Why POC Can Comfortably Say, "MOST Whites...."

Here's what I'm noticing, y'all:

Whenever a black blogger - male or female - talks about a common racist white tendency towards people of color, there's always at least one derailing white commenter who comes on to say something to the effect of, "But blacks are only about 13% of the population...your view is so narrow...and 'if' you're right then I'm shocked to hear about this...." - blah, blah, blah, and so forth.

Let's try this again: The reason POC use the term P-O-friggin'-C ("people/person of color", in case some of you are still behind the times) is to highlight the fact that "people of color" make up almost half the population of the United States.  So "black people" may be a minority, but people of color...not so much anymore.  It is precisely because of this current demographic trend that whites are slated to be a minority in a mere thirty years.

Why else do you think the GOP and the Tea Party (in their various incarnations over the years) have been steadily having heart attack after heart attack?  Meanwhile, some white folks write about becoming a minority like they're happy about that shit!  Like they can't wait it for it to be "their turn"!

Anyhoo, what I was getting to before is that when almost half the population of a country is having negative personal experiences with "the other side", and is experiencing systemic discrimination, and is basically yelling, "Hey!  We, like, still have a problem here!", only someone whose head is stuck immeasurably far up their privilege can be still "shocked" this day and age.

Now, if you believe this is a white Christian country and "everyone else" needs to get the hell out, well 1) you are entitled to your opinion, but 2) it is my deepest, sincerest regret to inform you that your opinion is based in severe denial, and you are simply setting yourself up for a major disappointment.

I'll be more blunt than usual: the only way all POC will leave is if white Americans commit yet another atrocity against us, and not just any atrocity, but one that will make all their other atrocities look like an afternoon at Sunday school.

There...I said it.

Talk about the cold hard reality of race in America.  Does this pygmy right here see white Americans actually going through with a mass extermination of POC? *snort* Nigga, please (yes, I dropped it...deal).  As I was saying, can I picture Average White America actually getting up and coming after the rest of us?  Uh...no.  You'd have to pry that shiny new Nintendo DS from their cold dead fingers first.

If the infamous white flight phenomenon has taught us anything, children - whether it's just one white person crossing the street upon glimpsing a POC or whole families moving out or even white folks hanging on to shit they bought by mistake because they're too scared to return it to the black woman at the counter - is that centuries of having shit done for them and specially set up to take care of them have - for the most part - softened the living hell out of them.

(...and Rome fell; know what I'm sayin'?)

Think about it, though.  Which white people do you know personally can stomach reading the so-called "Slave Narratives" all the way through?  I've noticed that when bloggers of color bring up America's genocidal history, white commenters act as though they "must have missed that line" and go on to talk about some other shit.  Ain't no white folks go to see Amistad; hell...the young ones "have never heard of it" and the old ones try to pretend like that shit never even came out in theaters...as though they genuinely expect us to believe Steven Spielberg could direct a film with Morgan Freeman and Anthony Hopkins - and a nekkid Djimon Hounsou - and people wouldn't know about it.  Uh...nigga, please.

As an African female blogger, reader, and participant in racial dialogue with white folks (whether online or in person), I have noticed that having "the talk" with them is a lot like being in a heterosexual relationship in which - for some reason - I've gotta be "the man".  Mention slavery and most white IQs plummet, their faces fall, and all of a sudden they're on the verge of tears.  Bring up genocide and whoo...you might as well dial 911 for an ambulance and tell those irritable bastards to bring an oxygen tank while they're at it.

I mean, yeah...you get your share of defensively arrogant, pompous shitheads, but they're often 1) some dumbass teenager...'nough said, 2) some clueless fucker who always reaches for the "My ancestors never owned slaves" bullshit (and white people, cut that out.  I have heard this too many times.  If you all accept slavery existed and yet none of any of your ancestors owned slaves...do I even need to finish?), and 3) some douche in denial who's too spineless to face historical and modern social facts.

Fuck...white people today think that the 19 terrorists who stayed on the planes as they went down were cowardly and immature.  Are you shittin' me?  Children, 1 + 1 is and always will be 2 on this blog.  Dropping bombs is cowardly and immature.  Refusing to invade lands and fight hand-to-hand with traditional weapons is cowardly.  This is why countries who are bombed or were colonized feel more anger and plain old annoyance than they do shame; the West has consistently used cowardly tactics to gain the advantage.  I mean, smallpox-infected blankets?  Seriously?  Seriously?

How come the Europeans didn't use tradional weapons when facing, say, the Zulu?  Were they that afraid Shaka would whoop their ass?  Or instead of bombing Nagasaki and Hiroshima, how come the U.S. didn't just land troops armed with traditional weapons?  Did, like, the ghost of the whole "samurai" legacy make 'em twitch or something?  You know that when one of their military leaders received news of loss he committed suicide the old-fashioned Japanese way, right?  Which white American leader - military or otherwise - do you know is willing to do some shit like disembowel himself and then quietly bleed out on his office floor for the next twelve hours?

I'm asking because this is exactly what kills me when so many white people talk so much smack about freedom and fighting - their white guilt fantasy films feature white warrior after white warrior after white warrior, and yet last I checked, the military hasn't been meeting its recruitment quota.  In fact, the numbers are getting so low prison folk and ex-cons are receiving moral waivers.  And yet white folks want to talk to POC about honor and struggle and fighting for freedom?

Nigga...please!

When I was in high school and the US "accidentally" bombed a Chinese embassy (in Serbia, I'm told), I noticed that for the first time, when the news got switched on in class, every teenaged white boy watched in rapt, fearful attention.  Where was their Celtic-German-Viking-warrior-smack-talkin' spirit then?  When 9/11 went down, and hatriotism was at its height, I still noticed that fellow students who were eventually deployed later got pissed about having to get up, get trained, board a plane and go fight - I saw no pride, no warrior spirit, no nothin'.  And when the first casualty lists started rollin' in, the military immediately noticed its number of willing newbies dropped.  Not only that, but the public made it clear to their president - not the other way around, mind you - that there would absolutely, positively be no draft (said president then went and tried to play it off like it was his idea...uh, yeah right).

B-B-B-But what about freedom fries, y'all?  What about the descendants of the fearful Visigoths and Vikings, and Celtic warriors, oh my?  What about I-don't-agree-with-Hitler-but-my-third-cousin-or-uncle-twice-removed's-great-grandfather-was-a-Nazi-and-so-I-ain't scared-of-nobody?  Why is any member of America's Neo-Nazi Party, Stormfront, or KKK still on American soil when "there's freedom and religion and white honor to be defended" and [insert racial slur here]'s to be killed without legal recourse?

My point, white children, is that when you read the phrase "most white folks do such-and-such", just go on ahead and get over the fact that it's highly likely that you really do "do such-and-such" (I'm not gonna say it's fact), and leave off the stereotypical defensiveness while you're at it.  If you must "say something" then by all means, talk about why white people do what they do.  You do, after all, have that extra insight (in case you're wondering why people like Tim Wise have so many fans of color, it's 'cause they let us know extra shit about you that we wouldn't know otherwise.  In fact, they help to counter a lot of the negative perceptions we have of you, 'cause that's all most of you ever show us).  And talk about how your ass can help other white folks cut that shit out.

Now, if you can't do either of those, then your best bet is to shut the fuck up and listen.  'Cause we're all stuck with each other; ain't nobody going nowhere and unless you want to get into a face-to-face-and-not-from-a-distance, most-times-will-be-hand-to-hand brawl with all our angry, bitter, nothing-to-lose, willing-to-fight-to-the-death asses, then I recommend you learn to get along with us.