It’s okay. It’s a beautiful rock. Sandy orange and yellow colored with veins of amethyst. And look at the view from under my rock!

So, who the heck is this Henry Harry Reid thank you Sam for keeping me honest guy and what did he do? (I *said* I lived under a rock.) Oh, he slipped and said the N word. And he’s a senator? Oh yeah, I thought I’d heard his name before. Oops. Not good. How the heck did somebody like that get to be a senator. I will never be a senator because I am afraid to run my mouth for fear that something politically incorrect will fall out. I doubt that it would be the N word but that would be because I was pretty much taught from an early age that people were people no matter what their skin color or religion or whatever. And I was taught that in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for anyone who thinks Da Yoop is a total backwater. It is not. But since I rarely speechify and give my opinion about political stuff, it’s doubtful that I will ever become a senator. And that’s okay. Life under my amethyst rock is just fine, thank you very much.

I am not totally sure what I think about this. It was a really stupid thing to say, but I think it was a slip-up. If we are constantly evaluating people’s speech and ostracizing them when they do slip up, we’re going to spend all of our energy squabbling about rhetoric and not dealing with real problems.

When my children were in high school, there was a big flap here on the Planet Ann Arbor about a young Caucasian teacher who used the word “nigger” during a class. Okay. The teacher was a very popular teacher of a very popular poetry class. He helped found a “poetry slam” program at a local teen center and coached students of ALL ETHNIC BACKGROUNDS. If I am correct, quite a few young African-American teens (and others) were able to find a talent and a “voice” by working with this Caucasian teacher. He cared about all of his students, no matter what outward characteristics were expressed by whatever DNA that they were dealt. And then one day… Parents were invited to attend classes with their children. During the class, the young Caucasian teacher recited a poem written by a young African-American person. Guess what? It included the n word (not even the N word). And so. The African-American parent of one of the students in the class raised a huge stink. “He said the n word, blah-de-blah-de-blah.” I am not sure but I bet his own child was embarrassed. Eventually, the teacher was exonerated and, as for the complainer…

…believe it or not, the father who raised the stink was also a teacher! Go figger. He was my daughter’s forum teacher during one of her years at Commie High. He was such a horrible teacher that I was almost ready to put my helicopter rotors up and complain to someone. My daughter did *not* want me to do that and I didn’t. After all, forum was not an *academic* subject but a good forum teacher supposedly looked after you in the jungle of high school and maybe even college applications. This guy was more interested in himself and how students perceived him. Sigh. Another parent did complain and the district removed him from his forum teacher duties after that year and then he complained *in class* that the child’s parent had taken his forum away from him. In the end, I figured that my daughter learned a whole heckuva lot that year and that’s ultimately what school is about.

I dunno. We really really need to be careful about what we call people who have different backgrounds than we do (or anyone). On the other hand, we cannot go forth any farther into the 21st century if we still have to squabble about labels all the time. Let’s talk about this stuff or not talk about it but can we go forward?

Goodnight. I am going back under my rock now. My beautiful amethyst rock with the beautiful view.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 7:21 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.