while while cat's thoughts about finding the book I'll mention more in my next entry, one thought that provoked more thought in my head was "I hate that they separate novels with protagonists who are gay or something other than caucasian from the rest of the pack -- why can�t it all be filed under fiction?"... and I so agree with the emotion, for my instinct is to cringe at the categorization of people... and nothing I am about to say changes that gut feeling that it is wrong, horribly wrong...

then I read a bit of the blog and found the author received an awards specifically for being in a category... awards she would not have received if there was no category and organization promoting the category... and I realized that categories, while inherently devisive and abhorant to my nature, serve a very positive commercial purpose for anyone seeking to sell themselves or their products in this world... and ultimately, that is what we do in this life...

and wandering over to CNN to read about Cornel West who is a former Harvard professor and asks questions like "Why are black men 7 percent of the population and 50 percent of the jail population ...?" and I got to thinking about things he said in the past about reparations for slave decendants and affirmative action and how rational thought can justify anything...

and I ponder... is a 22 year old white man responsible for something his great great great great great great great great great grandfather might or might not have done? (not every white man is decended from a slave owner or even had an ancestor who lived in the US a hundred and fifty and more years ago)... does a white child born in the USA today owe a black child born in the USA today something?... anything?...

I don't think so...

on the other hand, racial prejudice (and other prejudices) did not become unacceptible overnight (and all still exists, some very powerfully and even accepted and defended by law, and not just for any one group or small percentage of the population)... some laws changed about one hundred and forty years ago and in many ways, very little actually changed... some laws changed again about forty years ago and again, in some places and in some ways, very little has change... people still fear and loath differences they do not understand or want to accept... but in many ways, a whole lot has changed too... and the question becomes what is necessary to insure the change toward fairness and equality of opportunity continues...

the benign neglect of an education system by the people we have elected is an obvious (and often overlooked) cause of much horror in this country... the utter distain for human life exhibited by the few percent of the people who hold the power to make real changes in the quality of our lives is a glaring discrepancy in human nature that few want to face every day... and the acceptible methods of slow (and fast) suicide that are part of most people's daily routine, well, tell a smoker to stop smoking, or a drinker or anyone enjoying any poison to stop, or just consider putting off your caffeine-sugar shot this morning for your health and see what happens...

one thing that has not changed that has never had anything to do with race or culture or anything else is that money talks... life is compromise, after all, but a rich person can almost always buy whatever they want in this world with less compromise than anyone else if they really want to... and most people do not want to change their habits... justifying them is much easier...

so we've got millions of ghetto kids and millions of swamp kids and millions of mountain kids and millions of trailer kids... millions of underpriviledged kids and we're going to single out one group or another based on race and give that group a leg up and call that a way of eliminating racial stereotyping and prejudice... and for forty years poor white kids from the white ghettos (comedians make laughter and call them hicks or trailer trash or whatever) get the disadvantage of losing opportunities because of their skin color...

what did the kid from the poor white family do?...

there is no easy answer to changing people and creating a culture that is fair to all, especially not as long as the very few rich in charge do not want to share the wealth and really create a culture that is fair to all... the people in power will do whatever it takes to satisfy the most potentially disruptive voices in the populus and ignore the rest and demand big parades and lots of applause and much money for their decisions...

and the rest of us can do whatever we can to survive...

this was not actually where I was going today so it slips in here as an entry before the actual entry I am writing for today... the thoughts herein are sometimes incomplete, sometimes half-baked, but passed through my head this morning and sought some expression... what may have irked me most of all in the influences that came together today was the 500 Nations series on TV today... once there were people... now they are gone...

"As a high school student I was always annoyed by students who would ask: Why do we have to learn this stuff [history] anyway? We learn history so we don't repeat our mistakes. This is the common answer that my teachers, my father, and just about any other adult would give. This answer made perfect sense to me then, and I easily accepted it. In high school, students learn about the Nazi-Holocaust, and rightfully so. Information abounds regarding this topic. However, my teachers never taught me that our country has a Holocaust of its own (actually there are two; one killing 40 to 60,000,000 Africans, and one killing 100,000,000 Native Red Peoples).

Hitler himself often expressed his admiration for the expediency in which the American Christians removed the Native Americans... " ~ DS

The horrible truth about the atrocities committed by US citizens in their own country is that death was the kindest thing the white man and his government ever did to the native people of this land. That is, the least cruel thing done was kill them.

releasing my frustration with humanity is a good thing for me, it lets me go on to silliness and irreverence and life with a positive perspective... in spite of all I see, there's still hope...

that's how I survive...

. o O ( NOTES ARE THE NEW HAPPY PILL ) O o .
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