Mental Slavery

  • What an empty seat told me

    I’m on a public transit bus in Ottawa that’s full to and beyond capacity. People are standing, the bus driver is making announcements that people should move further back. Oddly enough there are two vacant seats that the standing crowd must not see.

    I ask myself, ‘is it a coincidence that these two seats are next to black men?’ I happen to be one of those black men.

    Of course I could be reading too much into this, and the crowd of standing white people around me and the empty seat next to the other black man, maybe they just want to stretch their legs. Thing is, I bet if I were to ask them if they had even the slightest tinge of racism in them, I bet they would say ‘no, of course not.’

    Am I the racist for seeing it? Feeling it?

    The empty seat next to me says otherwise.

  • You have the Power

    Suzuki

    Been noticing these ads recently. David Suzuki, one of the greatest Canadians, levitating fluorescent light bulbs. Intoning the sage words: “You have the Power”! Indeed. In the TV ad he appears on “Bob’s” doorstep just stopping by to change his porch light.

    Mr. Miyagi

    I can’t help it, but I don’t see David Suzuki in these ads, I see Mr. Miyagi.

    (This isn’t, at least I believe, because I see all older asian people as looking alike either)

    Remember Mr. Miyagi? The guy from the Karate Kid? Mr. “Wax on, Wax off, Daniel San”? Suzuki has become the wise and enlightened side kick just like Mr. Miyagi. It’s the famous minority as sidekick role, we get to help the white folk get smarter and then they go on to make the really BIG difference in the world. Try to picture Al Gore, and his inconvenient truth, levitating that light bulb… can’t do it? Yeah. Al’s going to make real change…

    This leads me to think of Morgan Freeman, who has gotten quite the kick out of playing GOD in the recent “Almighty” series of comedies. While it’s nice to see a black man as God, somehow I don’t really see the role as all that different from his wise black sidekick role that he has perfected in movies like “The Shawshank Redemption”, “Million Dollar Baby” etc. In Western society, God is pretty much that wise sidekick, doling out the needed advice. He stays in his little box, gets out of the way, and lets the white man shine.

    Bruce Almighty
    Morgan Freeman / God the sidekick

    Hence I don’t see this black Hollywood God as anything to really cheer about. Same ole. Same ole. I don’t know if this line of thought portends worse news for those who believe in God, or for minorities and the fight for equality… Hmm… Maybe it just means that David Suzuki will play God in the next “Almighty” picture…

  • The Debt

    The DebtRead a cool book recently called “The Debt: What America owes to Blacks” by Randall Robinson.

    I had come to an intuitive understanding over the years about white privilege, but had difficulty articulating what it was that I really meant. I know that in the Bahamas, when my parents were growing up there were hotels that they could not go into because they were black.

    But generally you tend to buy into the notion that enough time has passed since then and gee whiz lookie! everything is alright now. This book helps to set it straight. You can’t deprive people for four hundred years and expect them to catch up in fifty, with no help, and more than a little help from the systems in place to keep them down. Very good and compelling reading that I recommend to you.

  • Hello world!

    Welcome to the new Mental Slavery dot com. This is only the beginning. Thing is, that it’s two in the morning and I don’t have the energy to fix it up more than this. But after 6 years of fiddling. I think its about time that I actually got this blog going. What do you think?

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