Maturation is the shit.

I know I’m a very critical person. Lord knows no one has come to terms with this more than I have in the last few weeks. I’ve tried really hard lately to not write negative things about people in my blog, but sometimes, you’ve just got to make some harsh criticisms about other people.

Last night I was just cruisin’ the old MySpace when I noticed that this girl I know posted a bulletin. This particular girl is the daughter of some family friends. She’s seventeen (my brother’s age), and like most seventeen-year-old girls on MySpace, she tends to be very prolific when it comes to bulletin postings. Usually, I just don’t read them, but I was bored, so I opened one with the subject line, “I agree,” because who doesn’t want to know what seventeen-year-olds are agreeing with these days? This is what I read:

You call me "Cracker", "Honkey", "Whitey" and you think it's OK. But when I call you Kike, Towelhead, WOP, Sand-nigger, Camel Jockey, Coconut nigger, spick, Praire Nigger, Wet back, nigger or Chink you call me a racist.

You say that whites commit a lot of violence against you, so why are the ghettos the most dangerous places to live

You have Mrs. Black America.
You have the United Negro College Fund.
You have Martin Luther King Day.
You have Black History Month.
You have Cesar Chavez Day.
You have Yom Hashoah
You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi
You have the NAACP.
You have BET.

If we had WET(white entertainment television) ...we'd be racists.
If we had a White Pride Day... you would call us racists.
If we had white history month... we'd be racists.
If we had an organization for only whites to "advance" our lives... we'd be racists.
If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships...you know we'd be racists.
In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights...you would call us racists.

Did you know that some high school students decided to make a club for only the white students because the other ethnicities had them... they all got sent to court for being rasist but the african-american, latino, and asian clubs were not even questioned.

You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.

I am white.
I am proud.
But, you call me a racist.

Why is it that only whites can be racists?

Repost if you agree.

Siiigh. Seventeen-year-olds.

I know I should have just ignored it, but it really pissed me off, so I responded. I’ll save you all from having to read it, but I promise it was nice and level-headed. I basically said that racism isn’t even an American issue, but a human issue, and it applies to people of all ethnicities. I defined for her what a ghetto was; it is not a hotbed of criminal activity where black people live. Ghettos are neighborhoods that house minorities, historically minorities who are forced to live together by the majority ethnicity in power (which are historically white). I also pointed out to her that she doesn’t need to “march for her rights” because she’s a rich white girl who receives a private-school education and won’t ever have to worry about working for her tuition. I said, “You don't know what life is like for girls your age who live in Chicago right now, whose parents can't afford to send them to prep schools to receive better educations. That's why there are organizations that are restrictive based on minority races. It's not racist. Those organizations put together money for the children of minorities who don't have everything handed to them.”

Afterward, I was talking to my brother on AIM about it (he’s friends with her), and I had one of those epiphanies where I realized that my brother was not the same twelve-year-old he was when I left for college, but in fact a very brilliant, funny, seventeen-year-old who is going to two junior proms. He found my response to be appropriate, and laughed at the stupid bulletin. He said, “The offensive names for whites aren’t even hurtful. ‘Wonderbread?’ That’s not hurtful, it’s a brand of bread. It’s like going up to a black guy and calling him ‘Rye.’ You can’t compare ‘wonderbread’ with the N-word.”

We also discussed how, in good ol’ Virginny, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is also Lee-Jackson Day, a holiday which is defended using the same old “It’s history, not racism” slogan coupled with the Confederate Flag. To which my brother replied, “History is racism. People say it isn’t fair to have a Black History Month? Well, during the other eleven months we’re celebrating white history, history about society dominated by white culture. When’s the last time you studied African countries in World History?” (The only one I can think of, I admit, is Egypt.)

Anyway, I was surprised by and proud of my brother’s statements, and it was nice to have a real conversation with him without trying to compete in some way. Or fighting with him and making each other bleed. We’ve grown up so much since last December.