Uppity-Negro.com

Why I Adore My Husband, Reason # 2385628:

We're sopomores at Big Midwestern U, walking down the very well-manicured Fraternity/Sorority Row on that campus in order to get to class; he's in his combats, jeans, Dead Milkmen tee, and trenchcoat; I'm sporting my typical scrubby-nerd look. A gaggle of identical white women, all 5'2", blonde, skinny, in nearly matching black cocktail dresses, has gathered on the opposing sidewalk for some rush function. There are literally hundreds of them, and their flawless repetition of exactly the same exterior appearance gives us an increasingly severe case of the creeping horrors as we walk past. Joe finally loses his cool, and begins to yell at the top of his FM Radio Bass lungs:

"REPENT! REPENT WHILE THERE IS STILL TIME!!"

It was beautiful.

I'm going to have to go back on vacation...my mood is so not right today.

You're not making it any better.

"I learned it from watching you!"

I remember when I was in prison, for running over that little girl when I was loaded, I was branded on my left buttock in the middle of the night by my nazi cellmate and his friends.... oh wait. Once again I confused my life with character Tobias from "Oz".

Sorry!

full-on props for "not helping"!

i remember when i moved from super-segregated portland, OR to not-so-segregated berkeley, CA right at the start of 4th grade in 1974. one of the interesting things that was so different at my public school in b-town was that they taught us about slavery. here i am barely old enough to parse didactical syntax and i remember thinking angrily, "conspiracy and outrage! why the hell didn't they tell us about this?" funny. then "roots" came on tv and i remember thinking cynically--and was this fifth grade??--"i guess they thought they had to soften this up for the white tv audience, because according to what they told us in school it was an awful lot worse..." i loved that old elementary school!!! then the serial neutron bombs called proposition 13 and reaganomics came along, and public school education in california was all but annihilated. right wingers can say what they want about public schools, but it's about what they DON'T want taught, little things like, oh--history, for instance.....

I thought tobias stabbed someone in the neck with a pen or a fork or a skewer?

But his name is Tobias Beecher. He just never had a chance.

What did Poet get locked up for?

Which time? Remember he got out on parole and then came back.

Courtesy the HBO show site:

Inmate Profile
Poet
Convicted: February 15, 1996, armed robbery, attempted murder, possession of a deadly weapon.

Sentence: Sixteen years. Paroled in 1998. Convicted: First degree murder. Sentence: Life.

and just for more synergy in my life...of course yesterday I listened over and over again to his track on the bamboozled soundtrack - "ploylessly" which will probably be the closing on whatever the next mix cd I do is...no matter the musical genre.

They had 'em at UC Santa Barbara, too. Boatloads and boatloads of 'em.

I always wondered why they wore those stupid Teva's 1- without socks, and 2- without some lotion on their stupid toes.

Ick.

The frat boys at my Southern university (University of Arkansas. No Really. Dammit quit laughing!) weren't much better. But you're right, things west of Texas are... different.

While I'd had lots and lots of black friends growing up, I'd never so much as seen a midwesterner until I went to college. It wasn't just that they were racist, I was used to that. It was how prissy and effete they were about it.

A dumbass redneck is a dumbass redneck. You know which way he's going to dodge when something outside his tiny mental box comes his way. Southern Suzies (Suzie Sorority) were professional twits, but at least you could easily make fun of them. And in predictability is a certain sort of safety, kind of like a hand grenade with the pin still in it.
But some of the folks from west of Texas never ceased surprising me. I never will forget this kid from Oregon who had got himself some sort of monstrous "pay-it-all-and-here's-some-more-for-beer" scholarship to the U of A. I sort of looked up to him, because he sure as hell wasn't working as hard as I was and yet was able to maintain a 4.0 to my 2.8.

I remember him in the dining hall one day sitting across from me saying he was going to give it all up and head back. "Why?!?" I asked. He leaned his blond head in and whispered "there are too many black people here!"

I think I literally fell back in my chair. It was kind of like hearing one of the foreign exchange kids swear and getting all the words mixed up and wrong. I mean, to someone who grew up fearing a beating because his best friend was black, this effete snob wasn't even properly racist.
It was a surprisingly defining moment in my life, because it showed me being good at books didn't necesarily stop you from being a moron.

But remember Said helped get Poet paroled in the episode "Family Bizness" for a little while but then Poet shot somebody at a book reading and had to go back, jack.

*sigh* At my prestigious, mostly white southern university we had an unfair share of those fratboys. One that sticks out in my mind had this to say during a discussion of slavery in an early American lit course: "Don't you think ANY of the slaves were happy?" Although I tried to speak very slowly and in a calm voice, I still don't think he ever got it - slavery is NOT the secret to joy.

My ex was from Oregon (Albany/Corvallis). He told me that until he came to Texas, he had never seen a black person in the flesh. I've met some of his relatives who have never travelled out of Oregon much; Scott's story rings very true to me.

At least my elderly east Texas relatives who talk about "nigrahs" know they're racists.

i might just have to buy a new domain...www.nigrahs.com

for some reason i'm amused.

There was fraternity at my school- the Kappa Alpha's who celebrated Old South every year by dressing up in confederate uniforms and having ball-well there were probably other things they did as well, but the ball was the only public part.

They never understood why people objected!

"I had to serve as the voice of reason. Any situation where I'm the voice of reason is utterly, hopelessly fucked."

You and me both.

garrity, your husband is my second-favorite person in the world today.

Jason rates as number one, as I'm still doing the "It is a good day, for there is Margaret Cho" dance.

Hadn't realized the plague of frat-rats was that widespread. Well, only one thing for it.

Declare a cull and hand out Frat-Rat Whacking Sticks.

My personal moment of truth, in terms of the aforementioned genus of college student, was when I was teaching a music history class at a Large Midwestern Land Grant University Which Shall Remain Nameless But Is In The State That Begins With An I That Borders Illinois. I was talking about Dvorak's "New World Symphony" and Dvorak's philosophy that a great American concert music could be created by drawing on "the music of the Negro and the Indian."

Me: "So. Dvorak thought Americans should develop a concert music, an orchestral/instrumental music on the classical European model, out of what he knew about spirituals and work songs, mostly created by slaves, and singing and religious chant created by First Nations peoples. What're some of the issues that crop up here?"

Backwards-Baseball-Cap-Wearing-Frat-Sweatshirt-In-The-Back-Row (chuckling derisively): "The issue is that it isn't music, it all just sounds like a bunch of screaming and hollering."

Me (attempting patience): "Let's assume Dvorak didn't think that was true. Anyone else?"

A scattering of hands go up.

BBCWFSITBR (blurting, without raising hand): "Well, it isn't like it was MUSIC. Like rap. Rap isn't MUSIC, either. Just a bunch of gangsters talking about how they're, like, all tough."

Me (getting exasperated, trying to steer the discussion): "How about Dvorak? You've all heard the New World, what did you think about the way Dvorak used melodies from spirituals?"

Again, hands are still up, more hands go up, then the BBCWFSITBR blurts out again just as I'm pointing to a different student to speak...

BBCWFSITBR: "I guess he couldn't think of anything better to use."

Me (losing it): "Mr. [last name], when I want your racist, uninformed opinion, I promise you I will ask you directly. In the meantime, I ask that you remember that being white and having a penis does not make you right, and that you stop speaking when you're not called on."

The sad thing is that despite the fact that he got mocked hard when he was leaving class for having me come down on him like that, I doubt very much that any of it really made a dent. Sigh.

Oh well. At least it made me temporarily famous amongst the students, I guess, and there were very few discipline issues in my class for the rest of the semester.

Ok, Hanne, guess you and Jason can both be my favoritest person in the world.

Don't think I've ever seen anything make a dent in one of those critters. Well, blunt objects, but you were speaking metaphorically.

Were you speaking metaphorically?

I was speaking metaphorically, but the Whacking Sticks also sound mighty fulfilling in their way.

Beat on the brat
Beat on the brat
Beat on the brat with a baseball bat.

That's my motto, but it's early and I've not had my morning pot of coffee. . .