Postsecret strikes again! or...my sunday morning headdesk moment.

i saw down with my coffee and pulled up Postsecret, hoping to get some chuckles before starting my day.

instead of secrets that gave me shits and giggles, i read this:

a couple of questions immediately came to mind:

1) why do racists continually blame their racism on the other person?

and more worrisome:

2) what does it mean that the writer chose a stock photo of 2 small male children to illustrate how working in law enforcement "makes" him or her racist? they aren't doing anything sinister or anything needing police intervention....why THAT photo?

3) if someone in law enforcement is expressing racism and using a photo of children to illustrate the point...well, now how is that supposed to help foster confidence in the police?

keeping it real: if someone wrote a secret with a picture of two young girls and said "working in the sex crimes unit of my police department has made me hate women"....as a woman, i'm gonna be alarmed on many, many levels.

in my local town, whenever there are local stories of crime in which the perpetrator is black, you can find many many MANY comments linking the crime of that person to his (and my) race. yet, when you have instances in which the perpetrator is white (coughDAVIDCRESPIcough!), you don't see the same linking of the action of the man to the white race.

i don't feel like anyone should give the writer of the card props for being brave enough to be honest. it's like i told a friend a few years ago, "you don't get a pat on the back for being honest when what you're saying is some ol' bullshit!"

Give her what she wants, God.

oh, yes you are: part II

and here we go again: people acting like racists while professing their lack of racism. let's apply this logic to other scenarios and see if it holds water, shall we?

- i force children to have sex, but i'm not a pedophile.

- i steal money from old people, but i'm not an amoral thief.

- i constantly tell lies, but i'm not a liar.

- i don't eat meat, but i'm not a vegetarian.

- i wear a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus and swim under the surface of the ocean, but i'm not a scuba diver.

nope....i still cannot seem to make this line of reasoning make even the slightest bit of sense.

but here's what i know for a fact:

the use of the word nigger is designed to strip the humanity from black people and is meant to remind them of the power differential between white and black races . even a person of no financial means or little education can and do use this word to let it be known that whiteness is more valued in this country.

this truth is the rationale behind the punchline to the old "joke" what do you call a black man with a Ph.D?

i'm tired of the old "i'm not (fill in the blank) but" shell game that people like to play. that game people play right before they tell the racist/sexist/homophobic/ xenophobic/generally fucked up "joke."

so to borrow Bill Maher's phrase, here's the new rule: if you don't want to be called a racist, stop doing and saying racist shit.

seems simple, right?

just stop talking. forever.

dear post secret poster:

you have clearly never had anyone you care about suffer with cancer. i hope you never do. but i feel that i must let you know something very important.

cancer does not exist to make your kitchen cute, you self-centered fuck.

that is all.