Politically incorrect

For some reason, people seem to think being politically incorrect makes you a racist/bigot or that people who are politically correct can’t be.  I have stuck out all along that Daryl Dixon is not a racist.  He is politically incorrect and blunt too, which seems to be taken as proof that he is a racist.

That’s because people are judging him by his appearance, his family and his speech, not his actions.  He has (and will most likely continue to) go out of his way risking his own ass for every member of the group; white, black, female, old, young.  If people would judge him by his actions they would understand that his is not racist.  He is not a bigot in anyway.

If you want to really know someone’s character watch their actions, don’t listen to their words or look at their appearance.  I have known people so politically correct it makes my ass hurt.  They go to great pains not to say anything that anyone would find offensive, in public; but let them get behind closed doors and the closet bigot comes out.  They may talk a good game but when it came down to it, they were bonafide bigots.

On the other hand you would think someone who flies a rebel flag from there pickup truck is definitely a racist wouldn’t you?  I know someone who does and yes he is politically incorrect in his speech.  This same person who everyone would call a racist will give the shirt off his back to anyone in need regardless of their race; white, black or pink with purple polka dots.

Maybe I’m better at understanding what a racist is because I was exposed to real racism growing up in the south.   I didn’t grow up with this Politically correct garbage that does nothing more than sweep real racism under the rug because people base evaluations on how someone appears or what they say.  Actions mean nothing in the world of political correctness.  If they did people who are  not racist in their actions would be accused of being racist.

You decide who is really the racist

The person who may use ‘colorful’ speech but will help anyone in any way they can,

or

The person who careful to speak and dress ‘correctly’, but when it comes to ‘those people’ won’t lift a finger to help in any way because it ‘those people’.

Who is T-Dog and why should we care about him when the writers don’t?

One Walking Dead character that has been hanging around since day one, but we really don’t know anything about is Theodore ‘T-Dog’ Douglas.  IMDB doesn’t tell us much.

Theodore Douglas, more commonly known as T-Dog, is a Atlanta survivor first encountered by Rick early in the series.. He is a man willing to fight for his allies and has a kind heart as seen trying to rescue Merle Dixon, twice but failed to do so.

Poor T-Dog is pretty much just the token black guy at this point, he’s seemed to have no purpose so far except to add a little color to the show  (yes that was an intentional pun), and allow Daryl to prove he isn’t really a racist by saving him.  But there are a few things we have found out.

We know he has some honor.  When he drops the handcuff key on the roof  stranding Merle, he takes the time to do what he can to keep Merle safe from the walkers by chaining and padlocking the door.   Let’s not forget the first impression we get of Daryl from the discussion around the campfire, the news of Merle would be better coming from a white guy.  And yet when Daryl returns to camp, T-Dog mans up and admits his fault in dropping the key.

T-Dog also steps up to make it right by going back to save Merle.  But honor aside, T-Dog has some demons to deal with.

He has his own racist streak, “I don’t see anyone else stepping up to save your brother’s cracker ass.”  And after uttering his racist statement he has the nerve to make matters worse by saying Daryl doesn’t speak his language.  Kind of makes you wonder if maybe T-Dog and the Dixon brothers hadn’t already had some problems prior to the roof incident.

We get a glimpse of that racist streak again on the highway when the group is out looking for Sophia.  T-Dog pretty much says that Rick, Shane and Daryl aren’t going to lift a finger for him because he is black.   Dale tells him that Rick and Shane have done alright by him and that Daryl has saved his life more than once (Daryl will save him again by giving T-Dog Merle’s atibiotics).

So it’s clear that there has been a lot more interaction between Daryl and T-Dog than we know about.  We have seen a lot of ‘changes’ in Daryl over season 2, Daryl has grown beyond being the token redneck while T-Dog is still pretty much the token black guy.  It would have been awesome to see some character development with T-Dog and I thing that the writers missed a big one here.  Yes Daryl needed to grow but I think they wasted a lot of time focusing on the Daryl/Carol interactions.  Carol is a stagnant character that has not grown one iota during the past season.

I would much rather have seen more interaction between Daryl and T-Dog since they really do have a lot more in common than Daryl and Carol.  This abuse survivor angle just does not wash because Daryl does not choose to be a victim of his abuse, Carol does.  Daryl and T-dog however were both dealing with the issues of tokenism and race.  The issues were already there waiting to be explored.  Carol however is a non issue, her determination to be a victim should have gotten her killed or ostracized long before now.

Daryl and T-Dog are both determined to survive and would have to deal with their issues to do so.  It seems that they magically have, which is unrealistic in my view.  Seeing Daryl and T-Dog working through their issues would have been much more interesting than watching Carol prove just how good she is at playing the victim, not to mention provide T-Dog (another character created for the TV series) with some much needed character development.

Another dose of ‘Big Pharma’ BS

Once again pharmaceutical companies are priming us to swallow a bunch of BS aimed at making us believe a pill will cure all ills.  This time it’s a study that seems to indicate that a heart drug can help fight racism.

So we now are to accept the possibility that an ingrained, learned pattern of behavior is not our fault but something that we have no control over.  Really?  Most of the racists I have met in my life either were taught to be racist or they need to feel superior to someone to compensate for their own insecurities.

For centuries, Europeans saw everyone that was not of European descent as ‘savages’.  Whenever they went to another land they looked down on the native populations and did their level best to destroy the local cultures (and in many cases they succeeded).  While some believed that they were superior to the natives, for others it was a long accepted ‘fact’ that was passed down from generation to generation.  They were taught to believe this.

Even today we have this same warped attitude being passed on from parent to child; but rather than face it, we justify it.  The most recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are a good example.  We are told that ‘terrorists’ come from these countries and that the terrorists are out to get us and we fully support a war that causes the deaths of innocent civilians and our own young people in uniform.

We have swallowed the Muslims (Middle Easterners) are our enemy idea so completely that we will ignore terrorists that are grown right here.  We will label the terroristic acts of an American  as everything except an act of terror.  They were born in America, they can’t be a terrorist, only people born ‘over there’ can be terrorists.

We ignore the fact that many Middle Easterners are Christian.  They can’t be Christians because they weren’t born in the west, only Muslims come from over there.  And we equate all Muslims with Jihadists.  That’s like saying every Christian in the US is a member of Westboro Baptist Church which honestly offends everyone except the members of Westboro.

These beliefs are totally false based on stereotypes and unproven bias, but they allow us to justify believing these things.  And now we have the possibility of not only being racist but blaming it on something out of our control.  It’s a chemical thing.  I can take this pill and it will ‘treat’ my racist attitude.  How about you skip the treatment and go directly to the cure-education.

Try getting to know someone of another race.  I happen to know a lot of rednecks from living in the Florida panhandle for a good number of years and guess what I learned from getting to know them?  They aren’t all out running around wearing bed sheets and burning crosses on people’s lawns.  They don’t all automatically hate others for the difference in skin color. 

Racism comes from a lack of knowledge, we automatically fear what we don’t understand or what is different.  We tend to think that what we are familiar with is perfection and anything else is dangerous or beneath us.  I certainly hope people don’t but into this latest Big Pharma garbage.  It’s a heart drug, yes let it be used to treat physical heart conditions instead of turning it into something else.

Racist! Maybe not

Racism is still an issue today.  Yes it is alive and well even if it is undercover most of the time.  I’m on a forum where we discuss The Walking Dead and one of the things we were talking about was the fact that the most popular character on the show is a racist.  Or at least appears to be a racist.

A racist that puts his own life at risk to save the life of a Black man.  A Racist that respects the courage of an Asian man.  I had to bring up the fact that maybe not everyone we think is a racist is actually a racist.

I lived in the Northwest Florida Panhandle for some 20 years and believe you me I met rednecks and racists, or at least people you would label a racist at first meeting.  Once you got beyond that initial assumption (Yes, I did intend to bold that part), you might just find that they were also operating on assumptions.  Funny but when you get right down to it, Racism is completely based on assumptions.

We look at someone and decide we know everything about them and who they are from that initial impression, we don’t take the time to get to know them.  We assume that we know.  I’m not big on assumptions.

What is truly telling is that some of the biggest ‘racists’ I met were not racists at all.  They were cautious.  They didn’t automatically hate me for being black, they wanted to know my character.  They wanted to know if I carried myself like a hood-rat or if I was an intelligent woman.  Yes they knew all about the stereotypes and they were watching to see if I was a stereotype.  Once they saw my character, friendship was the next step.

Odd but we do the same thing with everyone we meet, we evaluate people before we grant the title of friend to them.  We take the time to get to know them.  We look at their actions and make a judgement from there.  If we would truly take the time to make that step instead of accepting stereotypes as truth, there would be a lot less racism in the world.

Sometimes we take that step willingly, and other times we take it because we are forced to.  Either way we learn something about others and about ourselves.