"These people are motivated by a vision of the world that is backward and barbaric," President George Bush said from the oval office last week when confronted with Sun photos of Saddam Hussein in his underpants.
Coincidentally, on the same day, I came across a scholarship application which referred to the music of black and hispanic housing project inhabitants — her neighbors — as barbaric.
When I was in high school, not even the most tolerant of white folks could get the word black out of their mouth without stumbling. Then, when I was in college it wasn’t politically correct to talk about folks in a certain way.
Later, with the proliferation of a hip hop culture, I now see the most suburban of white kids referring to themselves as ‘niggas.’
I have ridden this wave, this shift in tone, but now I feel it’s gone too far. President Bush has done more to make this country unsafe by blithely referring to those people, over there, different than himself as barbaric. As a person who has been called ‘you people,’ to my face and one of ‘those people,’ behind my back — this calling people out — in public is new to me.
I expect no more from George Bush. I was startled, however, when the scholarship committee on which I serve decided to give a scholarship to a woman who referred to ‘our’ music as barbaric. There is no immediate consequence for calling people names — terrorism — random violence is always a surprise.
