Welcome to another edition of This Week in Racism. I’ll be ranking news stories on a scale of 1 to RACIST, with “1” being the least racist and “RACIST” being the most racist.
-xoJane is the kind of website that typically hews closely to the “generic urban female” demographic. It’s sex and fashion tips, with article titles such as, “YOUR Outfits Of The Week: This Week Is A ME PARTY.” Well, shit got really real when xoJane posted an article titled, “It Happened to Me: There Are No Black People in My Yoga Class and I’m Suddenly Uncomfortable With It,” written by Jen Polachek.
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To say the liberal internet found the article “problematic” would be a significant understatement. There is actually an essay in the world where someone seriously says, “I realized with horror that despite the all-inclusivity preached by the studio, despite the purported blindness to socioeconomic status, despite the sizeable population of regular Asian students, black students were few and far between.”
What Caron doesn’t address is that it’s very possible that black people just aren’t into yoga. That might bring her carefully constructed worldview crashing down upon her, but she brought it on herself. Black people had to fight for their freedom from bondage, their right to own property, their right to vote, and their right to go to the same schools and play golf at the same country clubs as white people. If black folks want something en masse, history says they will let you know. Thus far, they seem pretty ambivalent about yoga, and I don’t think it’s really necessary that they all of the sudden change their minds about that. It’s like writing an essay about why more black people don’t bowl. Who gives a fuck?
Oh my God, lady. Seriously. What the fuck is this:
“Would a simple ‘Are you okay?’ whisper have helped, or would it embarrass her? Should I tell her after class how awful I was at yoga for the first few months of my practicing and encourage her to stick with it, or would that come off as massively condescending?”
Is this about her race or the fact that you are embarrassed to see a fat person trying to do yoga? Somehow, it gets better/worse when Caron has a nervous breakdown over the black lady doing yoga who probably went home wondering why some lady was staring at her for an hour straight:
“I got home from that class and promptly broke down crying. Yoga, a beloved safe space that has helped me through many dark moments in over six years of practice, suddenly felt deeply suspect. Knowing fully well that one hour of perhaps self-importantly believing myself to be the deserving target of a racially charged anger is nothing, is largely my own psychological projection, is a drop in the bucket, is the tip of the iceberg in American race relations, I was shaken by it all the same.”
As I said last week, people will always see race, even self-hating white yuppies. There’s such a high concentration of forced, unnecessary privilege checking in this article that it is now sentient and walks the earth. One can only hope that this lifeform made of pure liberal guilt will do us all a favor and retire to New Mexico, become a hoarder, and leave the rest of the world alone. 5
-Richard F. Cebull, a former federal judge who already got into hot water for sending a racist email about President Obama, has been further disgraced by countless other emails connected to him that contain offensive messages. The New York Times reported that the messages included jokes about “blacks, American Indians, Hispanics, women, certain religious faiths and liberal political leaders, and some emails contained jokes about sexual orientation.” Cebull sent these emails to professional connections and personal friends alike. The Judicial Council of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found in their investigation that despite Cebull’s less than savory behavior, they found no evidence of bias in his rulings. Let it be known, he’s one of the “good racists.” Congrats, Dick! RACIST
Photo via Flickr User Gage Skidmore
-Glenn Beck, former relevant pop culture figure and hater of race baiting, recently took MSNBC’s race bait and labeled the cable news channel racist for tweeting that right-wing Americans would “hate” their upcoming commercial featuring a biracial family. “I’m sorry, MSNBC, but you are racist, and we know who you are now,” Beck said. I think it’s definitely unfair to claim that every conservative in America hate interracial couples. That’s a pretty broad stroke, and not at all factual, but I’m not sure Glenn Beck knows what the word “racist” means. A simple Google search for “racist” brings up the following definition: “a person who believes that a particular race is superior to another.” Not sure which race MSNBC is saying is superior. Racially insensitive? Yes. Racist? No. If MSNBC’s tweet had said that biracial people are better than white people, then that statement would be more accurate. But whatever, let’s all take a second to marvel at that belt Glen Beck is wearing in that picture. What the hell is that? 2
The Most Racist Tweets of the Week:
