Being Black myself, loving me some me and feeling almost sorry for anyone that isn’t either me or Black, I’ve always been confused rather than offended anytime that someone from a smaller segment of society compared his or her ‘struggle’ to mine.
I remember being a little kid watching Reverend Robert Schuller on television one Sunday and he had two ‘little people’ on. They were twins and they were complaining about or explaining themselves as handicapped. Then one of them said, “There are lots of handicaps. Being Black is a handicap.” I remember thinking how absurd that is, knowing as I even knew then that being Black didn’t guarantee that you’d get one of those special license plates or that you’d get to park in one of those spaces right up close to the drug store.
Of course, the worst offenders of the “Black struggle is like our struggle” mantra are the homosexuals. I never once read in history class about the continent from which all the homosexuals were kidnapped. And although their 400 years of slavery was probably just as rough as ours, I’ll guarantee you that the homosexuals absolutely refused to abide by the fashions restrictions.
Don’t me wrong; I’m all in favor of gay rights, marriage, ect.—in America. If I had my own country, I’d make all the gays move here.
But what gays should realize when they compare their rights movement to ours is that they are conceivable offending some people that would otherwise be in their collective corner. Negatively comparing the progress of your rights movement to ours is like suggesting that when we have rights that you don’t, the greatest conceivable injustice has been done. Like we Blacks should always get our rights only after everybody else has already been taken care of.
Finally, Sarah Palin was in the news (again) yesterday. Surprised? This time, she was blasting White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel because he said that a proposal to air attack ads against fellow democrats that oppose President Obama’s health care initiative was ‘f—king retarded’.
Palin, the mother of a ‘special needs’ child with Downs syndrome, likened Emanuel’s use of the term ‘retarded’ to using the ‘N-word’. This means that according to Palin’s math, Black=mentally challenged.
And being accused of being ‘mentally challenged’ by Sarah Palin is like the pot calling the kettle…
