Ryane Oliva was fired from her nurse position at Rapid City Regional Hospital after making racist comments about Indian people. Still image from video via Real Lakota Facts
There is no racism in Rapid City
What were you whining Indians thinking?
By James Davies Queen Victoria was the most powerful person alive during most of the 19th Century, but her Victorian society was rife with racism, sexism, and social intolerance. Her long reign of absolute power had zero influence on rampant sexism. Women did not win the right to vote until she had been dead for 17 years. Margaret Thatcher was prime minister in the 1980’s, but there is still sexism in British society. The Brits are used to a queen as head of state, even if the present queen is but a figurehead, but there willingness to assign political power to a female politician is a nostalgic expression of antiquated propriety, not evidence of burgeoning social enlightenment. A Black American president who fills his cabinet with Wall Street bagmen, who expands the surveillance state, maintains the bloated defense budget, further restricts civil liberties, creates a health care plan designed to line the pockets of private insurance companies, constitutes zero evidence the era of American racism is over. Racism was in your face, if you grew up breed iyeska in Rapid City, South Dakota. Racist teachers, racist cops, racist clergy, racist businessmen, racist neighbors, and had any Indian transformed into a werewolf, they would have said, “Officer! I am being chased by a dirty Indian!” “But that’s a werewolf!” “Really? I hadn’t noticed.” Faith is generally trumped by science, because the strongest evidence for faith is the personal anecdote. Anecdotes constitute zero empirical evidence and are worthless to scientific investigation and determination. That is why, short of catching it on a cell phone, racism is almost impossible to prove, because no matter how many painful episodes each of us experience, regardless of how many witnesses there were to the racism, time renders all this evidence personal anecdotes. FOX News pundits often assert there is no racism in America these days, and if you had a dollar for every American who believes that, you’d retire with tens of millions in the bank. But every once in a great while hard evidence surfaces that racism not only still persists, but that it thrives, and not down in the Deep South, but right in Rapid City, in the very regional hospital ICU where my mother fought for her life not two years ago. Nurse Ryane Oliva was terminated after a racist rant against Indians went viral: “The [expletive] Indians can suck a mother [expletive] fart out of my [expletive] ass because the [expletive] Indians, they suck.” In the background her girlfriend giggles, because they are letting their hair down, venting their true feelings. These racist words weren’t belched up from some dark hellish pit few humans ever resource. These words smack of common use, in the home, among friends, over the course of a lifetime, racist attitudes lovingly instilled across the dinner table by misguided parents made that way by their misguided parents. Unable to freely express these deeply held hate-filled convictions, the new tactic is to deny racism even exists. This is how the friendly neighborhood racist reconciles the internal dissonance of being racist in a society where racism is now self evidently evil—“How can I be racist if there is no racism?” After all, our president is black, and a country that elects a Black president cannot be racist. Simple logic—put that in your race baiting pipe and smoke it. But that simple logic is really rationalized distortion, designed to discredit those who suffer racism, and especially those who activate against racism, to create a false reality where racism can still flourish behind a cynical veil of specious propriety. This is not some sophisticated scheme; it’s really a spontaneous expansion of the common assertion that because I have a “black friend” I cannot be a racist. My dad had many Lakota friends, he had a breed Lakota wife and a dozen breed Lakota children, and he was still racist, which is why he often told my mother, “Yer lucky you married a Whiteman!” It is ruefully hilarious how easily you can prompt a person who denies there is racism to spew racist invective. A few sensible remarks challenging the closet racist’s internal narrative and he won’t stop until all the sanctimonious, festering poison has been released from its oppressive chains. So, it is a miracle more racist rants don’t go viral, and maybe these ugly expressions of hate accomplish a greater good, maybe they wake America up from the denial racism exists, and whether it’s beer being thrown on Lakota kids at hockey games, or documented evidence of Wasicu judges handing down stiffer sentences to Indians than Whites with the same criminal history, racism will not be denied expression. Racism will find a way, because it is not an aberration, but a viscerally compelled sanctimony screaming to be honored, respected and dominant. (James Davies, skindiesel@msn.com) Copyright permission Native Sun News
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