A Very Brief Guide to What is Not OK

Editor’s preemptive note: this is not about political correctness. Violating these guidelines does not make you “insensitive,” “outrageous,” or “in my face.” It means that you’re acting like a bigoted fuck; if you aren’t actually a bigoted fuck, take this knowledge as a chance to reflect on what you actually want to accomplish, and whether or not you can do it without spitting in the face of an entire class of historically subjugated people.

This rant is brought to you by the letter “w,” as in “waffles.” The very first thing I would like to talk to you about as being Not OK are Obama Waffles. That’s right, they’re real: here’s an interview with their purveyors, and for an extra bonus link, here’s a hilarious response from This Week in Blackness (NSFW: language).

Briefly, allow me to get two things about Obama Waffles off my chest that are not relevant to my main point. First, they spread the pernicious disinformation that Obama is a secret Muslim, which is actually having an impact on otherwise undecided centrist voters, despite being entirely unfounded and linked to nothing more substantial than tenuous xenophobia. Second, the waffling theme would clearly be more appropriate to Obama’s opponent, as most of Obama’s position changes have been slight, nuanced, and moves toward the center, whereas McCain has gone so far (for only one example) as to say that he now opposes an immigration bill he once authored.

With that out of the way: Obama Waffles are Not OK. The caricature of Obama on the box is Not OK, not because it lampoons a public figure, but because it does so by making him look more like Dandy Jim from Caroline than the distinguished Senator from Illinois. It might be true that Barack Obama has a big mouth, perhaps figuratively as well as literally, but he does not have fat, floppy, glossy lips like Aunt Jemima. In fact, it was Waffle box creator Bob DeMoss’ assertion that to him this was OK, since to him “Aunt Jemima means quality,” that set off this rant.

Aunt Jemima is Not OK. Aunt Jemima was never OK, and in fact was originally a minstrel show character herself. If I have to explain to you why minstrel shows aren’t OK, then you don’t get to talk until you’ve been shipped halfway around the world in a slow boat, in the dark, in chains, without food, forced to work without pay or anything resembling freedom, then when your great-grandkids are suddenly freed and have to spend every day of their lives knowing that they’d probably get beaten to death for complaining about how your captors’ great-grandkids ceaselessly mock them for being pathetic mongrels, then your great-grandkids get to talk. Any questions? Shut up.

Uncle Ben’s Rice is not OK.

Referring to black people as monkeys or teaching your children that they have tails is Not OK, and yes, this shit still happens.  You might not have actually studied evolution, so let me spell it out for you: black Americans have had just as many generations to evolve from the common ancestor we all have with monkeys as white Americans have had.

The Cleveland Indians and the Washington Redskins are really, really, really Not OK. You can convince me that there are more important things to be worried about, but why are you defending this? How is the branding of a sports team more important than the remaining shreds of dignity of the few remaining indigenous people of this country, the demographic group that statistically has it the worst in almost every way of any class of Americans?

Referring to any class of people as “not even human,” no matter how far away they live, is not OK.

In fiction and the media, depicting women exclusively as sex objects or mothers is not OK.

In fiction and the media, depicting men exclusively as violent, testosterone-fueled jerks is not OK.

In fiction and the media, depicting all homosexual men as simpering, ineffectual sex addicts and all homosexual women as in fact bisexual women who exist only to turn on heterosexual men is not OK.

Inferring that men who don’t casually make inappropriate remarks about the fuckability of passing women must be gay is not OK, whether or not “there’s anything wrong with that.” Constantly making such remarks in the company of anyone you haven’t established wants to hear you make them, by the way, is not OK.  Doesn’t matter if everyone around is a straight man.  Trust me on this one.

There are a lot of things I could talk about that are not OK, of varying levels of nuance, and I invite you to talk about any important examples I might have missed in the comments. Before I bring this rant to a close, however, I would like to be very clear about something that is, basically, OK.

Straight white men are fair game. Deal with it. As a class, we’ve[1] had the power for so long it’s not even worth thinking about, and we’ve done so many unspeakably horrible things with that power to everyone else that… just deal with it. I’m not saying that individual crimes against/hatred of/attacks on any one given person for being male and white are OK, but if people want to poke fun at white men in a way that crosses a line into tastelessness, we can deal[2]. It’s far less than a fair price to pay for that legacy, and for to this day being the cultural and linguistic default, among many other things.

Let me put it to you this way: in a classroom, the teacher has the power. Yes, she’s there to work for her students, but she controls grades, curriculum, etc. If a student leaves a caricature of the teacher on the board, that’s annoying, and depending on how far it goes maybe worthy of a reasonable punishment, but it’s basically OK. If a teacher draws an insulting caricature of a student on the board, however, that teacher is almost certainly deserving of severe disciplinary action, if not firing. It’s an abuse of her power over an unprivileged class, and generally would not be tolerated.

Some of you might be thinking, “but that’s not equality!” You’re right, but nothing remotely like equality exists in our society on a scale much larger than that one black woman or latino guy you’re thinking of within the context from which you know each other, and this isn’t about her or him or you specifically, so stop it. To do anything more than pay lip-service to the idea of equality, those of us on the left-hand side of the greater-than symbol have to make concessions, period. Just deal with it.

Finally, here’s the real point: if you’ve got something important, significant, or controversial to say, don’t be a bigoted fuck about it. Don’t hide something of possible significance behind enormous public displays of your own asshole. If, on the other hand, you have nothing all that important to talk about but you still manage to come across as a bigoted fuck, please, please, do the grown-ups a favor: go home, shut up, and let us talk things over in peace.

1. Some would say my Jewish heritage makes me non-White, but in more contexts than not I find the distinction irrelevant, as I identify as an American and an atheist more readily than a Jew.

2. Some readers of the original version of this essay came away thinking that I was suggesting it was OK to attack people for being white or male, so allow me to hammer home that individual crimes against/hatred of/attacks on any one given person are Not OK, whether or not it is ostensibly done for that person’s white maleness. What I’m trying to get at here is the incessant disingenuous whining that, in fact, it’s hardest to be a white man these days, because you “don’t get any special breaks” and “you’re everyone’s target.” What I encourage is not for women or people of color to be intolerant of those who happen to be white and/or male, but for white men to try to accept that sometimes they might not be, whether or not they’re in the right, and this is unfortunate but it does not put you at the shit end of institutionalized, historically entrenched power structures. What I really want to say, over and over again if I have to because I think a lot of people refuse to hear it, is that we can’t put everyone on equal footing just by pretending that they already are.

Bush cartoon by Jason Schleifer on Flickr; all other images public domain or protected here under Fair Use provisions.