Transcript for Podcast: "I Feel Snitty," Episode 189: "It's not a problem if you ignore it." is now available!

Podcast: I Feel Snitty

Episode 189: It's not a problem if you ignore it.

Premiere Date: 5/24/2022

Length: 8:56 (1,637 words)

Link: https://ifeelsnitty.podbean.com/e/it-s-not-a-problem-if-you-ignore-it/

Transcript: 

Welcome to I Feel Snitty, episode 189, entitled, “It’s not a problem if you ignore it.” I’m your host, Craig Rozniecki.

 

Sadly, there was a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo this past week, where 10 people were killed and 3 others were injured. All ten of the deceased were black, in what has been called by police as a racially-motivated attack. The shooter, whom I won’t name, posted a 180-page racist manifesto on Google Docs just two days prior to the attack. He apparently copy-and-pasted most of it from other racist, gun-happy, right-wing fanatical lunatics – especially from the Christchurch, New Zealand mass shooter, who shot and killed 51 and injured another 40 at a pair of mosques three years ago.

 

In the plagiarized manifesto, the shooter wrote at length about what is termed “the great replacement theory,” which claims that persons with a darker skin tone than Casper are being taken to the United States and other white-majority countries to essentially replace white people, in order to vote all those evil, anti-white liberals into office. They’ve even gone so far as to say interracial marriage is a tool used by this Great Replacement Klan/clan to root out white people.

 

Okay, I’m curious; how far back does this go? Does the shooter truly believe slave owners brought Africans to this country as slaves to one day replace them? Call me crazy, but that logic seems to be more off than a drunken, blind man at a urinal.

 

I open up today’s episode with this, not because I want to specifically talk about gun violence in this country and what needs to be done about it. By now, anybody with a half a brain knows we have a serious problem and what we need to do about it. Unfortunately, we also know, in the Senate’s current state of 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, there’s no way in hell we’ll come close to attaining the 60 votes required to overcome the filibuster and pass any semblance of gun reform. No, I open today’s episode with this horrific story, because of a conversation I engaged in a few weeks ago.

 

While out at a bar, I was approached by someone about the Black Lives Matter movement. He claimed he had done thorough research on it, and from the very get-go, he felt it was a movement rooted in division, hate, and evil. Now, I admittedly have a love-hate relationship with social justice movements. While I have long considered myself a member of both the Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements, I also haven’t agreed with every decision the leaders of the two groups have made, and believe they’ve veered off course a time or twenty-seven. I compare modern-day social justice movements to the old game telephone. Do you remember that game? You and a bunch of others sit around in a circle; the first person whispers something in the ear of the individual next to him or her; that person does similarly; and at the very end of the circle, the person tells the group what the final message was; before then comparing how similar or dissimilar it was to the initial utterance. I feel social justice movements often times go through a similar process, where the initial message is powerful, cohesive, and consistent, but somewhere down the line, a percentage of the group attempts to revise, perhaps expand upon the long-running message, and the end result is promptly transitioning from cohesion to chaos. The MeToo movement is a perfect example of this. At its start, it was about providing alleged victims of sexual improprieties a voice, and to hold the alleged perpetrators accountable. For so long, abuse victims have felt like they were void of a safe outlet where they could let their stories finally be known. This resulted in the arrests of serial abusers Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, just to name a couple. Somewhere along the way, however, social media users decided to announce they too were traumatized by things like: a bad date, a dirty joke, or a hug that lasted too long. Look, it’s perfectly understandable to get offended by a bad joke or feel uncomfortable with a hug that won’t seem to end, but no matter how awful a joke may be or how awkward a hug is, they’re nowhere near as traumatizing and life-changing as childhood sexual abuse or rape, and to equate them does an extreme disservice to the victims of said crimes. So, while I tend to stand tall and proud for social justice movements at their inception, I also often find myself months down the road mumbling to myself, “Where the hell are they going with this?”

 

Speaking of which, back to the person I was talking to at the bar. When he started going off on Black Lives Matter, I thought to myself, “Okay, I have a love-hate relationship with social justice movements. I’m not going to pass immediate judgment on him for not being a supporter of BLM. Let’s see where he goes from here.”

 

Then he said something I’ll never forget. I seriously wish someone had taken a picture of me right then, because I can only imagine what my expression was. He said, and I quote, “I truly believe black people are more responsible for keeping racism alive than white people.”

 

Please, allow me to repeat that. He said, “I truly believe black people are more responsible for keeping racism alive than white people.”

 

As the great Elaine Benes once said, “I was speechless; I was without speech.”

 

I have no idea if he saw the inevitable WTF-expression on my face, but regardless, he didn’t stop there. He contended that black people “always” play the race card, even when race has nothing to do with it. He then provided one or two stories where he believed this was indeed the case. He concluded by basically suggesting that black people keep racism alive by talking about it.

 

There is so much wrong with this argument, I honestly don’t know where to begin. First off, even if this guy was right that there are occasions when people misuse the “race card,” as it’s so called, cherry-picking said instances doesn’t deny the fact that racism is still prevalent in our country. Very rarely do we find a perfect 100% link between A and B. There isn’t a 100% link between smoking and cancer, but due to the anomalies that are lifetime smokers not contracting any form of cancer, does that then deny the fact smoking causes cancer? No, of course not. Also, let’s be real here; if a person has been unfairly judged due to his or her skin color for as long as they can remember, isn’t it quite possible, even if they misconstrue a person’s intent as racist and play the race card as a result, they’re doing so only because it’s happened so many times previously, any similar incidents prompt an instinctual defense as a seemingly automatic response? If 9 people confront a black man in a similar manner, due to racism, when person #10 confronts him in an identical fashion, wouldn’t it be understandable for him to assume it was also because of racism?

 

It’s long been said that the first step to solving a problem is admitting said problem exists. Many conservatives, including this guy at the bar, feel differently. In their minds, there can be no problem if we don’t admit to it. This is just denial, plain and simple, and if anything, it only elongates and exacerbates the issues.

 

If a person is diagnosed with stage 1 cancer, the last thing a doctor will tell their patient is, “Just don’t think about it. You’ll be better in no time. In fact, to treat your liver cancer, here’s a prescription for an endless supply of bourbon.” Why? Well, because then there’s a 100% chance the patient will die from the cancer.  

 

The funny thing is conservatives don’t possess such a delusionally negligent mindset when it comes to all matters. When it comes to Middle Eastern terrorists? Let’s bomb the shit out of them! But when it comes to racism? Shh, be vewy, vewy quiet…

 

Problems aren’t easy to admit, let alone discuss, but that’s why we have shrinks. …and pills. …and booze. …and drugs. …and Maury Povich.

 

Conservatives want us to forget about slavery, Jim Crow laws, police brutality, voter suppression, stop-and-frisk, etc. They want us to believe that the past is the past, and has no impact on the present and future. They want us to stop talking about racism, because it makes them uncomfortable and keeps hope alive that they may one day be held accountable. But that’s not how problems are solved; that’s how problems are made worse.

 

I truly wonder what the man in the bar thought when he saw those 10 black Americans being shot and killed by a white man, due to the color of their skin, in Buffalo the other day. Was it the victims’ fault the shooter was racist, since they allegedly kept racism alive by being black; not getting treated as equals and telling others about it; and then venturing out into public? Was it the victims’ fault because their bodies simply got in the way of the bullets? Was it the victims’ fault, because at one point in history, a black person mistook a white person’s rhetoric or behavior as racist? No, racism and racially-motivated attacks have not maintained prevalence in this country because black people have wanted to talk about the racism and racially-motivated attacks; it’s because white people haven’t.

 

That’s it for today’s episode. Until next time, you can check me out on Twitter, Amazon, Facebook, Podbean, and Blogger. This has been I Feel Snitty, with Craig Rozniecki. Take care.