Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
The Speech
(Hate politics? Skip to the kitty.)
Read the full text or watch the video of Barack Obama’s speech here.
The man belted this one straight out of the park. I haven’t been this moved by a political speech since Edwards dropped out of the race — and, no, I don’t think Edwards could have given a speech like this.
As usual, other people have said it a lot better than I can. The empathy, the honesty, the intelligence, the logic of the speech floored me. What a relief from the foul winds we’ve been breathing for the last seven years — for decades, really.
Anyway, here is my inarticulate praise, which I posted at Daily Kos:
Effective, moving, logical
LOGICAL. The product of a brain not running on corn meal mush and twine with little twisty-ties holding one part to the other part and rubber bands for a power source.
I loved it.
***
Sorry about the political post. I know MOST of you don’t come here for politics. So here’s a pooty.
And because none of you want to talk politics (just guessin’), here’s my question for the evening:
How many of your grandparents were fond of spewing embarrassing racial slurs, ethnic epithets, or other random bits of nasty prejudicial slime?
I’ll kick it off. One of my grandmothers once said, “I hate those Chinese . . . ever since Pearl Harbor.”
D.
One Christmas, upon seeing the Brazil nuts in the bowl of mixed, unshelled nuts upon the sideboard, my grandmother exclaimed, “Oh! Ni**er toes!”
She at least had the good sense to realize what she’d said and was quite chagrined about it.
One of my mom’s college boyfriends (c. 1964 or so) was black. Her brother was most emphatically not okay with it; to her everlasting credit, my grandmother was.
We’ve known each other too long. I actually remember that story ๐
Heh. I quickly googled my blog to see if I’d told it before…
I must be getting old; I can’t remember who I’ve told my stories to…
I admit I’ve not heard him speak before. I just looked at the websites for bullet-points of their issues and plans for improvements. It’s so easy to be swayed by speeches, especially by a brilliant orator. He talks about education and race (can I just say, that if one is going to say African American then really shouldn’t they also say Caucasian American, especially if a large part of the speech is about strengthening the union? Sure Caucasian American sounds weird, but it’s a ding in the ear to hear White American over and over. I’m sure it’s just me, but that’s how I hear it. It seems to bleed the old White Establishment and everyone else is an immigrant. Whites belong, foreigners need laws to protect them. I have been called pedantic for mentioning this belief before, but I still stand by it.) with a mixing in of affirming his Christianity, brushing off Ferraro’s comments and that he’s not going to play the race games or sexism games and he’ll not live by generalizations. Fair enough. We’ll wait and see.
I still prefer to be a skeptic until the minute I get to vote.
It is amazing (to me, anyway) to think how pervasive it was. I didn’t know any of my grandparents for various reasons (mostly death) but my maternal grandmother’s sister came to live with us when I was about 9, and so I got to see them through her eyes.
She liked the Chinese because they’d had Chinese cooks when she was growing up, but she wasn’t down with anybody else. Black people were ‘them’.
We called Brazil nuts ‘nigger toes’, and the little licorice candies in the shape of people were ‘nigger babies’.
I’m glad those days are gone.
Hmm, maybe the n-toes story came from Dean, then. I heard it from SOMEONE.
Forget grandparents . . . few people want to admit how much of this was and is still present among their first degree relatives. Prejudice is alive and well.
No, looks like it was probably me; see comment #5. And I can’t even keep my story straight – in the other version, it was Thanksgiving.
Definitely signs of aging… ๐
Cute kitty!!
I don’t think I could tell you anything you don’t know already, but because of the prejudicial attitude of our grandparents, I was scared to death sitting between two very large black guys in a lecture hall at Cal State.
my grandmas are both bad…i’m down here with my gma haber in FL right now, and she still calls black people “colored” and seems surprised when they do anything good or successful, among other things…she’s one of the most judgemental people i know. they showed a curvaceous girl in the audience on american idol last night, and she was like, “who’s the fatty?” and yeah. there are more. it drives me nuts.
In ’74, we met up with my dad’s mom in Florida. That’s when I learned (from her) that the new “code word,” since black people knew “shvartze”, was “tonkeleh,” which is Yiddish for “clouded.” I don’t think it caught on.
my grandmother stopped speaking to me after I signed up to spend a few months in Germany. She did the collective guilt thing in a big way. Does that count?
> รขโฌลI hate those Chinese . . . ever since Pearl Harbor.รขโฌย
Reminds me of this joke.
A high school friend of mine, Jewish kid, had an 80-something-year-old grandfather who lived with his family. He was a concentration camp survivor and he had spent time in China after the war, learned the language, made a living, and eventually came to America. (This is not all that unusual — I have some distant cousins who lived in Harbin, and may still live in Harbin.) Anyway, he was always getting into fights with old Chinese people in the grocery stores and coffee shops because they would use racial slurs in Chinese and figure he wasn’t understanding.
That’s what that joke reminded me of ๐
Based upon my track record in this thread, I’ve probably also told this story before… :-0
I was friends with this guy (actually, the one Dean killed) who speaks fluent Japanese, and spent a lot of time in Japan. He’s about as much of a round-eyed barbarian as you can imagine: 6’1″ tall, broad shoulders, blue eyes, curly light-brown hair.
So I forget exactly in which city he was teaching English, but he was living about an hour outside the city by train. One morning, a woman got on with her two boys, maybe 10 & 12 years old; the kids almost immediately began talking trash about the big stupid gaijin on the train.
My friend put up with it for a while, but eventually put his book down, turned to them, and in a very calm, quiet voice said, “I can understand every word you’re saying, and you’re being very rude.”
The kids jumped, Mom gasped in horror, my friend returned to his book, and Mom promptly hustled the kids off the train at the next stop.
No, that’s a new story to me. I love it.
My parents (both 65) remember when it was OK to call Brazil nuts nigger toes, and my great-aunt used to refer to the Sikh farmers as ragheads.
Personally, I’m very glad none of that’s socially acceptable any more. If for no other reason than it would make things in my office a little tense. In a team of 12, we have three Indians – two Hindus, one born in England, one born in Calcutta, and a Sikh born in Canada – a Canadian-born and an Iranian Muslim, a Quebec Italian, a Spaniard, two Japanese, one Chinese, one Scottish-Canadian and a Ukranian-Canadian.
I’m late, but can I play? Because in some places, it IS still socially acceptable.
My dad called them n***er toes, and we called it n***er knocking, and until I was about 12 (so well into the 80s) I had no idea these terms were considered offensive.
A friend of mine works in a steel mill in Indiana and, in describing how much he hates the people he works with, he told me this anecdote: White Supervisor #1 gets in an argument with Black Guy. Black Guy is on “friends” with White Supervisor #2. So #2 goes and gives #1 hell about it, saying “Don’t you know not to mess with another white man’s n***er?” In front of a large white audience of co-workers. All of whom found it funny. A good zinger. No protests. No offended sensibilities. Just appreciative laughter.
This was a few months ago.
I hate the world. The end.
I’m not surprised, not surprised at all. As I’ve mentioned here a few times now, it’s not unusual for a patient to make ethnic slurs in my presence. Hey — fellow white guy — we all gotta stick together, right? I hate that shit.
Then you probably loved Glenn Greenwald’s column today…