Our Collective Voice - Kethra, Blog Hooligan

I read Ms. Davidson's document with an amazed sense of time and place distortion. I wondered what planet I had been visiting last March and April since it wasn't the same world she was on.

I then came here and read so very many good responses. It took me a bit to filter down what I actually wanted to say other than to stomp my feet and pull my hair in frustration.

It made me want to have Tony's skill with pictures, to show her what really was going on in Durham rather than what was in her imagination. The pictures of the Black Panthers shouting racial insults, the pictures of the Duke students she had assisted in inciting to riot, marching with signs on the house of two innocent men, the MANY interviews Nifong gave, lying through his teeth in order to incite the African American population so that he could win an election...

Are you really this disconnected from reality Ms. Davidson?

You offend me in the deepest sense possible. I am not white nor black (insert yet another color here), NO ONE paid my way through four college degrees. I never once accepted a student loan that wasn't paid back promptly. I have never ONCE collected wellfare, unemployment, food stamps, or any other "social service." My mother was a single parent of many children, so NO ONE paid my way anywhere. I paid my way. I worked multiple jobs and I rest on no one's laurels but my own.

I chose NOT to do drugs, NOT to get pregnant by any number of men, NOT to strip, NOT to whore myself, NOT to demand food stamps and welfare because no one would just give me a $30,000 a year job. It insults me that you support people who make these choices in life with your "oppressed masses" routine.

The reality is this, it is people like you, Ms. Davidson, who contribute to the ongoing racial/socio-economic issues in places like Durham. It is people like you, Ms. Davidson who sit, comfortable, safe and warm in their ivory towers and dispense their words of wisdom to the unwashed masses.

Ms. Davidson, you directly contributed to an attempt at starting a race war. Ms. Davidson, you directly contributed to inciting a riot. Ms. Davidson, you directly contributed to and enabled criminal behavior by Mike Nifong and the Durham Police.

Lets get factual here Ms. Davidson. You would no sooner know the truth, innured as you are in your little office, than if it got up and bit you in the butt. You continue to reinvent the truth to fit your chosen stance of ignorance and denial. Like the prostitute/felon that you choose to defend, you invent words to describe her. Exotic dancer? Oh please, let us just use the correct words here, you are after all an English Professor for heavens sake. She is a prostitute, a hooker, a whore. She is a liar, she is a stripper (titillating sexually) for pay, she is an abuser of not only the social welfare system, but of the medical system as well. STOP with the "poor black woman/student just trying to get by" line.

You demean and denigrate every person of color be they white, black, brown, red, or yellow with your self rightous "we (the powers that be apparently), MUST protect our poor little minority (read "black") people because apparently they lack the character to do it themselves. That is what your letter actually implies. That "someone" (like you apparently) MUST protect these poor people. Do you not see that is WHY there is still racial disparity? When "someone" STOPS protecting and starts DEMANDING that EVERYONE be treated equally and that EVERYONE who is being treated equally ACCEPT the responsibility that comes with that, then, and only then, will disparity cease.

Your anger should be directed at this woman, Mike Nifong, and the Durham Police who have, single handedly, set back victims rights 50 years. Your anger should be directed at this woman, who in abusing the social welfare/medical system, has denied services to someone else who really needed them. Your anger should be directed at ANYONE who has a lynch mob mentality and promotes that attitude - you know, people who use their position to publish a signed document inciting others to a mob mentality before any investigation had been completed. I didn't see YOU out there leading the march Ms. Davidson. Where were you? It is easy to hit the send button on the email isn't it Ms. Davidson.

Look in the mirror Ms. Davidson, YOU are part of the problem, not the solution. You either caused or participated in a great many of the issues now facing us and with your continued fantasy world, you continue to widen the chasm.

You offend me Ms. Davidson, as a woman, as a person of color, and most of all as a human being.

Kethra