Color me Frustrated

Moxie Lady prides herself on not being an over emotional cry baby, though today I had a moment when I felt that warm sensation in my lower eyelids that signaled a water fest. Maybe it's because my period is coming soon. Maybe it's because I was listening to Depeche Mode (they move me). Maybe it's because I was looking at the AP headlines scroll across the jumbo screen downtown saying that the cleared Duke lacrosse players are considering whether or not to sue the DA that initially tried their case. Maybe it's because the next headline read that Don Imus was fired yesterday. I cry easily when I'm really frustrated. I have cried while trying to assemble a shelf. I cried when I couldn't solve my calculus problems. I cry when I run into a wall I don't think I can climb over.

I have been talking about this all week, but I don't feel I'm getting heard and my frustrations are mounting. The situation with Don Imus is particularly explosive, more than the Michael Richards, Mel Gibson, Ann Coulter, General Pace debacles that have occured in our nation's recent memory. It's explosive because it highlights: 1) the lack of real Black leaders, 2) our nation's inability to accept what privilege means, 3) the obscurity that Black women face and the assaults we receive on all fronts, and 4) that money is the ultimate and final motivator.

I have already discussed my utter disdain for Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, two people that Americans are fooled into thinking are worthy of our attention. Barack Obama, who is slowly beginning to annoy me with his premature arrogance, is also masquerading as our Great Black Hope. Funny how these people who are hell bent on getting justice from Don Imus are all men. Funny how none of them have actually TALKED to or about the women that these commments were made about. Funny how those same women expressed their disgust with the situation, did not want him fired and simply wanted to move on. Funny how no one listened to them.

This point about privilege and to some extent money...first, Harvey Fierstein wrote an excellent and "in yo face" commentary about how we pick and choose what we tolerate. This privilege that we all possses in varying degrees clouds our ability to be objective when it comes to discrimination. Sure calling someone a n---- h----- h- is wrong, but if they were gay....eh, maybe not so much. Or fat. Or retarded. Black people suffer from being way selective about what they take issue with. We seem to have some super limited recollection of a time when we were getting thrown up in trees and lit on fire while still alive just because we used the wrong water fountain.

This is why this situation is key - more than the others - because it casts an ugly light on the fact that we have not reached a point where ALL discrimination is confronted. Yet we fool ourselves into thinking we are a right and just society. "Look at us", says the liberal white person, "I am as outraged as you are about Don Imus!" But quiet as kept can be when Ann Coulter called John Edwards a fag. When Letterman and Leno make fat jokes every night. When Howard Stern makes a celebrated comeback to satellite radio. When Three Six Mafia wins an Oscar for Best Original Song whose lyrics include the trials and tribulations of a pimp.

And this privilege extends into bigger arenas when talk about people like the Duke lacrosse players. Now they're the victims. Such victims that they want to sue to gain vindication. But I can't help but get angry when I see their smug, shit-eating grin faces. It's the same look they have had since this whole thing started. I still think they're guilty of wrongdoing. Just like white people think OJ is guilty. And its because their wrongdoings (much like Simpson's) is largely centered around their attitudes, their demeanor and their general behavior before and during the proceedings. While evidence may indicate that the alleged victim was lying, it still shows that they hired strippers to be at their house for a party. There is still documentation of the derogatory comments they made about these women. These are not innocent students - these are college men who thought so little of women that they hired them as party favors. The team is notorious for such behavior. The town is notorious for poor race relations. These men have the power to call their rich parents who hired rich lawyers to defend their honor. What did these women have in their corner? A DA who believed in them. A town full of locals who were tired of being treated like shit by an elistist institution. It angers me that the woman was proven to be lying because we all know it makes it harder on rape victims everywhere else. It angers me more because the system in which this all played out was never fair and accesible to everyone to begin with. The Duke players will go on to lead the same privileged lives they always had. They will graduate and work at blue chip firms and F500 companies and many will continue to abuse women in general and appease their fetish for Black women without much thought to these incidents.

So money equals power and privilege. CBS is no champion of human rights. The advertisers are no champions of human rights. These are large corporations that look at only one thing and that is the bottom line. CBS dropped Imus because advertises were jumping ship. Advertisers dumped CBS because they feared losing consumers....money (At least the executive in charge of CBS is a woman). And under the guise of doing the right thing, everyone goes home happy and richer. Don Imus can even been seen leaving the studio after getting fired in a top of the line limo. He may have lost his job, but he still has more money than Obama, Sharpton and Jackson. And he will make more with books, appearances and eventually his own radio show that will be broadcasted somewhere else.

All this controversy and the hope for true dialogue, exchange and action are lost. Fingers were pointed, shots were made and after the dust is all settled, the money is in the same pockets and Black women are left with the marks of dirty footprints from a national scuffle. Decisions were made about rights and wrongs, but I'm just not sure we were right about who was wrong.