it's my blog and i'll rant if i want to

this rant is motivated by a recent entry i read on another blog. i will not name names or give you a link as i do not wish to give their obvious ignorance and blatant prejudices another second of air time.

but here's what i have to say...

i was born, raised and educated in South Mississippi. as such - i saw/experienced/lived FIRST HAND bigotry, racism, hatred and prejudice. i remember days at school when the white parents were told to keep their kids at home because the black kids were going to "start trouble."

Charles Mack Parker, a black man, was taken from a jail cell in my home town by a gang of white men - lynched and thrown off a bridge into the Pearl River. I wasn't born when this happened, but this story was very much alive when i grew up. i even went to church on Sundays with men that were complicit in this event.

in all this - i was one of the lucky ones. kids are NOT born hating others. they learn it. my parents never taught me hate. never. they never taught me prejudice. fortunately, the parents of most of my friends felt the same way. My Jr. year in High school - 1985 - was the first year we had an integrated prom. a group of white seniors decided they only wanted to socialize with their kind. so they threw their own "Spring Dance" - by invitation only. i don't recall getting an invitation to that event. thankfully. my Sr. year was the first year we had only one prom - and everyone attended.

i asked my mom once why they raised me as they did. her response went something like this...

"you know i grew up in a childrens' home. we were the poor kids. we were the kids that no one wanted to play with. i knew what it was like to be prejudiced against and i never wanted you to make anyone feel that way."

whatta mom!

in college, i was an RA (resident assistant) in the dorm. one night a bunch of us got together and watched Mississippi Burning. i knew the story but had never seen the film. i sobbed through the entire thing. some of the girls i went with that night were black. they were my friends. they laughed at me for a week b/c every time i saw them, i cried, hugged them and apologized for the idiocy that was...

i moved to vail, colorado after college. my manager was from Manhattan. apparently i was the first person from mississippi she had ever met. first chance she got, she pulled me to the side and asked me in a hushed whisper, "Are you prejudiced?" i whispered back, "No. is that a problem?"

Why do i tell you all this? not to degrade my home state because you KNOW how much I love Mississippi and her people. for every 1 bigoted idiot in Mississippi, there are 100 beautiful, intelligent souls. apparently the same is true in the blogosphere. the vast majority of the blogs i read regularly and even the ones i drop in on occasionally are well written, funny, informative and mostly uplifting. and while everyone is entitled to their own preconceptions, stupidity and their right to express such, SO AM I.

i tell you all this because i feel i am uniquely qualified to recognize ignorance and prejudice when it is thinly veiled as an futile attempt at humor - as it was in this blog. before i even read the entry comments, which got heated and nasty, the hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. the writer sincerely thought she was being funny - making fun of someone's cultural music choice and describing the type of restaurant it would usually be heard in. nope, sorry hon, not funny at all.

it's one thing for me to make fun of rednecks. i r one. CP can poke fun at the idiosyncrasies of being jewish - she r one. and pissy, if she wishes, can diss latinas. she r one. oprah can talk about the challenges of black women's hair on national tv. you will NEVER EVER hear jane pauley do that. everyone knows it's okay to talk about your own family - but never acceptable to rag on someone else's.

you know who you are. you crossed a line. your profile states that you hate stupid people. that must create a certain level of self loathing in your life.

you offended someone i adore. you offended me. and while it is your right to do so, it is also my right to call you on it.