(NOTE: I Decided to frame my remarks as my own and not of the group out of respect to high road the group has decided to take. Whatever feedback I get from this, I wont mind. People yell at me in bellingham for all kinds of reasons. Sheltered people hating me here is as much a constant in my life as the weather. There are just times when my soul has to respond to things. If in the future, this harms or is disagreeable to any member of the group, I apologize in advance) Mr Teehan. I have listened to the podcasts and read the responses. I respect the high road that the group has taken and I realize that-as a moderate liberal with a bitter, slightly acidic take on the type of identity politics that is going on here-there isn’t much that I can say to represent them on this matter. I will say this, however. I am the son, grandson, and grand nephew of people that came from the deep south in the early of the twentieth century; a people who saw first hand the violence that you (and co) are juxtaposing with absurdist tortilla’s in a plastic bag. My grandfather and uncle left for the pacific northwest when a third of their high school class (25 people )was killed and thrown into a river over a “legal” issue that started when a black boy kicked a white man in 1938. As domestics, my grandmother and great aunts witnessed and were subjected to almost every horror known to human kind. Theirs was an agony that was unspeakable and unfathomable; one that doesn’t belong to me but is an animating force in my life in that there is nothing in the world that I take with a greater seriousness. For someone who is so breathtaking intolerant of the slightest bit of cultural appropriation, it is stunning how breathtakingly easy you ( and co) can appropriate the horror that my family went through. And it is stunning that you have decided to do it over a group that anyone with a basic IQ over 90 could look at and see as sweet young people with a taste for absurdism. You could have talked about the violence that people of color in this town have experienced and police inaction to it. You could have talked about the racial flare ups of the Occupy movement, and the number of white people in Bellingham who publicly supported Ron Paul, a racial separatist who( for his views) Louis Farrakhan called one of his favorite white men in history. You could have talked about the hidden problem of black men who are stopped and frisked for no apparent reason in this city. You could have even gone into detail about what community development does to try and build a broader coalition of people to support it. But no, you went after a group of young people who like to write absurdist messages over food. (And when does this stop? If absurdist tortillas are met with such rhetorical violence, then where is your endgame ? Is going after people caught reading/having opinions about the boom writers next? Should all the books about the great muralists of the twentieth century be swept from Bellingham bookstores because “white students” might have an opinion of them? Will a birth certificate/blood test be required to rent the movies of Luis Bunuel?) This kind of identity politic theater of cruelty can only play and be taken this seriously in such an ecosystem as Bellingham, a small, frail, sheltered hamlet in which entitled progressives can pat themselves on the back while listening to a radio, a “ cultural group” can intimidate people and get attention for themselves, and never the twain shall meet or co-exist with each other. However, there are people in this town who are trying to co-exist with each other. People who are trying to face and overcome discrimination in Bellingham that is very real. People who are trying to be the best allies that they can in trying to stop this discrimination. People who take things like critical race theory, the future, and how humans will treat each other very seriously. By making a group of hamsters who like to write absurdist messages over food the face of the race problem in Bellingham, you have done nothing but damage to those people, and I’m going to have a hard time forgiving you ( and co) for it. Robert Lashley ( PS: If a “greens bomber” put sweet absurdist messages over strands of collards taped in plastic, I would have thought it to be one of the cutest things in the city.)
Posted on: Sun, 18 May 2014 14:34:43 +0000
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