ON PAULA DEEN

THIS POST is the ONLY one I'll make about Paula Deen 

I don't care how many black people use the word "nigger," it does not excuse Paula Deen. AND, her deposition was about more than her use of a word; it was about her discriminatory employer behavior and her creating and maintaining a hostile work environment, especially for black employees. She wanted to dress black men up as slaves and have a "genuine Southern wedding" for her brother, for God's sake!!! Was her apologies needed? In our culture we require public penance--doesn't mean people MEAN it, just that we require it. She SUCKED at the public theater, but she had to do it.... Protecting brand? ABSOLUTELY. She lost millions of dollars in contracts once the Twitterverse was overwhelmed with negative comments (and funny ones) about her. 

Paula Deen is a symbol of our ongoing dis-ease with racism, sexism, and other isms. She is not the "only one," and she is NOT an anomaly. RACISM--the systematic disenfranchisement of people of color from public power--is in the DNA of this country. It is its Original and Persistent Sin. It's in the air; its in the water. And in the Deep South and in Up South (northern cities where racism thrives), Racism often is a thin layer of civility over a thick ooze of hostility.

Paula Deen is a distraction, if all the Twitterverse and other social media can do is harp on the word "nigger" and tell clever food jokes. We need a change in this country and we're not going to get it done with mere flashes of indignant statements.

BIGOTRY is the step-child of RACISM... it is the attitude and behavior of people who can behave badly toward people because of difference, but have no power over anyone else. We suffer relentlessly from both. BUT BE CLEAR: Bigots are just gnats in our tea; RACISTS cost us our lives and liberty.

We have work to do.

© Valerie Bridgeman
June 26, 2013

POSTED on FACEBOOK as well