Records and racism

Since I touched on what I consider to be frivolous records the other day, I figured I’d continue with something that bothered me a few weeks ago…

I’ve been listening to interviews with Diana Nyad, the 60 year-old woman who is trying to swim the Florida Straits from Cuba to Key West.  The attempt keeps getting put off because of politics so I keep hearing more and more about her.  She got swept in to the Gulf on her previous attempts when she was younger and wants to go out there and prove she can still do it at 60.  Okay, personal endurance, good for her.

But as she explains the history of marathon swimming, I keep hearing about other records and exceptions and secondary records and that’s the part I just don’t like.  The first woman to swim this… the first African American to swim that…  How about just making it the first person, that’s it.  Who got there first?  Whether they happen to be black, white, male, female, Chinese or Mormon is irrelevant.

The only objection I could understand would be that women and other minorities had fewer opportunities to explore and attempt new things back when records were made.  I guess that’s a well thought out and reasonable objection…  Over-ruled.

Holding up the flag and proudly saying “I’m the first (insert minority here) to do what a white man already did” is just crazy to me.  It screams second place.  We all know that the white man is the devil, he’s responsible for everything bad in this world from slavery to tooth decay.  So change it.  Go make your own records, stop impersonating the white devil by duplicating his events and claiming your second place trophy.
Do it better, do it faster, do it cleaner… whatever, but make your own mark.  Following in the footsteps of those that came before you is natural, but get a footprint or two off the trail.  “White man X climbed this mountain for the first time fifty years ago.  But I’m the first to do it naked.”

So after listening to this and getting slightly riled up, they go to commercial:  “The Jacksonville Black Artist Festival.  Bringing artists of African American heritage together to display their various art…”

I almost blew out a vein.  THIS is the shit I’m talking about!  I’m not the guy that goes out there and screams about the Miss Black America, the United Negro College Fund or the NAACP being examples of reverse racism.  The word “reverse” is my problem.  To me the words “racism” and “bigotry” stand alone.  Same thing with “hate crime”.  Bullshit.  Crime is crime and should be punished accordingly regardless of who the victim is.  Every time we draw a line between ourselves we’re reinforcing this bullshit division of the races that I still can’t fucking believe exists.  You’re creating an “Us and them” situation and that sucks, no matter who the “us” is.  Why do we institute this volunteer segregation?  Would the event have been any worse off if it had just been the “Jacksonville Artist Festival”?  Why should the color of the artist’s skin matter to me?

The commercial made it perfectly clear that this was not art about Africa.  This was art and performances of all sorts by black artists.  If you go into most libraries, the books are grouped by genre and then sorted alphabetically.  If you like Psychology, you go to 150.  If you like Physics, you go to 530.  So out here, if you like art about the continent of Africa you’d go to the African Art Festival.  I get that.
But if you walked into a library and they had black authors of all genres sorted out into one section and called it the Black Writer’s Section it would display the level of stupidity of this Black Artist Festival.  Alex Haley, Lisa Williamson, Langston Hughes, Octavia Butler and Terry McMillian all lumped together because of the color of their skin?

You want to know the worst part about this?  When I began writing that last paragraph I sincerely meant it.  Then I read it back and realized that this very thing happens in schools and libraries across the country every February…  Makes my words look tongue-in-cheek but they weren’t written that way.  I just don’t understand why we still think it’s necessary to single a person out by the color of their skin.

Back when I was young, I grew up in a small town up north.  We had just one black kid in my junior high (this was around the time of the “Thriller” craze and I SWEAR to you that black kid’s name was Michael Jackson).  I never saw black people in my town, I just didn’t grow up around them.  But even back then, when it was a complete non-issue, my mom taught me that skin color was not important.  Now these organizations and events are telling me otherwise.

Sorry mom, I just don’t fucking get it anymore…