From the awesome sax playing cartoonist, Bob Ray Starker:If you’ve ever said “I don’t see color,” just stop it. It’s ridiculous. Don’t say it anymore. Of COURSE you see color.
Not seeing color would be like not seeing blonde or ginger or brunette, or not seeing if someone is thick or thin, or male or female, or tall or short. These are things people are genetically born into, and you see them.
You see it. You notice it.
It’s one step away from saying you don’t see a man-bun or a nose piercing or a MAGA hat or a hijab or a swastika tattoo. Those things are choices, and you SEE them. Go ahead and see them, that’s not what matters. What matters is how you act, having seen them.
Don’t be blind, be conscious. Be conscious of what you see, and how you react to it, and what it causes other people to see in you.
Don’t judge people based on the physical things they were born into, and don’t immediately assume that you understand why they’ve made the choices you can see that they made. Maybe try to treat every person you meet as another person, equal to you and deserving of a chance to prove themselves.
Judge them on their actions, and not on your assumptions. They might surprise you.
But if, given a chance, they act like assholes, distance yourself and judge away. 😉
A clip from a longer Jim Wright post (go read the whole piece!) where he pinpoints precisely why he's getting sick up and fed with social media:
It's not the trolls, bots, religious nuts, right-wing nuts, and fanatical Stormtrumpers who spew hate and insanity in my face every day. I expect that and it doesn't bother me. Much.
Or rather it's not JUST that.
No, it's the other side. The Tone Police, the Purity Patrol, the Social Justice suicide bombers willing to die on every goddamned hill, the self-appointed Editors who want to argue over every single word, the tedious pedants, and the guy who screams "BOT!" in response to every comment.
More than anything it's the smug self-righteous left-wing gatekeepers who show up to every post with "do better."
I hate that fucking phrase.Do better. No. Fuck you. No one should have to put up with that condescending bullshit. As soon as I see "do better" or any variation, out the airlock you go.
It’s not about disagreement. Or even about reasonable criticism. All of us should be able to handle that.
It's about ENTITLEMENT.
It's about those who see the rest of us as objects to be OWNED, improved, edited, managed, controlled, silenced and redirected. It's about dancing monkeys.YUP! I’ve known a few folks like that. PAST tense.
AND today is Marathon Day. Snuck up on me this year. Totes understandable since I no longer work right at the finish line or live along the route. I don’t need to suffer the overwhelmingly HUGE crowds, the closed streets and T stations, the 500 person long lines for a damn cuppa. I often miss living in town but def NOT on Marathon Day.
I imagine the right wing Hate-the-Browns brigade will unpack their greatest hits from the 2013 Marathon on this day. They'll pretend their own kind hasn't been responsible for far more murders. With their cheerleader monster in the WH that number's only going up, up, UP .
