SPOILER ALERT FOR BOXING FANS
Dear Bigot,
Your comments after the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight were offensive. Basking in his victory, Mayweather stood on the ropes at the corner of the ring, raising his arms triumphantly and, yes, talking back to the haters who booed him. You decried his behavior as arrogant.
"He should be humble," you sneered. "He's undefeated. He should have lost, so he would know how loss feels." Dear bigot, Mr. Mayweather's mother was a drug addict. He lost her to the disease of addiction. He lost his aunt to AIDS, also secondary to drug addiction. He lost his father to the American prison system, a system inherently more ravenous for African Americans than for white people. (Do you realize, dear bigot, that African Americans and Hispanics make up some 58% of the prison population, but comprise only 25% of all Americans?) Mayweather himself has spent time in jail, whose gaping maw awaits 1 of every 3 African American males born today--during that time, he lost his freedom, freedom which you feel yourself unquestioningly entitled to, probably because society is not constantly threatening to take it away from you--a threat that is omnipresent in the lives of black men in America.
This is not the first time we have had this discussion, dear bigot. When the Baltimore riots broke out in response to the police-custody murder of Freddie Gray, you followed me around the house, barking in my face about how black people were undeserving of compassion or equal rights because they became violent. You were so smug that your blog post to that effect got 18,000+ views and thousands of re-tweets and atta-boys, as if others' sharing and agreeing with your racism made it right. Violence is done to African Americans all day, every day, in this country, and it is both perpetrated and ratified by the people in our society that are supposed to protect and lead us. This violence is accepted by an unfazed American public. Why do you have no outrage over that, dear bigot?
We have had numerous arguments in which I have done my damnedest to debunk your racism; after the murder of Michael Brown, after the murder of Eric Garner, after the murder of 12-year-old, unarmed Tamir Rice, and the list goes on. I have been close to kicking you out of the house, but my daughter loves you, and neither of you are currently able to support yourselves, so you stay. All you get when you throw a bigot out on the street, is a homeless bigot. So I will continue to try to educate you, dear bigot, no matter how bone weary I am of your irrational hatred of people unlike yourself. I would only ask that you open your mind. Give understanding a try. Allow that people different from your self may be just as human, and worthy of human dignity, as you are. Dear bigot, please grow up.
4:22 PM PT: Thanks everyone for pointing out something that I should have considered. I did not realize that this diary might be construed as condoning domestic violence. Let me make it absolutely clear, domestic violence is not acceptable, and abusers should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. What I meant to express in this diary is that I saw a pattern of condemning black people for a behavior, but affirming the same behavior when committed by white people. Apologies for not being clear enough.