Dear Carter,
You are a racist. It’s not surprising considering that if you’re white and American you have a 99.9% chance of being a racist. Look at me. I’m a racist. I don’t want to be a racist, obviously; I’d like to believe that I’m a good person and treat everyone equally until proven wrong.
But I am. I can’t tell you how many times someone will be telling a story about some fucked up thing someone did and when it becomes obvious that the fucked-up ne’er-do-well is black, I often find myself thinking "Oh, well, he probably can’t help it." And then I think, "God, that’s a fucking racist thing to think." So, clearly, I’m more of the patronizing jackass liberal version of racist, but I am what I am.
Here’s the thing, though. I try not to actively harm others and I try to be aware that, because I’m racist, I might be blind to the ways that my actions hurt others. I don’t want to hurt people if I don’t have to.
Sure, it would be nice if there were no racism, but I don’t see how that’s ever going to happen, so some days all you can do is not add insult to injury.
In other words, if you can’t help but walk around like God gave himself a vagina especially to squirt you out of, the least you can do, you know, if we’re going to try to behave like "civilized" folks (I know how much you love insisting that folks behave all "civilized"), is not run around flaunting the fact that you’re so great just because you’re white that when you shit, school children throughout the county ask each other what smells like flowers.
Today, Sir, you failed to behave like those "civilized" folks you’re so fond of. I doubt you intended it, but your post today on Harold Ford Jr. could have easily been entitled "How Dare the Negro Get so Uppity."
I suspect that you think that it matters whether Harold Ford Jr.’s grandmother was white or not because, if someone could prove that she wasn’t white, it would prove Ford a liar. But how do you even define "white," Carter?
How "white" does a woman have to be to be white? Two white parents? Four white grandparents? Eight white great grandparents? You see how quickly that goes from being a question about a knowable fact to being a question that assumes some kind of "one drop" rule–that being white isn’t just looking white, but not being "tainted" at all by blackness?
Assuming that blackness is so powerful that it trumps whiteness, no matter how little blackness might be present (if we could even measure such a thing) is racist.
Then, let’s move on to this little gem: " If it is not true, or massaged, it smacks of serious racial opportunism."
Racial opportunism?
Do I even have to point out how this is racist? Sorry, I have to ask because you seem like a smart guy and so it’s hard for me to imagine that you could not see how thinking that coming up with a white relative would be an "opportunity" for a black person. The implication here is that being black is so shitty that digging out some white relative would somehow give Ford an advantage he couldn’t have as a ‘mere’ black man.
AND YET… and yet…
You even acknowledge that most black people in the United States can trace their family tree back to Europe as well as Africa. So, even in your own framework, having a white relative is common enough that it can’t be said to be any kind of advantage.
I must, then, point out to you again that you have a grown-up job in which you have a great opportunity to influence and reinforce how we talk about politics in the state.
You owe it to yourself to actually think through this stuff and to try to leave the world a little more "civilized" than you found it.
Love,
Aunt B.