random manishtana fact no 78: i worked in a comic book and videogame store for eight years. and im a proud dc boy. superman. bats. flash. justice league. yknow.  see, i never got the marvel universe.

actually, more to the point, i never got the deal with how the marvel universe reacted to mutants. everyone hated them. black, white, asian, gay, straight, everyone. that just didnt seem very realistic to me. was the marvel universe a world that never experienced slavery? jim crow?the holocaust? the japanese interment camps? that was the only way it made sense to me for everyone to be on board that mutants were all horrible and evil–if they themselves had never endured the same tyrannical oppression.

then, this past week i had a conversation with a co-worker of mine, an older jamaican woman. [i mention this b/c she’s 1-old enough to have lived through the civil rights era, 2-she’s jamaican, and therefore doubly well aware of how negative/derogatory stereotypes are slapped onto groups].  we got around to discussing the shooting at fort hood, at which point she bursts out that we should just round up all them muslim and send them back to where they came from b/c they keep killing ppl and she’s tired of it. and–get this–she even directly references the japanese interment camps as a positive example for precedent!

so i flip out a little.  “no one else is going around killing ppl” she says. what about timothy mcveigh?, i respond.  jim jones?  david koresh? where exactly should we ship those guys? christian american abortion clinic bombers?  aren’t those terrorists too? and since when is any group of anything  any one thing?? and let’s say you’re right. let’s say thats a good idea. whats to stop the govt from saying black ppl should be rounded up and shipped back somewhere? “well muslims are a threat”. to who?  who’s to say which group will be in power at what time to say that any particular group is a “threat”.  what’s to stop them from doing the same “round em deal” to anyone else? to you? [a logical notion that anti-abortion, anti-gay rights/marriage ppl still havent caught on to yet, btw…] didnt america close borders off a few years ago to jamaican immigrants/refugees b/c they were a “threat” bringing in drugs to the country?  were they?  “but the muslims are a threat! going around killing ppl!” and ppl say that black ppl are all on drugs and criminals.  are we? are you? am i?

“but ur jewish”

um, wow. at this point id like to sidetrack a lil and say, um, ok, i realize i push the “jew” thing a lot, so maybe some of you out there have forgotten or something? but this isn’t a spray on tan im rocking. i was pretty sure it went without saying that im also black. very black. i drank tropical fantasy when i got out of school like everyone else, played the dozens, and ill get pulled over the same way any non-jewish black guy would for “fitting the profile”. during the holocaust, my family was a lil bit too busy getting lynched down south over here in america [and then for the next twenty years after that] so you’ll have to forgive us if we were a tad distracted during that whole deal.

coming back to the delicious gumbo of disbelief, anger, indignation, and the urge to jocslap a 54 yr old jamaican woman that was stewing within, it was literally at that moment that i realized–actually thought it at that very second–“so this is how the narvel universe works.”

because people are fucking STUPID.

also, apparently i need to work on a string of “hey lookit! lookit! im black” posts for the blog.

–MaNishtana

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