Letters to the Editor
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Garry Owen, the cut and runner
After calling people of the South hillbillies, crackers, and making jokes about incest, he leaves for the safter territory of Tom Tomorrow.
He apparently thinks that there were no good people left in the South after he fled. Talk about prejudice. It is okay to fling it but not to catch it.
You didn't get the cartoon Garry. The cartoon is about how people don't want to give up the advantages of being white. That makes almost every white person in the US a racist.
I am mostly white. In fact, despite some interesting ancestry, when I go to a job interview, I am happy for every advantage I can get -- including the fact that no one knows about the race-mixing in my family tree.
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angry and prejudiced too?
Garry, you seem to be a very angry man. At least your posts suggest so. I don't mean angry in a righteously indignant, facing up to injustice way. Though you sort of seem like that too. But why do you spew the bile? Why the blanket hatred for the south and for poor white people? Do you truly not see that you're engaging in the same type of generalizations (and offensive words) you so happily report do not obtain in your neighborhood? I prefer the other penguin, too, by a wide margin, but jeez louise!
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I chuckled, and found this a good strip
There is a good punchline in there, of the deeper sort. Almost all groups try to claim exclusivity if you want to be able to use their jargon, turn a slur into a term of inclusion. How can you claim to be one of the Opressed, the thinking goes, and wear the slur as a badge of honour when you can belong to the other group as well?
It's the old "you're either with us or against us" mentality, and Opus, being the silly antihero that he is, chooses to remain un-hip. Opus is the kind-hearted but timid person in us, not the wise one. His actions are poignant because we all do the same, taking the path of least resistance.
The humour comes from showing the situation we find ourselves in, wanting recognition, but not wanting to give up other parts of our identity just so we can belong, the feeling like that to belong we have to apply for a license from some dusty, hidebound bureaucrat.
So yeah, I liked it.
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Then I Suppose, Garry, That You Despise Chris Rock
Who infamously (in my opinion, anyway) said on an early HBO special: "I love black people, but I hate niggers." Making the exact same "point" as your aborted friends. Well...?
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You CAN be both!
*I* get it! I am a mixed race (if you believe in the word, "race") person: My heritage is white, Hispanic (Central and South American) and Black. How can one be a human being without being related to all other humans?
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The Joke - If you missed it
Was that you can't get up in arms about how person X gets to do this and say that with impunity while I can't unless you are willing to aknowledge all of the things you get way with for being person Z.
As such, a black person is granted the right to speak first hand of the opression of her people, and us the N word as a social identifier within her group.
By contrast a white person gets to not be black.
If you want the right to say and do like those people do you might want to ask what they had to go through to get this special dispensation, and are you willing to go through the same struggles (and not your grand parents, but you) to enjoy the same privledge.
As a white guy, you're ancestor might have been opressed because of his birth nation, religion, or ideology. But now, you're not. African Americans born today may not deal with slavery and systemized racism, but widespread personal racism is still something they must endure without recourse.
If you want to be a proud Nigger, you must forgoe all the things that being a Cracker grants you.
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Right on Jaz Paz :-)
And IMNSHO that is what the strip is mainly about. All this race-stuff presupposes that it is a binary choice. white or not, black or not, hispanic or not. Just like those moral licences: you can only have one.
But reality is analog, With club med, office parties and niggas in the woodpile we are all little bit of everything. And hardly any of us know our exact proportions. Opus have the edge there, going by surface area.
Even today there are lots of people who think 'mixed marriages' are bad. But can you even define that term without going binary ?
regards JakobA
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Sounds like you missed out, Garry with 2 r's.
A morally relaxed woman like that would probably have been up for some swinging. You could have taken her upstairs for a ride while the dopey husband was sitting watching the game. Instead, you got all huffy puffy and left. You gotta see these opportunities when they arise, because they don't come along very often! Tsk tsk.
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I totally get it.
ROFLMAO! Howwwwwl! Absolutely hilarious!
From reading the other letters, I realize that it must just be a multi-racial thing.