Soul Music

I was listening to Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit again. What I realized back then and what I realize now is that sometimes we always turn a blind eye towards racism. Sometimes I feel like saying hey, I hate racists but I can't just say that many people I know and like are racists and even sometimes racist towards me, but still they like me. Racism here in the East probably isn't as bad as racism in the West, it exists and often there are racist jokes here and there but if a member of our race married another indian or chinese or black or white, we just stop and shrug, okay. It doesn't end like it does in America between the whites and the blacks. I found an interesting website where you can actually see how horrible it is back in the early 1900s, its in www.withoutsanctuary.org . There's no such thing among the Malays as keeping other races in their place, although Tunku Abdul Rahman's policy might be different in the eyes of the West but it still remains we think of each other as equals. Intermarriage here is more common than there, often you find a Malay married to a Chinese, a Chinese married to an Indian, I myself am a product of such things and so are many people I know. But what causes the West to become as it is? When Kramer of Seinfeld responded to two young black boys that '50 years ago, you would have been hung upside down with a fork in your ass' [sic]. It wasn't so much was his words but when he continually responded,'well that's what happens when you interrupt the White Man' (emphasis author's own). And then there was Tom, Daisy's husband from the Great Gatsby when he said the White race is the top race and that soon the other races would swamp the Whites. What does that mean exactly? Just as I would answer sexist Muslims, or sexist Christians, Jews and the whole lot. I did not choose to be born this way, I did not choose to be brown, I did not choose to be female. I did not have this choice, how can I exist in this world and given a set of choices so limited on the basis of my sex and race? Believe me if I had a choice a) I would be gay and b) I would be agnostic but I have rejected these two choices out of my own reason and rationality and I can't. Is it as conspiracy theorists put it, ultra-white politicians controlling the government? Hahaha. Probably one or two deep down inside are ultra-white, but they are also extremely conservative and I'm imagining Bush kicking off his feet and remarking 'what a waste that Rice is black, she's so conservative,'. I don't get it, I've said it time and again, I brush off my skin and it won't turn white, I like some white people they've been my mentors, teachers and lecturers. I don't hate white people, I hate racist white people. Just as much as I hate racist people. Maybe Michael Moore is right, rather than avoid the question of colour maybe we should be more open about it, like for example I was at a bar, I noticed Jamaicans liked to wear colourful clothes then I said it to this Jamaican guy, he misunderstood it that I was referring to the colour of his skin, less sensitive okay? Its not like I'm fucking white, I have darker skin than some black people. Its politicized, all of this, read some political sociology :P