Aw, why you look so sad?
Arabs are your fears,
Come on and treat with me now.
No, don’t be ashamed to fight,
But let me see you through,
We both have dark sides too
We both torture and kill people
Who at least deserve second best,
Take it off your chest, cause I can’t love you less.
[Chorus A]
I’ll stand by Jews, I’ll stand by Jews,
Won’t let terrorists hurt you,
I’ll stand by Jews.
So, if you’re mad GET mad?
The Arab’s angry too.
They’re a lot like you.
Yes, they also mash chickpeas,
Deep fry in some grease.
Let’s eat a falafel in peace.
When you took their land up from them,
Didn’t ya think they’d want it back?
All of your protest, can not make me love Jews less.
[Chorus B]
I’ll stand by Jews, I’ll stand by Jews,
Won’t let jihadis hurt you,
I’ll stand by Jews. All the way until the treaty hour,
And then I’ll never desert you, I’ll stand by Jews.
[Bridge]
And if,
If we choose not to send you money,
Then at least you’ll know,
You didn’t do it with our dough.
To be sung to Huey Lewis and the News “I Want a New Drug”…
I want a new thug, one that doesn’t like phones.
One that would flip a girl from a chair,
One who won’t mind breakin’ some bones!
I want a new thug, one who likes to arrest,
One who can cure a gay man quick, or relieve Arab unrest.
One who would make the Arabs, make peace with the Jews,
One that locks a German in a room with ‘You know who’…
When he’s alone with Jews.
I want a new thug, one that doesn’t like brown,
One who helps big business keep those brothers hunkered down..
I want a new thug, one that works down south.
One who smacks a Mexican hard, smack the taste from their mouths.
One that would shoot a lion, extinct the caribou,
One that makes blacks nervous when election night comes too
I take the votes from you. I’ll take the votes from you baby.
[Insert crazy horn arrangement here]
I want a new thug, one who likes oil wells,
Make teachers teach for free, or have them go to hell.
I want a new thug, one who won’t shoot WHITES.
One who has a big riot gun, and a dog that bites.
One whose wife works home, makes sure she gets paid less,
One who beats her bloody if she wears a mini-dress.
Unless she’s hoooome with you, unless she’s home with you, baby.
Doctor Who, the fast-paced and fantastic TV series, is most enjoyable to watch when the usual perspectives of the characters are subdued in a particular story line, called “The Family of Blood”, starring my personal favorite Doctor (David Tennant) and platonic companion, Martha Jones, played by the talented Freema Agyeman.
Season 3, Episodes 9 & 10 of Doctor Who are two of my favorite episodes, wrapped in social constructs of gender roles, romanticism, race and violence. The two episodes follow the story of an ordinary English countryside school teacher named John Smith, who doesn’t realize the true complexities of his own brilliant nature — the selfless, lonely, creature he truly is.
“He sort of inherited me,” Martha Jones explains to the curious, as to why she and John Smith are hiding in the plain sight of their enemies. Martha’s dark skin prevents her from being taken seriously in 1913 England, as a common maid, and can not warn anyone of the impending doom of “the war to end all wars”. The story is gripping to the end, with great moments of drama, action, and sincerity.
Part of the satisfaction in enjoying science fiction lately, as someone who is older, brown, and has seen more Mystery Science Theater than anyone, is also seeing the changes in how Asians and Africans are represented in futuristic tales. 20th Century science fiction would almost have people believe that there are only white people in the future.
Doctor Who seems to have a better handle than most with regard to representations of race on screen. My absolute favorite episodes ever are the final three episodes of Season 3, which star Derek Jacobi and John Simm. Racial stereotypes remain, such as a mysterious primitive Caucasian gang, and worldwide representations of “the masses” in panic always being mostly white, as if there are no other continents of relevance. A new generation of egalitarian producers will be pitted against the traditionally-minded wealthy in a real-life battle where we, the consumers vote with our ballots and bank accounts. Which side will you choose?
Will the great Doctor’s skin ever get darker? Can’t James Bond ever be from Japan or South Korea?
Bernie Sanders takes the national stage tomorrow during the first Democratic debate. His leftist positions have earned him respect among voters in Vermont over the past several years, and voters of all stripes will now get to see how someone labeled a socialist can garner presidential momentum.
“I don’t think this is a leftist, extremist position,” he argued last week in Boulder, Colorado, referring to a proposed $15 per hour minimum wage. The US moved firmly to the left in 2008, voting for the first brown-skinned president, and now libertarians, liberals, and young voters across the country must consider if a socialist can run this country better than anyone else on the field.
What is so bad about voting for a socialist? Vermont has often leaned to the left, but referring to a successful Senator as a radical is rather strange. In truth, Senator Sanders is not THAT radical. Socialism is defined by Merriam-Webster as, “A way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies.” This definition is far from accurate in describing the contemporary American socialist.
Let’s look at the Urban Dictionary definition:
“Actual: An economic system in between capitalism and communism, advocating collective ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods.
Slang: Anything that a right winger doesn’t like. The national highway system is an example of socialism.”
Knowing that Americans will never realistically allow collective ownership, (except by wealthy white people, of course) what’s so scary about socialism in a country with a broken democracy? President Roosevelt consciously tapped Marxism when he started Social Security, and used government dollars to fund ground-breaking infrastructure projects. Does that sound like a bad idea to you?
American socialists work successfully in our country as civil servants, attorneys, income equality activists and a Vermont Senator. Does the prospect of President Trump or President Carson not scare you more?
This story below was originally published for Columbus Day 2014, and, typical of America, nothing has changed for people of color who founded our great apartheid nation. As the population shift continues, and some local governments across the country have made the same change, let’s hope to someday correct history on a federal level.
“This federal holiday has a long and complex history, including an 1892 proclamation by Benjamin Harrison and its establishment as a federal holiday in 1937. Many came to see Columbus Day “as a way for Italian Americans to be accepted by the mainstream,”
When do the rest of us second class citizens get to join the mainstream? Do you really think that more film/TV roles and 1 presidency is going to cut it?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
“Bite it, Columbus!” Shouts Minnesota, as the Land O’ Lakes has become the first state in America to acknowledge the long-known fact that Columbus did not first discover America, as there were plenty of human beings happily inhabiting the “New World” prior to Euro-trash arrival. The days of useless semantics may soon be at an end.
As a native New Yorker, I detest watching other parts of the world proactively improve, making us look like a bunch of uptight rednecks. Please tell your local politician to catch up with reality before the Catholic church starts to accept homosexual life–
Oops this breaking news just in…. Nevermind, it’s official, New York has become Kansas, and the Vatican views history better than most of my neighbors. Perhaps the Pope should be handed ownership of the Washington R–skins.
Most Americans who believe Organic Food is healthier than conventional food, or that organic food is pesticide free are WRONG. This myth was busted years ago by Stanford University and other researchers, despite the organic food industry exceeding $30 billion annually in our great country.
Most Americans are also unaware of the fact that race and religion are social constructs, meaning that they are ideas (usually bad ideas) created by people. Race is not, nor was it ever, based on bloodlines.
Somehow, over the past century or so, it has become an acceptable presumption that a white actor can blend into any role, regardless of what ethnicity that role is. Charlton Heston’s Ben Hur, Christian Bale‘s Moses, or Gary Oldman‘s Drexil Spivey from the classic film True Romance, are just a fraction of examples where American audiences accept white actors playing roles of another ethnicity, no matter how preposterous. Those who disagree likely attend Othello performances with a straight face
Gary Oldman’s legendary Jamaican step-n-fetch-it.
However, what is a far more preposterous and dangerous myth is that Europe and the US can successfully aide Middle Eastern and African refugees fairly, AS IF they have somehow magically done so in the past! Europeans and their American descendants have done so LITTLE to care for their populations of ethnic minorities, and practice foreign policy SO POORLY, it is an insult to common sense to consider they will somehow turn a corner and successfully aide this new generation of brown-skinned refugees.
The myth that America is a free country which treats all of its citizens well is a malignancy that must either be dealt with by egalitarian legislation that fiercely protects every citizen, regardless of race, gender, sexual preference, or income, OR people treated unfairly must unite politically to compel our government to equalize voting, schools, infrastructure and the workplace, lest we continue to be an apartheid republic just acting like a democracy.
This Texan history white wash is brought to you by Rocco’s Tacos, home of the Migration Quesadilla. We took the descendants of African migrants, paid them a handsome salary of $6 per hour, had them make a Colby Jack quesadilla with beef, ground up like their dreams of freedom, peace and literacy, and serve it to you as you like it. The Migration Quesadilla, only at Rocco’s — BOOM!
Mary Armstrong, living it up in Texas, post-migration
The Sara Silver Chronicles
This excerpt from McGraw-Hill’s new textbook, True American History, can be found in Chapter 3: “The Happy Workers”:
Mary Armstrong loved being a slave migrant worker most of her life, “I am SO happy not to have been left in that fertile, beautiful birthplace of humanity, known as Africa.” she began in her Houston home. “I completely understand why people from the Middle East don’t want to be associated with darker skinned people, and don’t admit to being Africans. We are a miserable race that could use some polishing, and when I say ‘polishing’ I am of course referring to forcing slaves to polish boots, saddles and furniture.”
“We were never slaves, we were migrant workers who were happy to leave our homes and culture to work for free in a place where we could be tortured or killed for trying to leave. Why anyone would want to work for money is beyond me.” She continued, “I guess there are communists and socialists everywhere in this great country.”
Mary Armstrong, the daughter and granddaughter of slaves African migrant workers, beams upon thoughts of her glory days on a Louisiana plantation, before her ‘great promotion’ in her teenage years. “After spending my youth and early teenage years as a food chopper, kitchen cleaner and stable girl, my boss tore me from my mother’s arms and told me I was getting a promotion to become a cotton-picking sex slave. I didn’t know what that was at the time, because I didn’t know much of anything, thanks to never going to school, but I could tell from my mother’s screams and cries for mercy that it was a job she only wished she could do instead.
“The boss gave me to another man, named Boss, and we went on a long trip together to a place called Texas, and on the way there, he taught me a new thing called ‘making the boss happy’ where I had to take off my clothes and do whatever the boss wanted me to do, no matter how much it hurt. Oh how I loved making my new Boss happy whenever he wanted! He never hurt me, until I saw my belly was getting bigger, and I told him I didn’t want to have a baby. “Hush now!” he said and shook me hard, “That baby ain’t yours, I’ll take care of it after it’s birthed.” He kept his promise, the good Texan that he was, and I never saw that baby again, after it was born All those problems went away, and then he said I could make him happy again.
“After picking cotton and making Boss happy for about twenty or thirty cotton seasons, everything changed on the plantation, and the workers started leaving for something called freedom. I didn’t know what it was, all I knew was that I was never supposed to talk to Boss about it, or he’d get really mad. One night, after making him happy, he asked me if I knew what freedom was. ‘I don’t know, Boss,’ I told him, ‘But, I don’t want to do anything that’ll make you mad.’
“That was when he told me there was a man named Lincoln that made him crazy mad. I don’t know why the President made him so mad, but after Lincoln died, lots of other workers that were communists and socialists left the plantation, but I stayed there until Boss died. He said I was his favorite worker in the whole wide world, and I can’t tell you how happy that made me.”
“I only wish I could keep working for free for the rest of my life. Curse that President Lincoln!” Mary Armstrong concluded, with tears welling up in her eyes, “There’s nothing I want more than to make white folks happy where ever I go.”
— Sara Silver writes The Sara Silver Chronicles, a series documenting the Race War in America. She is an imaginary teenage girl who lives in the Bronx, trying to understand the world around her through satire and true events.
Race Against Race! 