Dear A Yea...

I'm glad you're not in pain anymore

Or restricted by your body.

I'm blessed you stayed long enough to see me grow up.
There isn't a time I remember when you weren't there
I'll miss you lots in the times to come.

I wish we didn't have to say good-bye.

I love you, A Yea.
Rest in peace.

Racism Continued

Did you read the paper today? A proposal for blacks-only school. Can you believe it?? BLACKS-ONLY school!

BLACKS-ONLY!!!

So if a white administration suggested this we'd be back in the Rosa Parks era with a divided nation fighting for the right for all to be treated equally. But it's suddenly not racist if a black "executive officer of student and community equity" for the TDSB suggests it. He even wants race-based statistics on the students! They're so up in arms about the police and racial profiling but having the system in place at school is a good thing??! Uh hello, can't have it both ways, people!

They say it's needed to give special attention to the hopeless black kids out there who are falling behind in school, in life and in opportunities. Now if we take out the word "black", don't we have a lot of those other coloured kids in the same boat as well? Poor families come in every single colour there is out there, it's not necessarily about skin colour. The focus should be on socio-economics. If the government announced they wanted to put more money and time into schools in troubled areas, I might not have a problem with that. I might even applaud their recognizing that poor kids, living in poor environments with more problems to deal with than the average kid joe (eg. gun fights, making rent, absent parents), need an extra bit of help and encouragement.

What message are we sending out to kids, the black community and the rest of the community?

> If you're black you obviously aren't smart or good enough to be in a regular school. No no, you will go to a special school for blacks. And really, only black teachers can teach black kids so our plan is to completely segregate you from the rest of the world where not everyone is black. When you graduate from our black school and get back into reality, well, you'll just have to learn how to deal with it.

> If you're white, yellow, brown, magenta, etc. and feeling alienated, falling behind, losing hope and just generally not doing well in school... too bad! We don't have any special race schools for you.

Can I suggest a "Whites Only" school to help kids deal with the fact that the world is shrinking and there is a lot more competition for academic excellence with kids of other races and there's only so much white flight that can take place in Ontario with the mass influx of immigrants choosing to live in this province, and so with a "Whites Only" school they can feel at home in an environment with other white kids and not feel like they're drowning in the melting pot of other racial colours?

Or maybe an "Asian Only" school where we're all yellow, dressed in the crazy ensembles that is supposedly fashion, listening to shrieky Chinese opera and speaking only in my mother tongue. Once I'm out of school I'll be out of touch with society because I'll have become so cloistered in my little culture and I won't be able to communicate with anyone not Asian or understand why everyone laughs at my hair and clothes.

Seriously, is it just me?

But Do You Have to Bathe In It?

Perfumes and colognes are points of attraction, not people repellents.
Extra squirts do not make you smell better, just stronger.
Just because your brain and nose cells are dead and your nose hairs have fallen out, don't take it out on me.
I shouldn't have to:
-carry around barf bags
-change my seat
-hold my breath
-fan my breathing space
-be able to smell you when I enter an empty room because you left 5 minutes ago
-cover my nose when you're around

YOU DO NOT SMELL GOOD TO ANYBODY ELSE.

Let's practice safe squirting, once a day per person if you must. I find with our modern standards of hygiene, most people don't even need these "attraction enhancing" aids. Nothing wrong with good old soap, people. Use a little deodorant if needed, but keep it tame. I don't want to have to throw lit matches at you to see what happens.

Racism Part 1

We've all dealt with it. While I don't agree with it, it will always be around. There will never be a time when we are all joined as a group in our native dress singing and dancing under a rainbow while butterflies and poopless birds flit about in the sky.

What bothers me more than racism is reverse racism. It's not OK for anyone to say something deragatory about blacks, jews, islamics or any other group that feels the sting of racism on a regular basis. I don't understand why then it's OK to pick on the other groups. Have you ever heard the following?

"He welched/welshed on our deal!"
"I've been gypped."
"Irish people are always drunk."
"Typical Scot, always penny-pinching."
"Trailer trash redneck."

And so on and so forth. I have just insulted the Welsh, Gypsies, Irish, the Scottish and everyone who has ever been lumped in with the last group. I bet I would get in big trouble if I were to say similar phrases and use a "minority" group instead. Would you ever say "I've been Jewed!"? Hell no.

Notice I used quotation marks due to the majority population these minority groups make up in the GTA. I think "minority" really is a misnomer and should be updated.

It seems that it's become an increasingly acceptable practice to insult and act unfarily towards people as long as they are Western Europeans, a la white people. When did this become OK and why? When we think "racism", does it only exist for certain groups? I know for a fact that in the GTA, if you are a white male and you were thinking about a career in emergency services (i.e. Fire, Police and EMS), you had better have a back-up plan. Your skin and gender are not what they are looking for right now. Their mandate is to hire more people of colour and/or female gender because they need to better represent the population in which they serve. Can I not be a 29 year old white male when I'm rushing to an accident scene to help several black and southeast Asian people who were involved? Imagine how the bleeding hearts would be up in arms because an employer said, "Sorry, we don't hire black people even though we really have no valid reason for this decision."

Corporations are hiring people of colour now more than ever. They have to, it's a Human Rights issue. While I think equality is great, I have qualms about hiring because of colour. As a hiring body, I should offer you a job because of the contents of your resume and the interview. In other words, QUALIFICATIONS. It's not window dressing; having a rainbow of skin colours won't do shit for you if your employees are not able or right for the job. On the other hand, if you've ever gone to a bank in the Agincourt area you will notice that all the employees are Chinese. Pacific Mall, computer stores run by Asians, even churches are in this. Have you read their signs? Toronto Chinese (insert some denomination) Church, Mississauga Korean (same) Church. I know anyone can attend, but by naming yourself this, you are saying that your church specifically targets only these people.

Can you imagine if I set up a church and named it Toronto White Christians Church??

In a past tennis match between Venus Williams and some Russian woman, they checked each other as they crossed courts. It seems there was some feud going on and neither of them would move out of each others' path. Venus' dad fumed to the media that the Russian player was a "White Turkey" (she's tall and lanky). That is an outright racist comment but there was absolutely no backlash. Why?

Before you call me a cross-burning, Hitler loving, backwards and closed mind conservative, hate mongering Aryan, please note that I am not white. Or male. I am what you call a minority, but even I see what's going on in this world. Why the divisions? We don't have to love each other but surely we can accept that everyone's a little different and move on to a different topic.