Kevin Sorbo's rant about Ferguson and... American history in general (I can't say "African American" anymore, according to Sorbo) doesn't really deserve a response.
But... just a word or two, now that my initial laughter has subsided and I'm feeling a little bit insulted. Let me break it down. Here's what he said:
"Ferguson riots have very little to do with the shooting of the young man. It is an excuse to be the losers these animals truly are. It is a tipping point to frustration built up over years of not trying, but blaming everyone else, The Man, for their failures. It's always someone else's fault when you give up. Hopefully this is a reminder to the African Americans ( I always thought we just Americans. Oh, well.) that their President the voted in has only made things worse for them, not better."
Um...yeah. Not much to work with there. The Man wasn't a big topic of discussion in my life. My father and mother never let me blame anybody else for whatever happened to me.
Oh, we'd been forced to drink out of "colored only" fountains and cussed at by random white people who didn't want us walking on the same street with them, stuff like that. And my mother's uncle was beaten senseless by the Klan once, too because he preferred to work his own land instead of working for The Man. He was paralyzed on one side of his body for the rest of his life after that beating, but he kept on working that land. I could go on, but...old news, Sorbo might say.
And I was raised to feel pity for the people who persecuted us. And to just keep right on taking care of business. My own business. The Man didn't have to do much for us at all. And that was how we liked it.
Though I am afraid of men like Sorbo who are so mad at us that they can't think straight when they see us. Especially when those men have big old guns and military gear and get itchy fingers whenever there are more than a couple of us on the streets at once.
Wait, make that one of us, if he's male. That's a real problem we have. The Man tends to see our men as threats before they even do anything. So we have to explain that to our little men, so that they don't end up dead someday for just maybe asking a question before they assume the position.
We teach them that if The Man says "Jump," we shouldn't say anything. We probably shouldn't actually jump, either. They might think we're resisting and shoot us for doing what they told us to do in the first place.
But I mean, they shoot animals, don't they? Well... there you go.
One actual quibble, though, Mr. Sorbo. I think a whole lot of other people besides black people voted for Obama. They had to. We couldn't elect a president by ourselves.
There aren't as many of us as you seem to think. And a whole lot of us can't vote anymore because we've been purged from the rolls in a lot of states. Some with reason, a lot before there was enough fact checking to make sure.
Obama hasn't done as well as many of us would like, that's true. That may be because it has been open season on that particular black male ever since he took office. So when I think about how hard it has been for him to do his job at all...I cut the brother some slack.
But...okay. Nothing I can say will really matter to those who agree with Sorbo. But I have to admit I was a wee bit put out by that statement, once the sniggling subsided. Talk about "the tipping point to frustration," wow. That Sorbo must be one seriously frustrated fella.
If I should ever see him coming my way, I'll be sure to cross the street. Like a good American.
Photo credit: Library of Congress