Everything But The Girl

The idea of "post-racial America" is a nice one. It's a tempting narrative to grab on to right now, when we're experiencing the second administration of our first mixed* president. That would put a handsome, mocha-colored button on the troubled story of race in the Land of the Free and we can start treating slavery and Jim Crow the way we treat the subject of grandma's second husband:** just pretend it never happened.

Sometimes we get a little sideways with nostalgia and (probably) meth and start trying to play the old hits like lynching and segregation, but the post-racial among us will assure us that these are just echoes, institutional reflex, the involuntary spasm of overworked nerves in gangrenous limbs we've already marked for amputation. It's like the way some people still insist on buying vinyl records. Make your stand however you feel is necessary, but the technology has well outlived its purpose. It's artisanal racism, like the hipsters do with soap or frozen water, engaging in a passe version of faux craftsmanship in a futile attempt to hold off the sterile, processed sameness of the thoroughly indexed Right Now by willfully confusing unnecessary effort and twee self-indulgence with some kind of Platonic, formal authenticity.

Except with the racism stuff, the actual actions incited are illegal whereas handlebar mustaches and hand-tied bow-ties with Victorian-era knots are, sadly, not. Yet. We're not going to tolerate this bullshit forever, Millennials. I'm going to drink my corporate-branded iced tea and you are going to keep your preference for hydroponic hand-picked small-label Brooklyn Darjeeling to your goddamned self.

Loads of people are out there trying to sell us on the idea of post-racial America, but you know what group still isn't getting any love? The bitches.

I'm loath to use "bitches" to refer to women, but this is the internet in 2015 and I am a white man, so unfortunately, I'm bound by convention to have a certain percentage of my comments reflect a tone of violent misogyny. By this point, it's rote. You can't even just start a new job without rape and death threats ladies, let alone do something like run for president. Even God has to weigh in with his doubts, everybody. It's compulsory.

As an example, not only is 2015 not an ideal atmosphere to make real progress on the acceptance of women as equals in this "modern" country, it's demonstrably backsliding. Look at the Equal Rights Amendment. By 1976, 35 (of 38 required) states had voted to ratify it, only to have five states later take the unprecedented step of rescinding their positive ratification vote to protect women from discrimination in the United States. They probably can't even do that, but if I know, say, Kentucky, they probably just wanted it to be on record that despite any temporary loss of composure in the face of an army of crazed fire-bra-wielding mobs in the moment, they still fully endorse the hegemonic primacy of the Penis-Americans.

And this is after the ERA, again in a most unusual step, was given an arbitrary deadline to be ratified in the first place, a total of about seven years. This makes sense of course in light of the fact that, after 1979 when the ratification attempts would expire, ladies were expected to finally get off their decade-long collective time-of-the-month and stop being so hysterical about everything.

Legislatively it also makes sense because you don't want unresolved issues hanging around, gumming up the works and keeping other stuff from getting done by the men in charge. Yes, OK, the 27th Amendment was ultimately given 202 years, 7 months and 12 days between introduction and ratification, but that was brought up and ultimately decided by men, who can be sober and rational.

These are the kind of people you want in charge in a crisis, like say after Obama carries out his plan to nuke Charleston, South Carolina. When we men-folk are out there fighting a very rational inevitable race war, someone will have to be home looking after the kids.


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*If I understand it right, half Kenyan socialist, half genocidal fascist

**Insisted on kisses on the mouth, made us all call him "Pup-Pup," took to wearing dear, departed Grandpa's old slippers before fucking off with grandma's cashed-in T-bills. Sounds bad, but in her more philosophical moments, she'll admit it was $1,300 well spent in the end.