Bigotry

So, okay, I'm in the South.

So, Mrs. A_ leave out the book she's reading on the countertop at the hotel room:

The Help

Yeah.

Well, everybody's nice and Southern polite here.

And there's a clear distinction between Black and White. There's the receptionists and managers at the hotel, and the janitors and maids.

Guess which color is which.

It's really more out in the open down here.

But it's really out in the open anywhere.

I was online with some friends of mine Maia and black00thought, and one of them mentioned where he lives, in Boston, he was at a pizza place, and he offered to pack the left-overs from the meal, only to have his guest reply: 'Nah, that's what black people do.'

He was stunned into silence.

I could go on a tirade here, but Maia's response is better than one I could muster:

"When you're a racist, every pronouncement you make is stupid."

I mean: how can you argue with what bigots, racists, prejudiced people say? You can't.

"Black people pack up their left-overs"? Um, so do a bunch of other people, including poor little Irish me, but no, you can't say that to them. They saw, one time, somebody who is black packing up their meal at a restaurant, and from there on after, that's what black people do, and you can't say dick to shake their belief.

You know what the opposite of racism/bigotry/prejudiced people?

It's not tolerance.

It's intolerance.

Really.

A prejudiced person sees a person they've labeled or they hate, and they see them doing something, and they are like: 'Oh, that's how they are,' and hate them, and accept them as that. Prejudiced people are among the most tolerant people in the world: they label a person and they stick them into that box, and forever allow a person of that color or creed to do what they are doing, because 'that's how they are.'

What we need in this world is not more people to tolerate/accept/allow how things are: we need more people who say: you know, that's how you see it, but I'm not going to stand for that.

You know: like MLKjr, like Ghandi, like Mother Teresa.

She said, 'the poorest of the poor are like that'?

No: everybody else said that. She said: this person is a child of God and has an innate dignity, and I will die, respecting this person as a person, not as an untouchable.

You want to be tolerant?

Go right ahead: the world is as it is, because of your tacit 'acceptance.'