Friday, June 12, 2015

Uh oh. In the racial-identity-soaked political world that she has chosen to inhabit, does her life NOT matter? Also, a moment of truth in a local thrift store.

The City of Spokane announced Thursday it's investigating whether the president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP violated the city's code of ethics in her application to serve on the citizen police ombudsman commission. Rachel Dolezal serves as chair of the independent commission, in addition to her work as an adjunct faculty member at Eastern Washington University and president of the NAACP local chapter. On her application to serve on the commission, she identified herself as African-American. But public records, including Dolezal's own birth certificate, list her biological parents as Ruthanne and Lawrence Dolezal of Montana. The Dolezals told KXLY Thursday that Rachel is their biological daughter and that they are both white.
I had a run-in at a local thrift store (one of my favorite haunts) the other day with yet another black fellow wearing a "Black lives matter" tee-shirt. There's nothing that sets me off like racial identity politics, black or white, so I said in a reasonable tone, "You know, I don't want to pop your balloon, but ALL lives matter." You could see he immediately got pissed off, but before he could give me a rejoinder, I said, "That's why God invented firearms," and patted my right front pants pocket. He saw the gesture and said the first thing that came to his mind, "F-ck you, motherf-cker." I replied, still quite reasonably, "No, that's what the pistol is preventing, but I'm serious, all lives matter, yours, mine, everybody's, regardless of skin color. We all matter, don't you agree?"
This gave him a bit of pause, not being used to being asked to think about life in terms other than that of slogans. "I'm talking about cops killing young black men," he replied. "Oh I know what you're talking about, and I'm no fan of killer cops either, but when you put things in terms of race and race alone, you're no better than the cowards of the Klan."
Now he just looked at me. "You know," I said, "I've been fighting THOSE bastards all my life and I'll tell you something, they are damned happy to see you adopt their way of thinking about life in pure racial terms. And I'll tell you something else, they are happy as shit to see y'all murdering each other by the bushel-full every damn day. Hell, not even at the height of their power could they lynch you that fast. And I'll tell you something else as well. The ghost of every Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and every wanna-be Neo-Nazi fuhrer who ever lived laughs like hell every morning when the abortion clinics open for business in your neighborhoods. They love white people killing black babies (and most abortionists are white) and they love black kids killing other black kids. Hell, y'all are putting ALL the lynchings of the Klan throughout history in the deep shade and you're giving the Holocaust a run for its money (and here I raised my voice for the first time) -- AND YOU'RE DOING IT ALL TO YOURSELVES. Lord knows that you're good for comic relief in the parts of Hell that THEY inhabit. And the Devil does too.
He just gaped at me. And we were drawing a small crowd, mostly black women. And two of them were nodding.
"And when you put it terms of 'Black lives matter,' that implies that white lives, and Asian lives, and Eskimo lives, and every other kind of lives don't matter. So we get the feeling that if this is all about some sort of race test that we can't hope to pass to your satisfaction because of who we are, not how we act, then screw you buddy, we're not gonna play that game. So the rest of us get the feeling that if our lives don't matter then why the hell should we care if you think 'black lives matter?' And it's just a little ways from there for the rest of us to conclude that black lives DON'T matter either."
"That's right," said one of the black ladies softly.
"So if you wanted a slogan that the Klan could understand and use to recruit with, well, brother, that's it. So that slogan is either the worst kind of stupidity or the bastard who thought it up is trying to separate you from your natural allies or get you killed, or both. I can't think of another slogan more calculated to get an American Hitler elected, and I HATE Nazis."
Everybody was quiet now, but I thought, what the heck, might as well give 'em the whole sermon.
"And I'll tell you something else" (I'm always telling somebody something else), "when I see these black racists of Farrakhan's bunch talking about wanting a race war I'd say they haven't looked at how the numbers stack up. Because let me tell you something about white folks at their worst. When they get scared that people are trying to kill them just because of who they are, when they get pissed off along racial lines, they don't tear up their own neighborhoods or burn down their own communities like y'all do. They come to the neighborhoods of the people who threaten them and burn THEIR communities down and kill THEM. They have burned down whole CONTINENTS. And if you don't believe me, just ask the Indians. So before you wear a slogan like THAT," (and I pointed at his shirt), "you'd better think this shit through. If you manage to make this all about race and some American Hitler decides to put y'all on railroad cars leading to some camp, me and my white-assed friends will have to be the ones out blowing up the train tracks to keep that from happening, and I'll tell you, I'd really rather stay home than get shot at because somebody was stupid enough to buy into some racist's idea of how to view the world."
I concluded: "This ain't about black or white, it's about good versus evil and ALL lives matter." "And," I added, "you forget that at your own peril." It seemed like a good time time to walk away, so I did, leaving the cart behind. As I walked off, one of the black ladies said, "DAMN!"
It was perhaps my finest extemporaneous speech (with the possible exception of the one I am told I gave after-hours in the militia commander's tent in Texas that time back in the fall of '96, but I was drunk on Jameson's Irish whiskey at the time and don't remember a word).

17 comments:

Eddy said...

Man I love this speech. I wished I could word my thoughts like that.

Anonymous said...

I dearly pray that I could be so extemporaneously eloquent. Bravo, Mike!

Anonymous said...

You sure can think on your feet Mike, I'll give you that! And all without stuttering. ..That's the thing - getting people to actually think, and not just repeat slogans like a parrot. If you could change just that ones guys mind about the reality of things (not to mention the onlookers) then it was a good day indeed.

Anonymous said...

AWESOME!!!! Simply awesome.

CB said...

While in boot camp decades ago, we were forced to watch gruesome films of Nazi and Soviet atrocities. The Ku Klukkers are the in the same sewer. All lives matter.
Cameras are everywhere and hopefully someone recorded your beneficial rant for posterity.
Good job Sir!

Anonymous said...

BRAVO!!!! Hopefully they'll remember that, and possibly even change their way of thinking about life. I wish that I'd been there with you to record it.

http://www.audioblocks.com/stock-audio/4-slow-hand-claps.html
(slow applause).

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Who knows how far the ripples will spread from the pebble you just threw in their pond.

B Woodman
III-per

Merle said...

Good show!!!

Merle

Vegas Dave said...

I am afraid, Mike, that it is too late for that.

Jerry The Geek said...

Yeah, Jamesons will do that .... makes even not-Irish sound Irish, too

Anonymous said...

Well done!

I quoted from and posted the link to this article at http://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2015/06/12/mike-lees-way-forward-for-social-conservatives-on-gay-marriage/comment-page-1/#comment-3306720

davidk

Backwoods Engineer said...

Well done, Mike. My thoughts as well.

Dutchman6 said...

Well, it was extemporaneous but I've said similar things to other folks, black and white recently, practicing, I guess you could say, honing the language. I don't always come up with the right words on the fly. Of course there was the time that I told my mother-in-law after she deliberately made my oldest daughter cry that she was a "scabrous-hearted harridan who oozed meanness the way a rotting corpse oozes stank." ("Stank" is a Southernism bearing the same relationship to stink that "nekkid" has to naked. To quote Lewis Grizzard, "Naked means you have no clothes. Nekkid means you have no clothes and are up to somethin'.")

CowboyDan said...

Jameson makes some good whiskey. I used to rather enjoy it. As I recall, even their low grade stuff was pretty good.

My son is going to Ireland in a month or so. Do you trust your postman?

Good speech. Old black ladies didn't get old being dumb. I bet a lot of people have heard about that speech by now. A LOF of people.

Papa Whiskey said...

Your disquisition calls to mind an old “Far Side” cartoon by Gary Larson. The first panel shows a guy berating his dog Ginger, the word balloon full of objurgation in plain English and the caption: “What we say to dogs.” The next panel is the same drawing, captioned, “What they hear.” Same size word balloon, only now it’s full of “Blah blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah blah blah.”

It should not be imagined that a young black male is going to listen to what a white guy says, much less take it to heart. In their schools, their churches, and their social circles, they are relentlessly schooled to profile us -- as irredeemable racists. Racial reconciliation under such conditions is a chimera.

Anonymous said...

As John Neihardt said of his own best compositions: "Something helps". I couldn't remember the words of my own best extemporaneous speeches, either, drunk or sober. But when the Spirit moves and we get out of the way, much is said in very few words.

God bless you, Mike, and all of what you do.
-MM

Ramsey A. Bear said...

Posted to my facebook account. I wish I were so eloquent.

Anonymous said...

Hello Mike, whenever I need some motivation I come back here and read your speech to those people. What monumental truth you speak. There's only one greater truth than yours and it is found in the Bible.