More Polyglot Bullshit

This was my response to a Rumpus article I read just about a year ago.  Every other person that commented on the essay, which was about how Asians have their own special kind of racism that nobody else can understand, ranted about their personal experiences with discrimination. You know what? I am having a lot of trouble with my teeth and it really bothers me because I think having unattractive teeth speaks poorly of that person.

 The truth is that everyone one of us thinks we are so fucking special for one reason or another. Examine your conscience. Be the best human you can be. It doesn't matter what people expect of you and it doesn't matter what color your skin is. How could it unless you are on one of those Ethnic bandwagons? Just do your best.

December 17th, 2013 at 4:43 pm
I cannot finish reading this. My forehead is hot and my heart is pounding. Everyone EVERYONE has something to bitch about. This guy whose wife is fooling around on him says she can’t read my fiction and she hates my daughter because she is 5’10″ and hates short people. I am a red head. 2 to 4% of the world population. I will be 70 in the Spring. SEVENTY. This whole ginger thing is maybe 2 to 5 years old. When I was a small child, Ginger (Rogers?) was a cute nickname for a redhead or a person named Virginia. I so desperately wanted it to be my nickname. It wasn’t. “Redhead, redhead, fire in the woodshed.” In my early teens a little song I won’t repeat referring to having menstrual fluid on my head. And I was freckled and skinny. WHY did it NEVER hurt me? I knew I was smarter than my big brother and that was the win for me. No other redheads in the family that I ever saw. Lots of dead ones.

At my ten year reunion from high school I received the ultimate left-handed compliment. “I wish I knew you were going to turn out like this.”

Why can’t you just be you? Why do you have to take on a burden of a “yellow” race? I have never seen a yellow person or a red person or a black person. At a family gathering, introducing the very suntanned son of my Irish nephew and his Italian wife, I said, “He’s one of those little brown people.” He was. Just like your face IS flat. I married a Spaniard. My brother teased him about living in a cave with a goat and a wine bota, but got all freaked when I said his wife was the first Italian we let into the family.

Calm the fuck down. I’m trying to.