novapsyche | (no subject)

I went for weeks after the election spurning the news. I just needed time away from the cycle of misinformation. Lately, though, I've been trying to catch up with current events (insofar as five news channels can deliver).

The right-wingers who insist that Condi Rice is being targetted by racism can suck my left tit, and wow am I not kidding. I flipped some channels last night and came across Scarborough Country, which I know is a conservative show. But it is on MSNBC, and I like that news source. He has two guests on, and he's really laying it on about how Democrats are engaging in underhanded racism, because they're delaying Rice's confirmation, and she's black and a woman. The left-leaning guest was trying to explain how the criticism leveled at Rice is "principled criticism," but Scarborough kept coming back to this odd definition of racism.

Let me tell you something, as a black woman. If someone criticises me for my actions, behavior or competence, and bases that criticism on facts, then that criticism is not racist, even though I'm a black woman. If someone criticises me for something for which I am qualified merely because I'm black or a woman, then that's discrimination.

Let me say this more clearly. It is not racist to criticise someone who happens to be a minority. Alberto Gonzalez is Latino, but I oppose his confirmation as Attorney General not because of his race but because of his policies. If we can't criticise someone because of what they do, then I fear for the future of this country. There eventually will be no accountability for anyone, especially if they happen to be a minority.

This reminds me so much of the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings, it's not funny. Thomas claimed that the Senators there were attacking him because he was black and compared the hearings to a "high-tech lynching." But really this was political deflection. The issue wasn't whether he was black but whether he did something so inappropriate that it disqualified him for the position he sought. Notice how he couldn't say that Hill was giving him a high-tech lynching, because she was black, too. How would that have played? No, he directed his vitriol at the white Senators, who felt some strange sense of guilt and didn't want to be blamed.

This is like me going to a job interview for some position that requires a master's degree, then complaining that the HR department was racist because they disqualified me and I'm a black woman. That last part is irrelevant! To judge me on my abilities wouldn't be racist. It would be the American way.