Believe

Okay, enough with the random posts about rats and whatnot. It's time for another outraged rant. The ignorance and classism of the majority white culture have reared their ugly heads again. This has come to my attention through two things: 1. a carpet cleaner commercial and 2. a Halloween party.

So Jen and I were watching TV the other day, an event that rarely happens, when this commercial came on. A nicely groomed, white, suburban housewife-looking lady is talking to the camera about how wonderful Stanley Steemer is. "Not only do they make sure my carpet is clean, but they make sure their employees are clean too! Stanley Steemer does drug tests and background checks on all their employees." And she continues to spout this out as the screen switches to show a black man steaming this woman's carpet, all smiles.

We just stared at the screen in disbelief as I started to feel a little nauseated. If you don't understand why this made me ill, you will probably not understand the rest of this post. Is it automatically wrong for a company to drug test and background check their employees? No. But to cater your advertising to a scared upper-middle class white population by assuring them you'll keep the riff-raff of society out of their pristine homes? Yes, that is very wrong. Classism at its finest.

Exhibit B has a more local flair to it, making me all the more disgusted and sad. You may already know about this incident, but being as I don't watch the news, I discovered it a few days ago through facebook, of all things.

I saw a group at Hopkins called "That Halloween party was SO NOT racist." Ah, a defensive group about a Halloween party - I had to check it out. In researching this further (you can do your own research - I'm not including any links), I found out that a certain fraternity at Hopkins had hosted a costume party called "Halloween in the Hood." The facebook invitation to this party jokingly declared Baltimore an "HIV pit" and asked guests to come in what they called "regional clothing" and "despicable."

Right there, you have a huge problem. A group of mainly white students making a sweeping stereotype about people in the city and mocking a certain part of black culture - that's just ignorant. On top of that - to call Baltimore an HIV pit?? I'm sorry, joking about HIV isn't cool at all. These students live in Baltimore. They are there every day, but it sounds like they refuse to see the people of the city. They only look at it as something scary or gross to be made fun of. You're going to one of the best schools in one of the most needy cities (which also happens to be one of my favorites). What are you gonna do with that? Throw a party that alienates you from the people of the city? Poor choice.

But that's not all. They had a skeleton hanging from a noose out front. Now I am sure that they simply meant this as a creepy dead skeleton, being that it was Halloween and all. However...if you throw a party that mocks black people and display a body hanging from a noose...how can you not see how that would come across?? So, the JHU BSU protested the party and the fraternity, saying that they found the party to be offensive and the skeleton to be an ugly symbol of lynching.

This would have been the perfect opportunity for the party-throwers to step back and say, "Oh, crap. We didn't realize that this was offensive. We're sorry." But instead, there's just a huge backlash of people saying that the party had nothing wrong with it, and no one should be offended. Furthermore, a lot of people are saying that the black community is just promoting "reverse-racism" like it apparently always does. I'll let you read the comments on the facebook group yourself.

This is not just an unfortunate incident. This is one of those culture clashes that reveals how much ignorance and racism really do exist. Yes, white college students in Baltimore, you don't understand why HIV is not funny, because you have never met anyone with AIDS. They are real people. You don't understand why lynching is so serious because you did not live through it. Well it wasn't that long ago.

We can live so close to people with completely different perspectives, viewpoints, and experience than our own. And then we can turn the other way and tell them they are just wrong if they criticize anything we do. When we live as part of the majority culture, we have the luxury of seeing and hearing what we want to. I guess you could use the word luxury, but in the end I think it's more of a toxic lifestyle.

So much goes over your head when you live in your own bubble. But hey, at least the bubble has very clean carpeting and none of its jewelry is missing.