Just because you're white doesn't meaning I'm calling you a racist

I just missed my bus, and I'm bitter. Mostly because I've been up since 5:45am--that's right 5:45am. And I know I'm playing the smallest violin in the world for a lot of you folks because I'm sure many of you regularly wake up early to commute to work. But part of the luxury of being a college professor (and I should note that I don't have children--for all you parents out there with kids under four, I think you know all too well what it's like to wake up at 5:45am, or earlier), anyway, as I was saying, the luxury of being a college professor who teaches in the afternoon is I do NOT have to wake up at 5:45am--the only reason I did was so I could catch a 7:37am bus so I could attend a breakfast meeting on campus as a favor to another professor.

[Why I missed the bus is a great question--I think it has to do with the fact that the bus came on time, and my kitchen clock is three minutes slow -- something I just discovered and probably never noticed because the bus is always late, except at 7:37 in the morning. UGH]

So I'm feeling a bit snarky and I know I haven't blogged in a while, so what is going to follow is a bit of a rant, that I may not have time to fully flesh out because I need to catch the next bus at 8:17am, and I've got my eye on the clock (with its now accurate time).

So what am I talking about today? Oversensitive white Americans.

Normally I try to be very careful about qualifying my remarks--because I'm not trying to make a claim that "all white people are this way"--which is ridiculous and bigoted and no one would take me seriously.

But there are some Caucasian Americans who, in my opinion, are quite oversensitive about topics of race and who are reactionary to boot. In other words, we may all be oversensitive to issues of race, but the subcategory of people I'm talking about is the Euro-American who claims to be left-leaning and liberal and then misinterprets a comment that someone says, and then gets very defensive and ruffled believing that s/he has just been called a racist. And they are OFFENDED and CANNOT BELIEVE that you would dare to MAKE SUCH A VEILED ACCUSATION.

I've recently had an odd number of run-ins with "OWA"s. And it always leaves me taking a deep breath and trying to rein in my frustration. Because in the instances I'm talking about, I was NOT talking about race or racial issues and NOT using veiled racial language.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar--sometimes I'm talking about diversity, and I really mean that people have a variety of life experiences--I'm not using "diversity" as code for "people of color."

I'm now VERY CRANKY because I just saw another bus go by my house (the bus stop is across the street from where I live) which means either the 8:17am is early by 17 minutes or the 8:37am bus is VERY LATE.

That's it. A cranky Monday. And now I have to figure out when I should try to find a new bus schedule!

[Update: 10:59am. I ended up driving into campus and pleading with the parking attendant at the on-campus hotel, where the breakfast meeting was, to let me park there until the afternoon -- even though you only get validated parking for 3 hours. We actually made a deal where for $6 I got to keep my car there until I'm done with all my afternoon classes. And this is a SWEET deal because normally parking is $3/hour. So thank you to the parking attendants at Southern U.'s historic hotel! I owe you guys one! As for the bus schedule, I have no idea what was going on--but hopefully I won't have to worry about taking the 7:37am bus again this semester.]