The Mexican government issued a series of stamps yesterday depicting a dark-skinned Jim Crow-era cartoon character with greatly exaggerated eyes and lips, infuriating black and Hispanic civil rights leaders for the second time in weeks.
I can’t think of many things less important to get angry about than the stamps pictured above. Maybe the price of postage pictured is worth getting angry about, but not the black caricature. That’s just idiotic. If one of the stamps had pictured Memin Pinguin getting lynched, then it would be OK to have a verbal spew or two.
Let’s put Memin Pinguin in context. Does Memin Pinguin represent an ideology of hatred? No. Does he represent rapists, murderers and thieves? No. He’s a circa 1940’s cartoon stereotype. Getting rid of him won’t feed hungry children, won’t “heal” the damage done by slavery, and won’t affect Americans in any substantial way whether he travels around the world on stamps or not.
I’m not black, but if I were, I’d ask the idiots claiming to represent me to please focus on issues that actually matter, like the loss of economic freedom being suffered by the upper and middle classes. I’d ask them to find out why I am being treated like a cow when I fly and get it fixed, by God! I would focus on a thousand things other than a series of stamps issued by a foreign government. But because my self-appointed “leaders” would mostly be idiots if I were black, I’d be a sad black man.
Since I’m white, and my self-appointed white leaders are mostly idiots, I’m just a sad white man. The quality of the minds we are continuously exposed to by the media in this country is appalling.
Reverend Jackson, please, focus on getting more women pregnant. You’ll be doing less damage. Reverend Sharpton, find a competent hair stylist, there is some sort of mind parasite living in your hair. La Raza, go back to trying to steal back the Southwest for Mexico or whatever it is you people do. The buzz of your meaninglessness is bothering me. We all have bigger things to worry about right now.
LaShawn Barber, who is a blogger and happens to be black, feels differently than I do.
It’s a caricature, for God’s sake. Let’s stop taking everything so damn seriously and get back to talking about issues that actually matter in the grand scheme of our lives.