December 19, 2005
Another Wise Decision
(Source)
RALEIGH, N.C. -- A proposed billboard that would go up near the state Capitol in North Carolina is sparking controversy. For the people who want to post it, it's a sign of the times. But an Arab-American organization says it's racist. The group behind the billboard is trying to tighten standards for obtaining driver's licenses. The billboard shows a man wearing a traditional Arab head scarf, clutching a grenade and a North Carolina license. The message on the billboard reads: "Don't license terrorists, North Carolina."
Well, yeah, it’s racist.
They could have used ANYONE. ANYONE is capable of being a terrorist. You’ve got white supremacists who bomb places to spread their message of hatred and intolerance. There’s militant pro-lifers who bomb abortion clinics. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Ted Kaczynski. The Washington snipers. Rebels in Chechnya. The IRA.
As proven by the actions of these people and groups, terrorism is NOT limited to one ethnic group. It’s not limited to a single ideology. And anyone with a lick of common sense knows this to be fact.
Instead, the Coalition for a Secure Driver’s License took the ignorant way out and used the likeness of an Arab to spread their message. And they more than likely used the excuse “Well, most people associate terrorism with Arabs anyways, so we figured that would be the most effective route.”
Bullshit. Only closed-minded jackasses associate Arabs with terrorism.
It’s all too common for white people to associate ethnic groups with morally reprehensible behavior. You can poll any number of cracker-assed rednecks and at least 3 out of 10 will say that A) Blacks are lazy opportunists who love playing the race card, B) Hispanics are doomed to a life of menial tasks and construction work and will never better themselves, C) All Asians are Communists, regardless of the fact that not all Asian people are from communist China, D) All Jews are penny-pinching drama queens, E) All gays are closet pedophiles hell-bent on converting all straight people to being gay, like some fucked-up evangelistic sexual cult, and F) All Arabs are terrorists. I could go on and on with this shit, because I’ve heard it all before. And not just isolated incidents, mind you. I’ve heard these sorts of comments numerous times from numerous people, and a majority of them were white.
Of course, racism isn’t pegged to one ethnic group. A denial of that fact would be just as ignorant as implying that terrorism is exclusive to the Arabic culture. But I don’t hear Hispanics bitching about lazy black people. I don’t hear black people acting condescending to Hispanics. I don’t hear Asians griping about Jews. Maybe I’m hanging around the wrong people. Maybe I need to actively seek out ignorant racist assholes and see what they say whenever presented with a person of another culture. But no matter where you go, the results are still the same: some jaded, ignorant person spouting the same tired crap about an ethnic group that they’ve probably never even taken the time to understand.
The point is, this type of simple-minded pigeonholing garbage is what’s causing our country to rot at the core. While the addle-headed simpletons out there beat their chests and scream about the “coastal elite” and “limousine liberals” destroying America, they deny the truth about who’s really royally screwing up this country: them.
Instead of promoting the idea of America being a melting pot of cultures and races, people have embraced this isolationist mentality that everything that is different is bad, and by extension we’ve turned into a nation of Archie Bunkers. Monday-morning quarterbacks who are all too happy to point the finger at everyone else and wrap their own hypocrisy in a tapestry of nationalism and entitlement.
Some of you will inevitably ask, “You expected something different from North Carolina?”
Well, yeah. Living in a certain region doesn’t give you a free pass to act like a moron. Understandably, most people are more than willing to label some places as chock-full of slack-jawed idiots, because the moron-to-sensible person ratio is woefully imbalanced in those areas, but stating the obvious doesn’t change the fact that this shit shouldn’t happen.
I’ll bet you’d see people up in arms immediately if the Arab organization in question retaliated with a billboard that showed a Budweiser-swilling jackass clad in a sleeveless flannel shirt with a Larry The Cable Guy “Git-R-Done” cap and a lip full of Copenhagen with the slogan, “Don’t license dumbasses, North Carolina.” The amount of backlash from that decision alone would probably spread like wildfire across the trailer parks and backwoods cabins of the South and Midwest. Toothless, pregnant wives and meth-crazed mulleted yokels in rusted-out Camaros would all rise up and raise their fists and shotguns in anger, with a collective cry of “DUUUUUHHHH!!!”
Because, as we all know, it’s perfectly fine for white people to be condescending, but if one of those damn minority groups tries to get all uppity and act like they deserve to be treated like a regular fucking human being, it’s time to open a can of whoop-ass.
Posted by Jake at December 19, 2005 07:06 AM
| 
