1. It got 5 stars on the Netflix rating
2. It was Quentin Tarantino movie night at the house
3. Jamie Foxx is an incredibly talented actor
Notice I didn't say "black" actor. I did this because Morgan Freeman is right: We're never going to get over this whole racist thing until we start referring to each other as Morgan, and Jamie, and John. Well, maybe Morgan, and Jamie, and Clint Eastwood. Given that I do not actually envision anyone weaving my name into a sentence with Morgan Freeman's and Jamie Foxx's; at least not in the foreseeable future.
I am glad that I caved in and watched the movie. Quinton is a total "G" (Genius -- for my older friends who actually read my blog posts) when it comes to creating stories with film. He pulls you deeply into them right away. His portrayal of the subject of slavery in Django Unchained was raw, and tragically probably accurate. Django Unchained was a great story.
But, since you ask, on to what perpetually pisses me off. After all, it's Saturday, and Saturday is rant morning. My family never owned anyone. Slavery was a dark time in American history. We handled that whole era about as well as we managed the Native Indian thing. We, all Americans, as children of God, are clearly fallible. That having been said, let's all listen to Morgan Freeman now and shut up and get over it.
For a black man or woman to assert that I owe them something because some guy in the 1800's was a morally bankrupt prick who probably also slapped his white wife around, is racist. If you want to lump me into the same moral category as him because of the color of my skin you are being a racist. My mom's family came from England in the late 1800's and settled in Michigan. My father's mom and dad emigrated from Poland before World War I. I'm sick of hearing about it. I don't owe the black culture anything. Jamie Foxx, you are an amazing and talented man, but take your Saturday Night Live "black power" diatribe and shove it up your ass.
Quite frankly, I'm mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. Accordingly, I might just slap the crap out of the next guy that assumes I'm a racist because of the color of my skin. One of the problems with that being, that if he was black, the assault would be assumed to be racially motivated. Though, that would be erroneous. I would have slapped the crap of him because he's an offensive and racist moron. Which obviously validates my position that this whole racism thing is a self-perpetuating swirling drubish of stupidity.
As mentioned in a previous post, I have some unique experiences with black culture. I played baseball in an all black league in Atlanta. I rode the #14 Cross Town bus in Detroit dozens times in 2012. I was called a cracker on the #14. I am not a racist. I have black friends. Some of them are way smarter than I am (Milt, Terry). My best friend loves a mulatto girl. I had great fun with the guys I played ball with in Georgia. I loved Coach White, ironically the coach of the all black team.
In spite of all that, I just referred to a culture of people as "black" about a dozen times in the preceding paragraphs. How do we do it Morgan Freeman? How do we break the cycle?
When I was five or six my father was running an aluminum manufacturing facility. He had Japanese customers over to the house for dinner. I remember asking him why he had Japanese people at our house, when they were trying to kill him in the war. He calmly explained, "Son, that was over twenty years ago, and the people governing their country made some bad decisions, and horrible things ended up happening. But the two men we just had dinner with don't feel that way about us, and they are my friends. We work together. They pay my company to make things for them. So, we move on."
What a concept: Move on. Maybe, just maybe, if the black culture told Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to shut to hell up, and started referring to me as John instead of some white guy, we could all move on.
OK. Now I'm going to get some black coffee.
