Barack Obama · clothing · hair · Hispanics/Latinos · race/racism

Redux: Please don’t…with explanatory links!!!

Thank you for being my friend. Here are some guidelines so that our friendship can be a pleasurable experience for all of us.

Please don’t make fun of gay people.

Please don’t make fun of black people’s hair.

Please don’t tell ask me why I don’t straighten my hair.

Please don’t make fun of Mexican people or how Hispanics pronounce English words.

Please don’t start conversations about how Obama is a socialist and then add that you think he’s a Muslim terrorist and that he was born in a different country.

Please don’t make comments about how my former public school students might have had HIV or AIDS.

Please don’t make comments about how “those black people” are always “pulling the race card” and that Al Sharpton is their “crazy leader.”

Please don’t repeatedly refer to me as “sexy Latina” instead of my name.

Please don’t tell me when I point these things out too you that I’m “too sensitive.”

If you don’t understand why any of these statements or actions are inappropriate, please don’t ever speak to me again. It’s safer that way. For both of us.

4 thoughts on “Redux: Please don’t…with explanatory links!!!

  1. I agree with all of them – except one. Obama believes in high taxes and government control of as many industries as possible. That IS socialism.

    Why is it so offensive to you for someone to comment that Obama is a socialist? The center-left parties in Europe, identical to the current U.S. Dem platform, are called the socialist party of (insert country).

    Maybe you think that socialism is the right course for America. Okay, that's fine -but don't kick someone out of your shabbos table just because he or she calls a spade a spade.

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  2. Adam, you are indeed correct. I tied together all the phrases that usually collect together when Obama gets mentioned at the Shabbos table. For some reason, it starts with socialist comments and ends with a racist one. Indeed, if people want to discuss how Obama is a socialist without entering into racist statements, I have no problem with it.

    Incidentally, your comment makes me think of when my students and I read Arthur Miller's The Crucible. We called each other 'witches' and 'communists' for weeks as biting remarks on the points in the book. Then I finally explained what communism was to the class and some of my students were appalled: “Wait a minute, Miss, I AM a communist!”

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  3. Well said, Aliza.

    By the way – people REALLY touch your hair? Like, without asking?

    Maybe you and I should get together and write a book called “Things we learned in public school – that we wish you had learned in yeshiva”

    Okay, the title needs some work but you get my point. :o)

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  4. Yes, really, really, people touch my hair without asking. It's not enough that they make racist comments that make me feel like an exotic monkey, they also try to pet me like one.

    Ha, I don't think it's a public school versus yeshiva (plenty of yeshiva guys I've met were a heck of a lot more sensitive than some of my public school mates) but I get what you're saying. It's just things I wished you'd learned that I learned.

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