Bullshit! Shit is living

Learning on the job

When I write, I have both the Microsoft Word spellchecker and grammar checker active to catch the basic errors or highlight something I might need to review or on my own good judgement ignore. Then when I paste my copy in the blog editor, Grammarly tackles some context, the punctuation, number agreement but shies away from political correctness.

I have not set the grammar checking rules to a stringent adherence to Victorian style or James I prose, nor do I aspire to Shakespearean flourish. In a way, I think I have my unique way of using words, constructing sentences, and conveying my opinions.

There is no doubt that I still have a lot to learn, it is an ongoing activity of self-development. Obviously, I deviate from formality to levity, abuse structure for artistic license, I will try to explain the jargon, whilst attempting to avoid neologisms, the occasional colloquialism or is it expletive will surface and that without apology.

The bull always shits

This is because, there is no better word for it and when in my last blog the grammar checker went after BULLSHIT, I retorted with Bullshit! Yes, whilst there are uses for the shit of bulls as manure, it is what they naturally do like we all do, we shit and it is as much proof that we are living things and much as we breathe. A characteristic we cannot do without, else we are on to constipation and without prompt relief death.

Blog - Thought Picnic: Killing their people with incompetence

The Cambridge Dictionary defines bullshit in usage as both an exclamation and a noun and as; thus, complete nonsense or something that is not true. Pardon me, it is apparently offensive too. I guess it is one of those times when the shit hits the fan and the fan splats the shit on anyone who has not already taken refuge under a table.

“This language might be offensive to your reader.” Screams the grammar checker. It’s my blog and dear reader if you have never had to look back in anger at the water closet, your immortality is secure. Let’s stop feigning disgust, shitting is life and life is shitting.

Bullshit highlighter.

Opinion: Asking for the opportunity to prove ourselves

This is good acting

I watch very little television if I watch any at all, the things that fascinate me are murder mysteries, educational documentaries, detective series, trains and travel.

However, from the moment I saw the trailer for How to Get Away with Murder starring Viola Davis, I was hooked, by both the title and the drama. When I eventually got into the series, I was quite enamoured by the strength of the character of Professor Annalise Keating as portrayed by Viola Davis, I recorded the whole series.

In the weekend, Viola Davis, unbeknownst to me became the first African-American lady to win the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series and her acceptance speech so seriously deviated from the norm by paying a glowing tribute those who had opened the way before her in the quest for the recognition and adoration of their peers in entertainment.

A speech well made

This is the full text of her acceptance speech as transcribed by the New York Times, but one cannot help but excerpt a cogent part of the speech. “The only thing that separates women of colour from anyone else is opportunity.”

Whilst, I will not be too forward in suggesting I have suffered the loss of opportunity, I can fully understand the sentiment that informed her speech where for whatever indecipherable reasons I have missed out on opportunities not offered to me when for all intents and purposes I am well qualified for the job I interviewed for.

Then again, I cannot put it down to overt racism, yet when having been interviewed and well considered an executive at the BBC in 1991 decides he’ll rather not give me the job because I was not extending myself enough or in his words, I was short-selling myself, you wonder.

Open for opportunity

More recently, it was an interview with a major bank where apparently I did not pass the muster for Miss Congeniality for the job. These experiences begin to introduce doubt and literally beat you down that you have to find strength from within to rise beyond that situation.

Blog - Thought Picnic: As Runner-Up Miss Congeniality, I Didn't Quite Make It

Yet, I could paraphrase Viola Davis and say that for many, “The only thing that separates minorities in any society from everyone else is opportunity.” Being given the opportunity to prove that they are both able and capable because some assumption, presumption or dare I say, prejudice has led to people at the gate not letting others into their fold for all sorts of reasons.

She goes on to say that, “You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.” By extension, you cannot win accolades, praise, recognition or promotion for opportunities not granted to those who generally by default are not amongst the first to be considered for such placements.

Entitlement debasing opportunity

Then again, I see other areas where people who generally get given these opportunities abuse and squander them foisting their sense of entitlement into the situation.

In the light of this, I find myself antithetical to the smart and apparently beautiful Charlotte Proudman and I note the significance of her surname when on being complimented for her looks in connecting with an eminent male lawyer on the LinkedIn professional network took umbrage at age-old chivalry to deem it sexist. [The Student]

There is an element of political correctness in this reading that bothers somewhat old-fashioned people like myself who will have the tendency to compliment, offer a seat to ladies, take off my hat when speaking to a lady or step forward to open a door for a lady – that is the cultured and expected decorum expected of gentlemen and it in no way belittles the professional attributes of the lady.

Try some emotional intelligence too

In a way, I felt quite sorry for Alexander Carter-Silk who being a generation ahead of the lady was slightly conscious of the possibility that a compliment might be taken wrongly and yet chose to make it in good faith. The Internet shaming of the man shows how discretion is no more a matter of valour for another generation. [LegalCheek]

For all the commentary for and against that episode, I will very well understand and quite sadly appreciate that Miss Proudman with all her academic intelligence and feistiness might have blown certain opportunities that would naturally be open to her in the pride that always presages the self-fulfilling prophecy of a fall. The requisite amount of emotional intelligence always helps in communicating umbrage or agreement.

Then again, Miss Proudman because of her extrovert self-esteem and intelligence displayed a sense of entitlement and effrontery that can be both emasculating and aggressively off-putting, she will go far.

Yet, I commend all those who grasp any opportunity they are given to become and excel and for that also I commend Viola Davis.

Opinion: How Zwarte Piet is a Subject of Culture, History, but Rarely Race

Some quaint traditions

A number of exchanges on Facebook regarding the Sinterklaas tradition which is the Low Countries' equivalent though contrived of Santa Claus had me rummaging through the memories of my almost 13 year sojourn in the Netherlands.

The topic concerned the helpers of Sinterklaas called Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). These are usually Caucasians with blackened faces in clothes of flamboyant contrasting colours somewhat modelled on the Moors as Sinterklaas is said to visit the Netherlands from Spain.

Much as I understand that the blackening of faces might present a culture shock to foreigners observing this tradition for the first time, it does not remotely pertain to outright racism apart from the general idea of a master-servant relationship between Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet.

Know your history

What bothers me is the tendency for certain people to arrogate to themselves either real or imagined histories of figures and traditions they have no affinity with and in the process they begin to personify the victim complex of those cultures.

On the broader issue of our humanity, we do recognise that we all have a responsibility to seek the institution and enforcement of broad human rights for freedoms and the pursuit of happiness.

However, it is also important that we recognise our core identities such that we do not appear to race ahead of the discussion that pertains to the rights of others in groups that we do not essentially belong due to many factors beyond race and residence.

Too diverse for colour to matter

My view of the black race is that it is just as diverse as any other race. Though we might have shared histories of oppression and indignities suffered through centuries, it is important that we recognise the differences in our history within the compendium of many histories in Africa, in the Caribbean, in North America, in South America and now recently in Europe.

Whilst centuries ago, Africans might have shared in the broader cruel history of slavery towards either the Middle East or the Americas, each destination developed a divergent history where the commonality of race is the only affinity between us after which we are all very different people.

In Africa, Blacks might people the Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone parts of Africa, but within those countries that make up these groupings, we are radically different in culture, tribe, tradition and histories that the artificially cobbled-together nations we belong to are mostly geographical expressions that we have learnt to live with.

How to join a struggle

We can identify with and join a struggle for the liberation of other oppressed members of our race, but we must be careful that in our identifying with a cause we do not lose our identity and history to complete assimilation, uprooted from the ancestry and moorings of who we are.

Other Africans joined together to fight Apartheid, but we fought as free people seeking the freedom of our brothers and sisters; we did not become South African and put ourselves under the influence of Apartheid to stand in the face of the shootings in Soweto.

Quite heterogeneous

In Britain, the tendency to see the black race as homogenous is dangerous. The majority Caucasian indigenous and growing foreign population though white, rarely identify that strongly along racial lines as Africans, African Americans, Caribbean or similar people of colour do.

They have their languages, culture, histories and strong identities linked to regions, customs, traditions and many other common traits that sets each grouping out as unique.

I sometimes fear that we coalesce and school together like fish on issues where we are essentially birds of a completely different feather.

Zwarte Piet is hardly the problem

It is why I could not countenance the apparent righteous indignation bordering on apoplectic rage, of African residents of England to Zwarte Piet. The debate is ongoing in the Netherlands about cultural and politically correct elements of retaining that aspect of the Sinterklaas culture.

It is healthy, interesting and robust, but it is nowhere near the zest for insurrection demonstrated by racial impostors from abroad, who might have found another roller coaster bandwagon to hitch a ride on.

We indeed must have debates about racism, racial equality, race relations, race history and probably revisit history for understanding, appreciation, recognition and reparation of wrongs of the past and present – I do not think that debate can be had with wrestling Zwarte Piet to the ground in either horseplay or mortal combat.

The fight for dignity is paramount beyond race, but we lose focus when we decide to take more offence on issues where our affinity with the people we presume are not liberated is tenuous at best.

England: And the coconut fell on her head

The Police Constable of Political Correctness

Sometimes I wonder where I have been on either side of the politically correct debate and have found that I have been on both sides and sitting on the fence.

In general, I don’t do politically correct, I do polite, I do respectful and sometimes with a tinge of what I would call the gentle English putdown.

A case in Bristol [1] was concluded recently that had a black Liberal Democrat councillor engaged in a heated debate with an Asian Conservative councillor predicated on the latter arguing that spending money today on trying to right the wrongs of slavery was wasteful.

The Liberal Democrat retorted that the Conservative would be termed a coconut, a term, sometimes derogatorily inferring someone who has abandoned one’s roots pandering to the seeming proclivities of another culture.

The myths and expectations

This matter goes deep and it would appear both councillors were somewhat unwise in their choice of words. Asians never really did suffer the ravages and consequences of slavery as much as Blacks did, so in a way her stance regardless of the objectivity of her argument was insensitive at best.

The use of the word “coconut” with the variant of “bounty” or “banana” which infers white on the inside and brown or yellow on the outside is as racist as one can get in jocular or formal council meeting environments, if that is how you want to be affected by it.

I was once called a bounty when a friend wanted me to offer an academic reference in his favour, when all I could do was give a character reference. I responded saying it was not the exclusive prerogative of the white man to be objective.

A broad political church

Furthermore, ethnic minorities cannot be expected to be exclusively left-wing or left-leaning, we are borne of different circumstances and opportunities that it is very possible for us to be right-leaning and conservative with the option to join political parties of that stratum and represent people from that perspective.

The idea that ethnic minorities are trying to be whiter than the whites is sometimes atrocious; as if one can be accused of being blacker than the blacks. If one was born abroad and has spent more than half one’s life in that society one would think that person were fully integrated in the dominant culture rather than be holdouts of a sub-culture which might no more be representative of its origins.

The question then becomes why should I only be defined and identified purely by my racial colour and no inference to the varied cultures in which I have lived and the content of my character which is usually not worn on the face or skin?

Back where we started

We need to move on from race and deprivation politics and accentuate the better parts of our co-existence. The Conservative councillor could well have mollified her argument in favour of cuts in more temperate language not creating the situation where latent grievances of the pasts are allowed to surface with politically damaging consequences.

The sad situation too is evident in the fact that the Conservative councillor had hardly moved out into post-cultural self-assuredness, she took offence where she could have been above the fray. People defined by being unsure of their roots still find that they are easily offended at every seeming slight and hardly possess the wit to deflect the barbs.

I suppose race still holds sway in many matters that affect ethnic minorities regardless of how long they have lived in their host societies where they are probably supposed to be fully integrated, if not assimilated.

The coconut is cracked open

The wider implications of the case, the prosecution and the sentence border on elements of free speech, expression, urban usage and context – in some circles, this is political correctness gone mad but if anything, either coconut or banana must learn the nuances of being politely rude rather than being politically incorrect. It is probable that neither is even whiter on the inside yet, how interesting, that would be to all concerned.

As the saying goes amongst the Yoruba of West Africa who were probably the most decimated and plundered in terms of slavery with outposts of that culture in Cuba and Brazil – he whose head has been used to crack the coconut is not going to partake in the eating of it.

Figuratively, she threw a coconut and it landed on her head – What a pity, as the English smiled wryly at all the fuss.

Source

[1] Councillor found guilty of racial harassment over 'coconut' jibe | UK news | The Guardian

A male bird is a cock

Enter the silly cow

Going back to the fundamentals of gender differentiation, the male of the homo-sapiens sapiens species is called man and the female is called woman. I do recall from the creation story that inference - male and female, made He them.

The male of the bovine species is bull, the female cow - maybe that is skirting the limits of decent conversation, we might lose the ability to use the gender differentiator just in case someone gets offended with the use of the word cow. I have heard "silly cow", but this would never be uttered by your respectable gentleman here.

However, I am about to become a raging bull for the fact that the avian species might be afforded the choice of hen for the female but not again cock for the male.

This is no joke and it comes from no less an authority on birds than the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, one might just surmise they have been mixing bird guano in their teas and coffees and have gone quack-quack.

Protect the cock

Any sensible person would think such an organisation would protect the basic gender identity of the species they have full remit to protect and conserve from extinction, but a somewhat unfortunate if not incipient fixation and obsession with the human phallic symbol has attacked the functioning elements of their sanity that this stupidity is now evident.

Obviously, we are told that it is their word processor or Internet filters that mark cock as sensitive and obscene such that a male blackbird becomes a **** blackbird.

If only one can get a parrot to recite without respite "A male bird is a cock", their bird brains - Ooops! Sorry birds - might just see that they have chosen to better be sorry than safe.

Would we eventually lose the word bird because it could be used to refer to the female species of the human race? Too wit to woo!

Beyond plume and wattle, I hope that respectable ornithologists would ensure that this idiocy receives enough derisive commentary even if faces go redder than a robin's breast, this must not thrive, all the more for making this an unpleasant and less gay day.

This is political correctness gone mad - Internet filters - my foot! Awk! Awk!