March 13, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Blaming Alcohol for your Bigotry

I didn’t have a sip of alcohol until I was way into my 20s. Even today, I’m not sure I’ve ever been “drunk” (although with legal alcohol levels so low for drunk drivers, I may have been). I’ve certainly never had a hangover. Mostly, when I drink, I fall asleep.

One of the reasons I didn’t drink when I was younger was because I saw people drunk and I was not impressed. They’d say things they’d later regret, they’d get into arguments, they’d become difficult, and then they’d throw up on the front lawn. I couldn’t see what was appealing about any of that. (Mind you, I was also a nerd who didn’t swear, either, so I guess that makes sense.)*

From what I can see, alcohol doesn’t turn you into Mr. Hyde, with a completely new personality. Alcohol releases your inhibitions, and the part of your brain that says “Hey, maybe this isn’t a good idea” goes to sleep while you decide that skateboarding down the stairs nude would be a wonderful experience.

I bring this up because I’m tired of people saying terrible things and then blaming the alcohol. The latest involves those frat boys who were caught singing a racist song on the bus. Yeah, they’re sorry now — sorry they got caught doing it. And of course, they’re blaming the alcohol. If it hadn’t have been for the alcohol, they never would have done that!

Yeah, they just would have thought it, instead.

I am absolutely positive that if you got me drunk, you would never in a million years hear me say something racist. Oh, I’m sure I’d say other stupid things, because that’s what alcohol does, but I won’t all-of-a-sudden turn into someone I’m not. You won’t hear me insulting gays and minorities and women, but you will probably hear me insult conservatives, bigots, and religious leaders because hey, I do that now sober. I’ll just be louder and more obnoxious about it.

I mean, I’ve seen my friends get really drunk and curse and scream at racists, because that’s who they are. The alcohol allows them to say things they might have never said otherwise.

So to those kids on the bus: We should all thank the alcohol for allowing us to see you as you really are, you racist fratholes.

*Here’s where people say “What do you mean “was a nerd”?

December 30, 2014 by Michael A. Ventrella

There are exceptions

I love this quote, and I couldn’t have said it better myself.

A friend criticized the quote, pointing out that it should have mentioned exceptions: Some protesters were indeed anti-police, for instance.

Ironically, that was the point of the original quote, wasn’t it? You shouldn’t take the exceptions (racist police) to imply that all police are bad any more than you should take the exception (violent protesters) to imply that all protesters are bad.

If we have to add “there are always exceptions” to everything we say our conversations will be unwieldy and ultimately not very informative. (Of course, not every conversation. There are always exceptions.)

See?

December 5, 2014 by Michael A. Ventrella

It Happens All the Time

My office manager’s husband was once more pulled over and stopped without reason. “Uh, OK, I’m going to give you a ticket for tinted windows. Mind if I search your car while I’m at it?” I give him credit for remaining calm in these situations.

This is normal. This happens all the time. I see it every day in my job, representing people who are pulled over for Driving While Black.

This particular man is a dark-skinned latino who owns and manages properties in New York city. He has no criminal record, and none of these stop and searches has ever produced anything illegal. The police never have any probable cause to search his vehicle, but he agrees to do it anyway because if he said no, they’d hold him and search it anyway (especially since the Courts have now held that they no longer have to get a warrant to do so).

And this is “normal” for him.

I get plenty of cases where the police search and find some marijuana or something. I don’t get the ones where they don’t find anything, because then there is no case. I often wonder how many searches like this happen — are arrests made in 50% of the cases? Does that mean 50% of the time, people are being stopped and searched for no reason and we just don’t hear about it because nothing major is filed?

That’s why it is so frustrating to read comments from white people who think that the anger dark-skinned people have right now is unjustified.

September 2, 2014 by Michael A. Ventrella

It’s not always racism

Yesterday, I wrote about how we should not listen to white people when they say it’s not about racism, because they’re not the “experts” who really experience it.

However, we should also beware of going too far in the other direction: sometimes it really is not about racism.

I have often had discussions like this with my clients:

“That cop is a racist!”

“Why do you say that?”

“He treated me terribly and gave me no respect!”

“I know this particular cop very well. Trust me, he treats everyone like that.”

Sometimes people are a jerk to you not because of your race, but because they’re jerks. Or maybe it’s because of your dress or attitude. A white guy dressed as a thug and acting like a gang member also doesn’t get a ton of respect.

But there really is racism. Obama talked about how, when he was a Constitutional Law Professor dressed in a suit, he still couldn’t get a taxi. Black business leaders find themselves being followed in stores despite looking like professional CEOs in all respects. The fact that blacks get arrested for drug offenses in bigger numbers than whites despite drug use among whites and blacks being pretty equal is another good sign. There are plenty of other examples.

All I’m saying is: Racism absolutely exists and it is something people deal with every day. Just don’t automatically assume every time you’re treated bad it’s because of racism. I have friends who hate Obama but it’s not because they’re racist. They hated Clinton too. They hate all liberal politicians. If Obama was 100% white, they’d still hate him.

For that matter, I can’t stand Al Sharpton, Clarence Thomas, and Herman Cain, but not because of their race. (And if you think I supported Obama because of his race, well, you might want to ask if you are the racist, unable to see anything but a candidate’s race to determine why anyone would vote for him.)

However, if your main criticism of Obama is that he’s a Kenyan Muslim who doesn’t look like a “real American” — well, I think that’s a pretty good sign it isn’t just his politics that have you angry. And if your protest includes a Confederate flag, you might as well stop pretending.

September 1, 2014 by Michael A. Ventrella

Stop asking white people

Seriously. I’m sick of watching white people debate whether there is still racism.

I’ve ranted before about how we tend to listen to people who already support what we previously believed as opposed to experts who may challenge our assumptions.
It bugs me when people listen to TV commentators to decide whether climate change exists, or pay attention to celebrities to determine whether they should vaccinate their kids, or read blogs from angry gun owners to interpret the meaning of the Constitution.

Deciding that racism is over by talking to all your white friends is on par with these mistakes. Listen to the experts.

April 25, 2014 by Michael A. Ventrella

How to hide your racism

Clive Bundy hasn’t said anything different than what many popular politicians have said on the right; he just didn’t say it according to the modern rules on how to pretend you’re not racist.

(In case you haven’t paid attention, here’s what the lawbreaking rancher said: “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro … They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”)

Now even racists on the right are distancing themselves from the man they had previously called a patriotic hero. Here’s what Bundy didn’t know that they do:

Lesson one: Use code terms. Don’t say “black” or “negro”. The proper term these days is “thug.” Warning: Make sure you never refer to an actual white criminal as a thug so as not to confuse your listeners. If talking about welfare, you can also use “inner city” — that seems to have worked well for Paul Ryan (see Lesson two).

Lesson two: Equate welfare with slavery, but in a good way (not like Bundy did). Ignore the fact that most people on welfare are white and predominately in the south. For some amazing reason, racist whites on welfare know they need it and deserve it, and so any comment about welfare cheats never seems to apply to them. So don’t worry about offending your base. (Freedomworks, a major Tea Party group, has promoted this idea through its promotional movies and blogs a lot.) This is what Paul Ryan did a few weeks ago, and he’s still a darling of the right!

Lesson three: Like any racist, assume that the example you see represents that entire race. Forget all the black scientists, lawyers, judges, business leaders, preachers, and Presidents of the United States who prove you completely wrong and concentrate instead on the small percentage who fulfill your stereotypes. Never mention the good examples! (Bundy has this part down pretty well, actually.)

Bundy is merely repeating the things he hears constantly from some of the leaders of the Republican party. He just rephrased it in the wrong way.

March 29, 2014 by Michael A. Ventrella

What is this “satire” you speak of?

Our most prominent satirist these days is Stephen Colbert, who plays an ignorant conservative pundit so clueless he doesn’t realize he is saying things that help his opponents. Anyone who has a brain understands the character and gets the jokes.

This is a picture my wife made of Stephen Colbert using dryer lint. It’s now hanging in a Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum somewhere. Her web page is here: http://www.heidihooper.com

And then there are The Humorless.

Recently, Colbert did a hilarious bit about how the Washington Redskins, in order to show their concern for the Native Americans they insult daily with their name, set up a charity to benefit said Natives. They called it “The Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation” — which is kind of like saying “The Washington Wop Foundation for the Betterment of Italian-Americans” or “The Washington Faggot Gay Rights Foundation.”

Or, as Stephen Colbert put it “The Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever.”

Come on, that’s funny. By using this comparison, he is showing how insensitive the Redskins are being while they pretend to be enlightened. “I owe all this sensitivity to Redskins owner Dan Snyder,” Colbert said after making the announcement. “So Asians, send your thank-you letters to him, not me.”

To add more irony, “Ching-Chong Ding-Dong” was a character Colbert created to make fun of Rush Limbaugh doing a stereotypical racist rant when imitating Chinese President Hu Jintao.

But some people just don’t get it, claiming he has “gone too far” and demanding a boycott of his show. These well-meaning but humor-impaired people are against stereotypes and racism.

Hey, just like Colbert!

March 9, 2014 by Michael A. Ventrella

Population shifts and what that means for elections

I love maps and statistics like this … this map shows how the country has changed over the past twenty years. Each county is color coded for how the county changed racially — a very red county means that the county’s new residents were overwhelmingly white, and a very blue county went overwhelmingly non-white.

This is important for elections in that it shows how the minority-heavy districts (which tend to be more Democratic) can change places like Virginia. It also shows something bad for Democrats in that they are tending to concentrate in the urban areas, making the rural areas even more white and Republican than they had previously been.

Anyway, there is a very good analysis of this here. There is also an interactive map where you can zoom in and check on your county. You can click on each county and see the county’s population change. For instance, take Monroe County, Pennsylvania, where I live, just over the New Jersey border. It went hugely blue over the last twenty years and added about 17,000 new residents.

Please do not be scared away by the fact that this is from a liberal blog — the information is presented clearly and without bias, and contains information that is interesting to anyone who likes these kinds of statistics.

February 28, 2014 by Michael A. Ventrella

“He only won because he’s black”

Michelle Bachmann said Americans voted for Obama because he was black and they felt guilty. Yep! That’s why I supported Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Carol Mosley-Braun and Herman Cain.

No. Wait. I remember now. I didn’t support any of those people.

Dammit! Why can’t the world be as simple as Michelle Bachmann, where there is black and white and nothing inbetween — where the color of someone’s skin is the determining factor instead of complicated things like their experience, stand on the issues, and education?

But no, that’s just too subtle for her. The fact that the majority of Americans supported a Senator who graduated at the top of his class from both Columbia and Harvard Law, whose positions on the issues most matched theirs, and who belonged to the party that had won more votes in three of the last four Presidential races is completely meaningless to her, because the only thing she sees is the color of Obama’s skin.

Let’s see … there is a word for someone like that, isn’t there?

February 7, 2014 by Michael A. Ventrella

Driving While Brown

My office manager’s husband was stopped again yesterday for no reason — second time this week. It usually only happens once a month. The police searched the entire vehicle and of course found nothing, because he’s a successful businessman with no criminal record.

Then again, he is a dark-skinned Latino.

Whenever he gets stopped, he remains polite but firm and does not give the police any reason to arrest him. He allows them to search the vehicle because he knows if he says no, they will find some reason to hold him, go and get a warrant, and do it anyway. After an hour or so, they have to give up and let him go.

He is a building owner and manager in New York city, so he often travels in work clothes so he can make repairs to his buildings. He may not dress in a suit and tie every day, and that is part of the problem. Fortunately, he does not wear a hoodie.

When police want to pull over a car, they must have a “reasonable suspicion” that a violation of the traffic code is taking place. That’s so easy to find, though. You swerved a bit, you forgot to turn your signal on when you changed lanes (even if no one was behind you), and in this case, his license plate was obscured by snow.

Once you’re stopped, they can hold you if you “fit a profile” or if they “smell marijuana” (which they do a lot of). I had a case a while ago where my client’s car was pulled over for being suspicious because “there were many people in the car, it was from New Jersey, and it was driving on a road known to be used by drug traffickers.” Mainly, route 80, the biggest highway coming from New York city, which everyone takes. A car full of people from New Jersey in a tourist area like the Poconos, just over the New Jersey/Pennsylvania border? Clearly suspicious.

Oh, did I mention all the people in the vehicle were black?

This particular person, however, gets stopped along the 100-mile corridor between New York city and his home here, so it’s not just one police department doing this. That’s even worse, though, isn’t it? It says this is systemic.

And it’s not always racism as much as it racial profiling, if you see the distinction. I’ve had many cases where black cops pull over black drivers for stupid reasons, too.

Some people scoff at this, and say everyone is overreacting. These people are always white.