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I'm going to tell you a truth about life, and in order to do that, I'm putting my revelation in context with the comedy of Russell Peters and his commentary about our racist world. In the piece, Peters draws laughter pointing out a snippet of reality we've probably observed, and he begins it telling white people how much he admires them.
White people, my white American friends, I'm here to tell you something. I like you. And I'm not just saying that, you know, to say it. I'm telling you for a reason because I think white people have done some major things in the past 30 years. They've really taken some strides. And I feel bad for them, you know, because all the nonwhite people in the world have them convinced that they're racist. We have them so scared to notice anything of color that they're afraid to describe things accurately now. (Russell Peters at YouTube)
Peters goes on to tell about a situation in which a white male would not acknowledge or describe a black man as black because he feared that would make him seem racist. You know why the white guy did this. He'd swallowed that idea that only racist people notice color and the nonracist folk are colorblind.
If you watch Peters, you'll know that he's not saying there are no racist white people. He's making a comment on political correctness when it comes to racism and does a brand of comedy that some political correctness fans would probably like banned. Peters is not afraid to deal with sterotypes, a vertebra in the backbone of comedy.
I looked for an excuse to mention Peters, perhaps. Nevertheless, his observation is a good segue to a similar phenomena I observed while watching a touching and educational documentary Caring for Your Parents on New Orleans' Public Broadcasting Station, WYES, this week. Here's the first instance:
... much more important than money, and the data show, that the single most important variable to never spending anytime in a nursing home is having a daughter. And that is not a sexist comment, I want to make that clear. It's based on the data and having a daughter is the most powerful predictor of not spending time in a nursing home. (Dr. John B. Murphy, emphasis added by author)
And again, this time a woman, Dr. Cora Christian, speaks during a roundtable following the documentary:
I know this may sound very sexist, but I think often if you look at the statistics and definitely in my culture, the women are the caregivers. The women are there for both father and mother. The women have to share much more of this burden. They'll run from their jobs much more quickly and try and feed mom and dad and come back and take care of it, but then when it comes to dividing the assets, if there are any, you then start to see equality. All of a sudden the men are involved. And I'm going to get in deep trouble on this program, but I think often that happens. That's the reality of what I see. (applause) ... (Dr. Cora Christian, Founder, Virgin Islands Medical Institute, emphasis again added by author)
The audience immediately applauded her stating the obvious, and you know, we could have an entire post just on that last part of her comment about dividing assets and dealing with men, but let's not go there today.
I suppose as the white people in Peters' piece don't want to offiend people of color, Dr. Murphy feared he may offend women and probably some men, and Dr. Christian feared she could offend both genders as well. They had to make it clear they were speaking based on facts not casual observation.
That's what people do when they don't want to lose credibility these days. They state the obvious like "The sky appears blue on sunny days." And then they get some data to back that up. Oh, look, here's a nifty link, Why is the sky blue?
Just so no one will call me sexist (they could since I titled this post "I don't want to sound sexist, but ...) I'll throw in a link to show that I know that there are women, good daughters, who painfully struggle with placing their parents in a facility because they wisely accept that they
