I have a motto, and I think it fits most situations in the United States and everywhere, so i think it’s time to share it with you. It’s simple: just six words:
EVERYBODY HAS RIGHTS EXCEPT EVERYBODY ELSE!
If we all considered who we don’t like for certain reasons, it’s obvious that we are not exactly working to keep our country free when it comes to expression.
When you think about it, everything going on lately–from racism and culture clashes to reality show backstabbing like on Big Brother this season– has to do with how we feel about other people compared to ourselves at a particular moment and in a particular situation. We want America to be a free country until something is said or done which infuriates us to the point at which we want a certain right to be controlled, changed or abolished.
A football player in Philadelphia used the “N” word and was caught on camera, while star chef Paula Deen admitted to having said that same word at some point in her life. Really, just by saying we’re talking about “the ‘N’ word” means we are saying the “N” word. Twenty years ago, if somebody had mentioned the “F” word on the air, folks would have fainted, and that one has nothing to do with the concept of African-American repression (it’s either about sex or violence, depending on your context). Believe me, I don’t like the “N” word any more than I like words like retard (which I had hurled at me quite a bit in my formative years), but I don’t think either word can be banished from our vocabulary. They exist and will always exist. What we might want to do is counteract the catalyst for their usage. People who feel so strongly about sharing the same breathing space with certain other people sure seem to go where they are to start a fight about whose right it is to be there. So maybe it isn’t about everybody having rights at all, but about feeling good about one’s own rights.
We seem to respond out of fear of what is different. Something as simple as whether one uses mayonnaise or Miracle Whip® salad dressing can be a cause for disdain. I’m amazed at how many people look at me as if I were an excommunicant in church when I’ve said that I like Miracle Whip®. It’s as if I had just admitted to trying to kill somebody’s momma. They turn up their noses and look at me as if they can’t understand how somebody like me (and I don’t know their perception of what somebody like me is like) can do such a thing. Usually I then get some dialogue about why it is not good for anything because the other person doesn’t like it. It reminds me of an episode of “Garfield and Friends” in which the cartoon characters started a major argument just by asking what toppings to put on a pizza. Your choice is fine, but if somebody mentions one that you don’t like, you feel fine about reading them off about it.
On Big Brother, some of the Houseguests have been saying interesting things that have caused racial controversy. Both black contestants have been voted out through the machinations of one particular player, and it seems like this player pushes everybody’s buttons by rubbing salt into their differences and making it seem like the other person should be stoned to death for not being a conformist. I think “different-ism” is more dangerous than any race problem, because it does tend to make everybody leery of his neighbor just because they don’t match up.
The real problem is that we are still existing just fine in spite of our differences, so we should continue to have rights and let everybody else have theirs. That means we can’t even discriminate against racists. We don’t have to associate with them, and they should in turn not associate with us. That way everybody will have rights, and if we don’t clash over everybody else’s.
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