Upon being asked why she refused to give up her seat on the bus, the late, great Rosa Parks replied, "People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically... No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."
Do not think I'm enough of an asshole to compare myself to Rosa Parks. Not even close. She was brave as all get-out. She took chances. She quite literally risked her life in an effort to get a small bit of human decency out of people. She was someone we should make sure our kids know about and admire.
I, on the other hand, am someone who sits in my safe, comfortable apartment, jots down some uncomfortably funny scenarios from a safe distance, and hopes they'll make people laugh and think and squirm and, in some small way, challenge the status quo. What I do is as easy and safe and cushy as it gets yet, this year, it bruised my heart, as corny as that sounds. It exhausted me.
If I'm exhausted, I can't even imagine the sort of tired a Rosa Parks must have felt.
A few people have asked me about the last couple of White Histrionics entries for the year, which I never wrote. I'll be honest: seeing more and more shit like this, in the actual news, made it more and more difficult to write a new entry every day. No bit of satire I could dream up and write down could be a better example of how fucking privileged white folks in this country have it, than THIS sort of thing.
I've been doing White Histrionics Month for a few years, now, and started documenting it in blog form in 2016. I'm not sure there will be a month of White Histrionics in 2019 - not because there isn't enough material to work with, but because there's TOO MUCH.
The fact that a white person wrote to me, early in March, to let me know how hurtful, offensive, and divisive they found White Histrionics to be, and how unfair to white people they thought it was, should have tipped me off that this year's White Histrionics Month was going to be a rough one.
What started out as a creative endeavor has ended up being a little bit soul-killing. No one who really needs to open their eyes to the major problem this country has with race actually WANTS to. No one who really needs to step up and admit that they, as a white person, enjoy privileges that their non-white counterparts do NOT is willing to do so. I'm not saying that there are NO white people who get it. I'm saying that the ones who get it, already get it. The ones who don't? They don't want to and, frankly, I don't believe they ever will.
I'm not sure how I'll feel about this in a year, but I at least wanted to explain why March 2018 on this blog is an incomplete month. I also wanted to thank everyone who took the time to read even a single post, everyone who shared the link with others, everyone who suggested topics or submitted entries (Robert Sanchez - you know I love you) and every person who wrote to ask where the rest of the month's posts were: the fact that you've read what I've written, and want more, means a lot to me.
