Long Saturday morning post…fair warning.
Aaack. This whole Paula Deen thing. I mean, I really don’t care. I never liked her food or her cooking, BUT I understood (perhaps mistakenly) that she was a good southern Democrat and there aren’t many of those around, so I always gave her a pass. Even when she made the disastrous pharmaceutical deal that was in equal parts slippery and self-serving. Her ineptness (ineptitude?) at PR was, in a way, charming. So, when she admitted recently that she uttered the N-word some thirty years ago, my eyebrows were raised, but honestly, I wasn’t shocked. I lived in the south for over 20 years. My husband lived in the south for most of his 50+ years. Her horrific attempts at apologies only served to underscore that she needed to do some firing of her own – her PR team just sucks.
But then…
…then more stuff seeped out. Not from vicious rumors, but from her own mouth. That she was filmed recently with her son in some weird Cuban black face get-up spoke volumes, no?
In the grand scheme of things, I care very little about what happens to this woman’s empire, who she is makes us (my husband and I) remember why we had wanted to move away from the south for so long. Are all southerners racist? No, of course not. Our best friends in the world are southerners. But, it is hard work (or, at least it was for us) to live in the south and shield oneself from racism so insidious sometimes you don’t realize you are a part of it.
Continue reading “Insidious Southern Racism is Alive and Well, Trust Me”
my mom today, on the eve of mother’s day weekend especially, but also because she died twelve years ago yesterday at a way too young of an age. Time does make the loss sting less, but it does nothing for feeling that somehow I got cheated, losing a mom just when things were getting exciting.
Christine Anne Scott 