimental to your health and is not recommended.  Use at your own risk).  Also, it’s very hard to read context, particularly online.  So yes, when the white Mayor of a California town sends out an email to a black person with a watermelon patch in the White House front lawn, it sets off an alarm in our brain.  Think of it this way.  You have a little brother or sister and growing up you might have teased them endlessly, beat them up and generally been an ass to them.  But if someone else decided to do the same thing you did, you would defend your brother/sister with your life.  Its the same way with racial/cultural jokes.