Pinko Feminist Hellcat gives us all a clue on the Danish cartoons things, and I'm going to randomly go off on a rant, here,ok? Nothing annoys me more than the whole 'white people can't be expected to be decent people or get the same information that people with a whole lot less resources have' thing. What's up with that? I don't get it. I've seen white people turn out learned books on racism, so it's not like white people are biologically unable to say "Hey! There's a difference between the time that black kid beat me up for insulting his sister, and hundreds of years of racism and daily racial insults towards people of color!" And as for the idea that the information is hard to get- if any white person is on the internet and doesn't know the basic facts about say, whether Martin Luther King Jr was FOR black people or FOR white people(difficulty: he was black and led many blacks in marching in the streets for rights whites didn't want them to have), well, that's their own damn fault.

We need to shift the 'your own damn fault' thing to the people who deserve it. For example, many black kids at my high school were shortchanged because of a racist tracking system. Most whites would think this was their own damn fault, but somehow magically miss the fact that they vote in the idiots who think this stuff is a good idea! Seriously, we have the people sitting on top of the 'hierarchy' here, as far as money and politicians paying attention to them, and somehow, magically, they can't vote for schools to be integrated or for anything that would improve the lot of black folks?(OK, and white folks, too- I mean really, giving people crap education isn't advancing science for you guys either)

Not to mention, they also claim that they can't say "You know, that is racist" to other white people. I've heard white people say those words in different sequences, so it's not like they can't say them. Intrepid researchers of white people, Joe Feagin and Eileen O'Brien noted that white folks would rather keep the peace with racist cobags, rather than step up to the plate. Note that it is very possible that these two people are white- but somehow they managed to notice when white guys said something racist! So I'm learning more towards it's your own damn fault if you're a racist.

And if you don't know what 'racist' means, that's your own damn fault too. We need to restore a sense of responsibility here. It's weird to me because black folks are always talking in our community about what we need to do better, but apparently to some folks, being born white means you never have to learn, grow, or say 'dude, I was a fuckup'. Like fuck that shit. I of course simply refuse to think that white folks can't be prodded into a semblance of acting decently, because seriously, that's too depressing to contemplate. I mean really, the idea of a large chunk of the population having something terribly and immutably wrong with them is pretty creepy, and I don't get why, even if it's to get out of being decent, whites would subscribe to this notion.

Ok, I ranted, but I should give this link while I remember it. The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen is amazing, and you all should read it.