I need to say some words about bumper stickers, America’s favorite method of political salon: on the ass of a car where no one can have an actual dialogue, you just shove your ass/bumper/views in their face and drive off, tra-la-la-la-la.
I still have my Nadar/LaDuke bumper sticker on my car.
I am frequently amused by the fish wars, like the great crusades of the middle ages but with stick on fish on car asses. First came the standard Jesus fish, then the Jesus fish with symbols, then the 90’s came and brought us something to balance out the gloom of grunge—the Darwin fish with it’s tiny legs and “Darwin” inside. So clever, so funny and so inflammatory to the religious right, Darwin fish caused angry honking, car defacement as many a poor Darwin fish was pulled off of cars leaving chipped paint in the name of God. Then came my favorite fish of all, the religious retaliation fish, a huge fish that sometimes says “Truth” or “Jesus” eating a tiny Darwin fish. Why is it my favorite, you might be wondering? Because the retaliation fish is actually supporting Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory by showing the big fish eating the small fish as well as the adaptation of zealots in bumper sticker expressionism.
Always makes me laugh.
Recently I saw a bumper sticker that did not make me laugh.
It actually caused a knot in my stomach.
Now I am not bumper sensitive, I have seen the various anti-abortion stickers, with or without sad fetus, with or without a promise of hellfire blah-blahde-blah. I can certainly “Visualize whirled peas” and keep driving.
But this new sticker cannot be washed away by clever words about peas.
I feel I must bring this sticker to the attention of people.
This sticker has a picture of President Barack Obama and next to his image it says
“Re-Nig 2012”
Yes.
It really does.
They are creeping into town, on the highway, the backroads of our country like the covert racism stuffed away since the 60’s hidden with polite smiles and PC terms that has bubbled to the surface with the election of an articulate, intelligent man who happens to be half black and become overt racism.
Like a boil, it is ready to pop.
Red, swollen and angry.
Like the GOP.
Believe it or not, a person who owned one of these repugnant stickers actually tried to tell me it wasn’t racist.
Yes.
Really, he did.
So I asked him “If this sticker is not racist, then what does it mean?”
“Well, we want to take back the country,” He says “it’s not racist, it’s a joke.”
“How is this a joke?” Says I.
“Well, see it’s like re-negotiate” says he.
“So why is it spelled with an I instead of an E for re-nEgotiate?” I inquire.
“Well, it’s a joke, see.” He repeats lamely.
“Well, to most folks it LOOKS like you are calling the president a racial slur that starts with NIG, can you see how folks could see that?” I say
“Well, people need to learn to take a joke” he says indignantly and walks away.
Just because you call something a joke does not make it funny. I know a lot of people, myself included who don’t think that is a joke in any way in fact some of those people might like to kick mister bumper sticker in the nutsack and ask him if he thinks that is a joke.
The problem with an area like the one I have grown up in is most folks here do not know anyone who is black. They only see black people on TV and since a large part of what the media portrays is stereotypical that is in turn what a lot of people perceive as actual fact.
When a person is deemed “other” it is easier to dehumanize, to make that person or group into a “them” and then it is easier to treat “them” in ways that person would never treat someone they knew or tolerate receiving from someone else. When you know a person and look them in the eye, they are real and you can see how your actions affect that person by what is reflected back in those eyes.
People who do not have words used as weapons or tokens of shame do not understand how deep the visceral ripple goes for people who have, plain and simple.
When I was in the 4th grade I was visiting my family’s farm for weekend visitation with my dad and a neighbor girl and I would always play together when I was there, there was no one else our age to play with and we always had a good time, I knew her family and she mine, we had slumber parties, built club houses, rode motorcycles and made mud pies.
It was always a blast.
Until this day when I was in the 4th grade, you see my friend from across the way brought a friend to play a girl from town who she knew from school, they almost looked like sisters with their blonde hair and green eyes and smiling faces. The more the merrier, we strode off to the large irrigation canal behind the house and we decided to go in, it was fall and the water was long gone, we had already had our annual mud fight down there and now it was bone-dry with a sprinkling of shells from the little bivalves that seem to love irrigation ditches here. We played with shells, dug for clay, looked at nests and it was good clean all American fun on the farm.
We played for hours and then decided to get out of the canal and my friend went first and helped the girl from town out and I reached up my hand and she pulled hers away and let go, I fell back and looked up at them, a little dazed and they looked down on me, smiling like little twins.
They smiled as they spat on me.
They laughed as they threw dirt clods at me and called me “Jap”.
It went on for some time, and I could tell it was my friend’s idea and that the girl from town was the follower, I looked at girl from town and asked her to help me, tears streaming down my face as I pleaded for them to let me out and to stop and she looked down at the ground and stopped smiling.
So did my neighbor and she prodded her friend “Come on, it’s just a joke, it’s FUNNY” they looked down at me and my old friend spat at me one last time and led her shamefaced-twin towards her house to play some more.
I stood there shaking with rage and climbed up and went in the house, alone.
To this day when I think of humiliation, powerlessness and shame, I remember this fall day.
Some people in this country have kept the cruelty of childhood and think things like
“RE-NIG 2012” are funny.
I have no answer to this situation other than to say out loud when I see it that it is wrong, it is cruel and I do not think it is in any way a joke.
Once when I was traveling in the deep south, I saw a pair of trousered bare feet dangling out of the back of a car’s trunk on the highway, as we got closer we felt sick as we saw the feet, though plastic were a dark brown and we knew they were a response to the news of the month about an African-American man who had been dragged to death in Texas. We pulled alongside the car and flipped them the bird and shouted.
I know it didn’t change their minds but it felt necessary to voice that it was not funny it was not right and it was in fact disgusting.
I know this post will not change the mind of the man with the bumper sticker but I also know I must voice that this too was not a joke.
It was not right.
It was not nor will it ever be anything but disgusting.
I see the neighbor who spat on me in town and I wonder if she remembers that day at all as a flock of birds fly overhead and the big sky clouds roll by in the never ending show that only appears here and I wonder if anything will truly ever change.
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