Do Racists Know They're Racists?

I don't know if I can word this quite the way I intend. What I've been mulling over a lot lately is the relationship that hard-core racists, those who aggressively and vocally express their hatred for non-white people using words that would make many of the rest of us blush, have with the word "racist."

Do they feel misunderstood if someone uses that word in relationship to them? (As in, I'm not a racist. I'm just right.)

Do they embrace the word as a badge of honor?

If they don't own the word, what, exactly, do they think a racist is?

I have a reason for thinking about this. My daughter is currently dealing with a racist in her life, a family member, who, during election season, tried to fill her ears with scare tactics regarding putting a you-know-what in the White House. She told him to cut it out; she didn't want to hear it. This person almost lost his job because he would not shut up around his coworkers during the election (although I don't think the n-word was actually used in the workplace -- just a lot of badgering). Now that the you-know-what is heading to the White House and my daughter put a stop to all the n----r talk, this person continues to pester my daughter by redirecting his passion toward all of the President-elect's non-pigment-related flaws, whatever they might be.

My daughter does not have the option of dropping this person from her life, and I'll leave it at that.

Again, I wonder what this person's relationship to the word "racist" is -- badge of honor? Or insult?

I don't want to get close enough to ask, frankly.

Gone

I'll be doing even lighter than my usual light posting for the next few weeks. I'm in one or another of the Carolinas, watching my small grandsons for a few weeks while my daughter jets off to see Europe. Or at least some parts in Germany and Ireland.

You should be lucky enough to have such a mother.

The "right" kind of ketchup

For a few months prior to the 2004 election, my daughter and her children lived with her inlaws. Her Navy husband had had to go on ahead, and Daughter and the kids followed once housing was available.

One day while she was still living here, Daughter and I were running errands. Among them was a trip to the commissary. In addition to the groceries she needed for herself and the kids, she had a little bit of cash from the inlaws and a short list of things they wanted her to pick up.

As we were driving, Daughter said, "Mom, FIL wants me to get ketchup."

"Ok."

"Mom," she said, "he said it has to be HUNT'S. Nothing but Hunt's. He said he wasn't giving any of his money to that liberal Kerry by buying Heinz ketchup. He was really mad about it."

We had a good laugh, and she bought the Hunt's; the Hunt's/Heinz thing has become something of a shorthand between us when we talk about her in-laws.

Last night Daughter and I had a long phone conversation. The in-laws had just finished a short visit at her house, and she was talking about something that had happened at dinner, but then she interrupted herself (as we often do -- I'll bet you do, too) to tell me about a special moment at the table. FIL picked up the ketchup -- the Heinz ketchup.

"He looked at it for a long time," Daughter said. "He didn't say anything but I could see he was thinking about it."

Because dinner with two little ones at the table is lively, she never really noticed whether FIL actually used the ketchup.

This conversation reminded me of the Buy Blue site. I hadn't been there in some time, but the last time I looked I was quite disheartened -- I concluded that to be politically and socially responsible I'd have to stop eating, drinking, and buying clothes, at the very least. However, the ketchup incident sent me back to look, and I was mostly pleasantly surprised. Many of the places I shop are either blue, neutral, or represented by rather small elephants. I can substitute "bluer" (or less red) businesses for some I currently use. (The directory can also be viewed according to category or ranking.) It pleased me to see that while Blockbuster is represented by a medium-sized red elephant (because it makes more donations to Rs than Ds), my new love Netflix has a small blue donkey, representing its contributions to mostly Ds. Amazon makes many more R donations than D, while Barnes & Noble's medium-sized blue donkey represents not only its Democratic donations, but also props for "employment equality" and "social responsibility." I love Amazon's site, but I can get books at B&N just fine, thank you, and thanks to Netflix I'll be buying very few movies anyway.

The funniest statistic, though, I've saved for last. While it might be true that the purchase of a bottle of Heinz ketchup puts a little change into the personal pocketbook of Teresa Heinz Kerry and her husband to do with as they will, the H. J. Heinz Corporation makes generous donations -- currently 71% of its donations -- to the REPUBLICAN party. (Con-Agra Foods, Inc., maker of Hunt's ketchup, isn't listed on the Buy Blue site at all.)

So FIL, keep on boycotting Heinz. It'll make you feel good, but it'll make me feel even better.