An Apology (of Sorts)...

I guess that I owe an apology of sorts to Mr. Westmoreland of Georgia.

When I wrote my blog entry “KICKING… AND… SCREAMING…” on the ninth of this month, I was proceeding from the assumption that my experience of only hearing “uppity” applied to black people was the universal experience. It has been made clear to me that it is not. Several people whom I’ve queried, black and white, southern and northern, have said that they have heard “uppity” applied to both races. Now I will say this… my black loved ones from the south predominantly say that they have heard the word used either MOSTLY or EXCLUSIVELY against black people. Another loved one of mine, a black yankee, explained that it is now used among black people to describe snobs. To me, that actually goes a long way toward proving my thesis – that it has been co-opted like the dreaded “N” word to reduce or remove it’s power to hurt.

This same loved one, knowing me well, discouraged me from phrasing this apology as, as he put it, a “double-edged sword”. Although it is not my intention to offer anything less than a sincere apology for saying that his use of the phrase HAD to be racially-motivated, I would also like to maintain that it was PROBABLY racially-motivated.

Look, I love my Southern brothers and sisters (literally, in the cases of one of my sisters and two of my brothers, not to mention my mom and dad and more than a few aunts and uncles and cousins and myself up to the age of 8), but let’s face it – the further that you go south, the greater racial suspicion grows. And it is not simply whites suspicious of blacks, it goes both ways.

I think that a reason for this is that, especially under rule of the republicans who these people consistently vote for, the south is dying. The agriculture upon which they relied so heavily (the “family farm” has been relegated almost entirely to large, corporate-owned “factory farms”. The industry that Sarah Palin praised so highly has been outsourced wholesale to Mexico and overseas. And, although I’m a liberal and therefore not possessing the deathly fear of immigrants that my conservative brothers and sisters have, I also recognize that a lot of the jobs that are left are given by corporate giants to illegal immigrants for whom they do not have to provide health care or pay what Americans consider a living wage.

So, yes – when white people see a job that they might have given to a black person, or black people see whites given preferential treatment for a job, I can understand how resentment can grow on both sides.

That doesn’t make it okay. We need, as a nation, to move past that. Let’s face it – the Ku Klux Klan was founded in the south, and maintains its strongest chapters there today. And, speaking of the Klan, if we as a nation are going to engage in a “war on terror”, shouldn’t we really start by battling domestic terrorists such as the Klan?

So, Mr. Westmoreland, if you are reading this, I apologize for saying that your use of the term “uppity” MUST be racially motivated and change that to “I believe that your use of the term “uppity” was racially motivated based upon your history and my personal experience of the south.

Peace.

Randal