Yeah,
so the other day, Dan (AKA Sangmin) asked me if I were Mexican. Because he said he wanted to tell me a funny joke, but if I were Mexican, I might be offended.
I’m drawn to lie to you and write that I took away his recess time for thinking I may be a Mezkin. I’m tempted, ’cause that’s funny to me. But I won’t ’cause I want you to like me.
I’m not here to write about my laundry. Inflammation makes my skin itch and my joints twitch (or is it bitch?). I’m inspired to retort to inflammatory rhetoric, and I have questions. These are the same ones I ask myself in reflective reverie.
I want to learn, because I miss stuff sometimes. Like when I lived in D.C., talking to a co-worker about “Do the Right Thing” – what, nearly twenty years ago?
I confessed that I didn’t really get why S. Lee’s character smashed the window at the end. Forrest suggested that he may have been saving the shop-owner’s life. Thanks F.
Do you wonder if Forrest is white or not? I ask b/c I’m not sure if I should include that detail. Is it important to your visual image? Is segregated D.C. an important detail?
It’s our many little aversions to egalitarianism that I want to pluck at. And it’s you I want to learn from. The way I am among those I trust, that’s what this space offers me.
No pretense for you – no tone of mine is ever intended to be self-righteous. (except, maybe just then)
I’ll probably vote for Obama because he’s kinda black-ish. And I’m not a democrat. I was raised on a mocro-biotic diet, and I subsist on white sugar and nicotine.
Six or one half-dozen the other. All the presidential candidates have terrified me. Terrified me like mobsters from The Godfather somehow. Been that way for years.
I’m just tired of saying, “Yeah, you do have to be white to be president.”
The shame bucket is too heavy to carry forever. That seems to be what inspires white liberal guilt and holocaust denials alike.
Truthfully, I was taken with Obama’s “Union” speech. And yet, I want so much to be taken. Such a contrast to the slowed-down pedantic tones G. Bush Senior. would use (remember?)- It would make me want to take off my galoshes and stow them in my cubbie.
Anyway, Dan. What did I say to Dan? And what was his joke?
