Liberals, by and large, like to pigeon-hole everybody. Give them a label, and that's what you are for the rest of your life. Black, White, Conservative, Mentally Ill, it doesn't matter.
With real human beings, however you cannot realistically do this to them. No "bad" person is 100% "evil," nor is every "good" person 100% perfect. We are a spectrum ranging from good to bad and everything in between.
I now present Darlena Cunha. She came to my attention this morning, after writing in Time magazine in favor of people rioting in Ferguson. Something prompted me to take a deeper look at her through what she has written and this is what I found: in 2007, Darlena moved from California back home to the East Coast. She became pregnant by her boyfriend. Her boyfriend proposed, then they bought a house. Then, several events ganged up on her. Three weeks after closing, the housing market collapsed and their home instantly lost 40% of it's value. Then her boyfriend was laid off. Darlena gave birth to preemie twins, and decided to freelance from home to raise their children. As a result, they suffered an 80% pay cut.
She wrote the article, The day I drove my Mercedes to pick up food stamps, where she described her experiences applying for Medicaid, SNIP (otherwise known as food stamps) and WIC. She had this to say about the Mercedes (and why it was a significant part of the story):
That's the funny thing about being poor. Everyone has an opinion on it, and everyone feels entitled to share. That was especially true about my husband's Mercedes. Over and over again, people asked why we kept that car, offering to sell it in their yards or on the Internet for us. "Sell the Mercedes," a friend said to me. "He doesn't get to keep his toys now." But it wasn't a toy — it was paid off. My husband bought that car before we met. Were we supposed to trade it in for a lousier car we'd have to make payments on? Only to have that less reliable car break down on us? And even if we had wanted to do that, here's what people don't understand: The reality of poverty can spring quickly while the psychological effects take longer to surface. When you lose a job, your first thought isn't, "Oh my God, I'm poor. I'd better sell all my nice stuff!" It's "I need another job. Now." When you're scrambling, you hang onto the things that work, that bring you some comfort. That Mercedes was the one reliable, trustworthy thing in our lives.
I would like to say, as of the publication of the article (July 2014) they still had that Mercedes. Good for them. The next article gave me a very wide grin.
Darlena attempted to apply her Liberal virtues upon her children, and got them thrown right back in her face by her children. I’m a die-hard liberal. It ruined my parenting. What she attempted to do was apply a reasoned approach to why she did what she did to and for her six-year-old twin daughters. She attempted to get "buy-in" from her daughters and it failed miserably. Her daughters logic was impeccable and better than Darlena's.
So, she had to fall back on those old Conservative (although she doesn't use that term) principles of "Do it, because I'm your Mother." The system of telling young children (generally under 10 years old) what to do rather than explaining why and expecting the "now enlightened" child to do it of their own volition has worked for several thousand years. Once children start developing the ability to reason through several sequential thoughts to get from start to finish, then you can take the time to explain the why's and wherefore's to them. The best thing to do with children is tell them to do it. Make the rules for their conduct age appropriate and clear beforehand. If you have to administer punishment, do it when you are calm (or have the other parent do it while they are calm), then love and hug them before and after the punishment. When correction (and by extension discipline) are done through love and support rather than anger, you will end up with a better young adult. Now for the reason for the post: Ferguson: In Defense of Rioting. In typical Liberal fashion, she writes this (emphasis mine):
Because when you have succeeded, it ceases to be a possibility, in our capitalist society, that anyone else helped you. And if no one helped you succeed, then no one is holding anyone else back from succeeding. Except they did help you, and they are holding people back. So that blaming someone else for your failures in the United States may very well be an astute observation of reality, particularly as it comes to white privilege versus black privilege. And, yes, they are different, and they are tied to race, and that doesn’t make me a racist, it makes me a realist. If anything, I am racist because I am white. Until I have had to walk in a person of color’s skin, I will never understand, I will always take things for granted, and I will be inherently privileged. But by ignoring the very real issues this country still faces in terms of race to promote an as-of-yet imaginary colorblind society, we contribute to the problem at hand, which is centuries of abuses lobbied against other humans on no basis but that of their skin color.
Then Darlena has the temerity to invoke the Boston Tea Party. For those of you who do not keep up on history, the Boston Tea Party was a political protest over "Taxation Without Representation," the frustration of American Colonists and their being taxed by Great Britain without Colonial representatives in Parliament.
In today's dollars, about $1.6 million of tea was destroyed by throwing the chests containing said product were thrown overboard from three cargo ships. Nothing was burned and no one was hurt. Benjamin Franklin (that old, evil white guy) actually called for and tried to make restitution for the losses. The Boston Tea Party was actually considered at the time something shameful. It didn't get its current prospective until 60 years after the event.
As far as what I have in bold above, I think Darlena has a different dictionary than I do. My dictionary defines racism as, :"... the doctrine that a certain human race is superior to any or all others." To say "I am racist because I am white" as a blanket statement is beyond ludicrous. And, just as a thought, if she is a self-admitted racist, why should any person who is not of her skin color trust her?
I prefer to judge people on their actions and the content of their character. The color of another persons skin is not a factor in any decision I make about a person. There you go. Darlena is a self-admitted Liberal, and a self-admitted racist. Do I think every other Liberal is a racist? No. I make that determination based on each persons actions and words. You draw your own conclusion.