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Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label racism. Show all posts

Monday, December 3, 2012

Dining hall employee, the Chronicles 2: Manager caught red-handed by Brown man!



My last shift in Dhall was revealing in terms of power relations in society. 
Nah, screw that! it was weird. 
First it is my Saturday night shift, until 10 pm! It is a shift that is intrinsically painful on my senses. No telling that more extraneous elements that could make it even better, are welcome. 
And of course there was extraneous elements that made it better.  
One fellow proletarian employee (of a higher rank nevertheless) was being so extreme about the timely provision of lettuce. I was already at another task so when I finally attended to it I had to ask" are you mad at me?". My fellow class comrade affirmed to me that it was necessary that "we did what we supposed to do". A fellow worker then proceeded that I could be stabbed if I was in a relationship with a Latin-American and I refused to wash the dishes. I did not really understand how the "Lettuce situation" could amount to such a stereotype being validated. Seeing the approving look on the rest of the company I guess there was one... Somehow. O maybe not. 
Wait! 
Now comes the part, where, as a brown man (this fact is not related to the kind of tasks I persistently got for the last 3 weeks) I was cleaning tables. I looked back. There, hidden between the cereals and the pole, the highest ranking manager présente was looking. In a perfect spy-movie position, ready to catch me red handed not cleaning the tables like a brown man has to do for 3 weeks straight (last fact not even closely related to the story). And I have to confess, I was nasty: I did not avoid the awkward situation, I embraced it. I looked at my leader straight in the eyes! 
That was not very smart indeed. Because, as a proletarian soldier of dhall, I had to enjoy the overwhelming visits, past all ranks, of my beloved manager. I cannot describe my pleasure at hearing these numerous phrases filled with imperative verbs: 
"-You gotta pick up your paste and clean the red side" 
"-I did already." 
"-Well, then you have to pick up your paste."
"-..." 
LeBounce
Dining hall employee, the Chronicles 1: Of potatoes, black outcasts and knives.
(all opinions, facts and characters presented in the previous text are purely the result of the authors imagination. They have no factual or real implication or source. That said, I love Dhall and I do wanna keep my job: skidmore dining hall is clean, so far racist free and delicious food is its product)  

Monday, November 5, 2012

Stop stressing racist people!


Most modern societies are said to be post-racial. This statement is absurd! In fact all we need is some more good racism.
Nobody is hanging dead from tress, it is hard to find burning crosses in yards and nobody is called a negro anymore. Nevertheless, statistics continue to show that minorities are lagging at the bottom of the social ladder. I don't like numbers much, but poverty statistics, joblessness and jail population are flagrant showcases: racism was not eradicated. 
If anything, it has undergone plastic surgery! Political correctness just places limitation on racist people. This lack of expression space does not "cleanse" them from hatred. Rather it pushes them to integrate the "mainstream". Thus the public sphere is infected with this "implicit" smarter racism. 
Anti-immigrant platforms and laws pertinent to "the war on drugs" are examples of the political scene being infected with this. Representations of minorities in Hollywood are just another example of this implicit racism.  
Stop stressing racist people! 
Instead we should allow them the freedom to say it like it is. Potentially, we are going to be shocked with the amount of ignorance and hatred that some still hold. Still, we would be able to contemplate our society under the light of truth and with a bit less makeup. 
By allowing them a degree of freedom of expression and not action, racist people will be easier to determine. They will also be less inclined to hide their venom and spread it hidden under layers of euphemisms and deceit. 
Don't hide racism, face it! 
Lebounce