Oink!
I've come to find that blogging is as much an exercise in patience as it is in thinking and writing.
I want to make a point here while addressing the strange comment that Matt made, seemingly castigating me for not noting the apparent "racism" of another blogger – JiMong – on another site.
So? I clicked on the post and got taken to a site called "AsianWhite.org". I find it weird and creepy. Aha! Ya'll got me! I'm a racist and a hypocrite! You so swift!
This isn't the racist Fighting 44's, an Asian American "community site" that is really nothing more than a place to express hatred for anyone who dates across racial lines and use the most despicable racial slurs imaginable without batting an eye. Yeah, they are mostly Asian Americans, but I called them out because I found their behavior on their discussion forums beyond the pale of anything approaching reasonable dialogue. But Jimong's site is far from the racist drivel that goes on on the Fighting 44's – if it weren't, I'd be the first to say it.
Far from it, like Jimong said, he doesn't have anything against interracial couples. Clearly, neither do I, being the result of one. He was pointing out that this particular Asiawhite.org site – which advocates and defends Asian-White relationships as some kind of life philosophy – is weird and creepy. Am I racist because I find people who make it their life purpose to date a member of a certain group, or who has certain attributes, creepy? If it were a site about "Why I Like Banging Redheads" I would find it equally weird. A person who happens to like to date redheads for whatever reason – who cares?
And anyway, finding someone strange for having a stated predilection for something and commenting on it – I don't find that racist. What I do find racist is a site that consistently and categorically dismisses entire groups of people as "subhuman" (your words, Matt) or any other litany of derogatory adjectives. No, I'm not every going to have a definitive "proof" that yours is a "racist" site – like a figurative smoking gun. I have given my definition of the term and how I employ it, and the reasons why I utilize the term when I do.
If anyone is "racist," it's the people who imply that I don't have the right to speak out on through my own blog because I am black (yes, all your little comments about me being all kinds of whatever bcs of my apparent affirmative action breaks are straight and obviously "racist"), or I should go to Africa, or that I smell, or am stupid, or shouldn't write in Black slang because it makes me sound even more stupid (along with the backhanded compliment that I am apparently not, which is why I shouldn't use Black speech slang) – there's racist fools out there like a mofo.
But me pointing out racism or talking about race makes me racist?
Puh-leeze.
You don't have to agree with me. You don't have to write like me. You don't even have to come to this blog, you know. You can call me crazy, deranged, or a "racist" myself. But I stand by my words and don't hide, like some people, behind a sheltering mask of anonymity.
Who is more believable – the person who speaks up loudly and clearly upon a stage of reasonability, or the person who cowers behind a virtual mask and feigns a superficial righteousness and indignation? I sign my name to my blog, as well as all the things I write and the comments I make on other blogs – and take full responsibility for everything I have to say, even if sometimes I have to swallow my pride and eat crow, which I have done here when I have spoken out of line, as anyone who actually reads this blog knows full well.
And contrary to whatever has been said about me on my detractors' blogs, I don't write under other people's names and I have never misrepresented myself or lied to make a point.
Can any of these Internet trolls say the same?
I think not, which is why it's hard for moral and reasonable people to talk about anything substantial on the Internet.
But I'm learning a lot about keeping a cool head and holding a steady course, even when stupid people occasionally rear their unreasonable little heads.
Thanks be to the commenter who reminded me of my main professor's favorite quote: "Don't wrestle with pigs, because you just get dirty and the pigs like it."
I won't wrestle with the pigs, but I still feel obligated to engage with them when they offer themselves as a foil against which to make an interesting point.
And most of the time, the posting of Internet trolls actually do most of my arguing for me. I just have to remember to wash more often than I would if I were only dealing with actual reasonable people.
