Do You Want a Revolution?

Coretta Scott King has passed away.

I feel like a distant family member has died. Like suppose you had a great-aunt who used to visit you occasionally while you were growing up, and then she moved to Paraguay, so you didn't see her much anymore but still exchanged notes and letters here and there, so there was a residual fondness even if you weren't seeing her on a regular basis, and then one day, you learned that she had passed on. I think for many Americans (and particularly, for black Americans, of course), Coretta was a member of our larger extended family.

I am sad. My heart goes out to her family.

What is even sadder is come of the comments that I've seen today on a newsgroup discussion. Sample:

What a shame she didn't die sooner. And it's a shame the rest of the niggas in America aren't dead yet either.

What, you thought racism was a thing of the past? Please.

I know the King legacy was all about the nonviolence, but this kind of shit makes me so angry I could slap the shit out of someone. Never mind the larger racist context, what kind of ignorant dirtball says something so disrespectful about someone on the very day of their death?

Other idiots are posting comments like,

She was great on "The "Jeffersons" [sic] We'll miss you Weazy [sic].

So, so, witty. Sigh.

We've been looking for a new place to live, and we've been considering two neighborhoods not far from our own. The demographics of the first one are a mix of white, Latino, Thai, and Korean. This neighborhood is a kind of funky, artsy, walkable area with lots of great little shops, plentiful yoga, and very nearby a park. The second neighborhood is more a mix of black, Latino, and Korean. There's not as much stuff to walk to, but the housing blend has more of what we're looking for (larger, side-by-side duplexes) and there's a nice neighborhoody feel. If we moved to the first neighborhood, getting Viva to her current school would be a hassle, so we would probably take her out and enroll her in a different school. Anecdotal evidence suggests that while these schools have a mix, our choices are either a predominantly white school or one in which the kids are mainly Latino and Asian -- either of which means Viva would very likely be the only black kid in her class.

If we moved to the second neighborhood, it's close enough to our current location that we could keep Viva in her current school, where her class is a slightly different mix. Out of the 12 kids in her class, four are black, three are of Asian heritage, three are white, one is Latino, and one is Middle Eastern. The racial/ethnic makeup of this school was one of its main selling points to me.

Given the bullshit I've been reading today, I don't think I have to tell you which neighborhood I'm leaning toward.

And if that means I've ventured over into, "But if you don't want to move there, the terrorists have won" territory, so be it. In the meantime, keep the dream alive. I'm out.