Ok, a little ranting and raving here. I am on the job search again. Yes, there are tears involved along with drinking, self-loathing, and just enough desperation any job seems better than none at all. These are actually the needed ingredients for writing the perfect cover letter. It's a pretty soul-destroying frustrating process that I've basically accepted and learned to smile through. Until I came across a job listing tonight.
First, a history lesson.
Now let's be honest- this country was founded on discrimination. It was founded by a group of white, heterosexual (at least on the surface) rich males who intended to keep the power where they thought it should be (in their hands) and created the facade of a vote to make people think that once every couple of years the power was in their hands and that they really were all equals. Discrimination and lies of course eventually gave birth to capitalism and consumerism thus creating the perfect foundation on which we lay all of our bullshit in hopes of building towards a better tomorrow. God bless America.
But here's the loophole. People eventually caught on. And there were protests, and lots of violence, and the past fifty years (and a few amendments later) America has worked very hard at implementing a mask of sorts we refer to as "political correctness". See, here's how it works. You can be a racist, you can be an ageist, a sexist, a masochist, a homophobe... you can hate anybody you want to hate (even yourself) for whatever mundane reason. You just can't talk about it. You can't advertise. You can privately discriminate as much as you damn well please, but you just can't go public with it, because then it becomes an ugly mess.
And we're fine with this. Most of the time being politically correct means twisting our words so what we're saying sounds a lot better than how we mean it. Or, as it's known in more honest cultures...lying. But whatever. Fewer tears are shed, fewer law suits are filed, and we're getting better and better through the aid of our government at filtering our anger out internationally instead of domestically.
So anyway the point of this rant and rave is that I'm on the job search and I come across this ad on VillageVoice.com.
NEEDED.
AFRICAN AMERICAN SECRETARY FOR BUSY MIDTOWN OFFICE.
$10/hr.
Benefits.
Ok. Now, call me crazy but I feel as if this politically correct equality driven society we're working really hard at achieving is actually being completely disregarded by the very people it was created to serve. I can only assume that this employer is an African American and not a Caucasian. Not because I don't think a Caucasian employer would want to post an ad like this. But you can be damn well sure they wouldn't do it out of fear of being deemed a racist or getting their asses sued for such open discrimination. Of course I'm not ruling that out- it could be a really really stupid white person- in which case you could just ignore this blog. But if I'm right (and I suspect I am)- I want to know when discrimination and racism suddenly became acceptable as long as it wasn't directed at a minority group. Because something tells me that if there was an ad in the Village Voice saying "SECRETARY NEEDED. WHITE PERSON ONLY" it wouldn't exactly fly. It probably wouldn't have even been published. Just like my sarcastic suggestion of starting the network WET (White Entertainment Television) is generally passed off as absurdity.
And that is just waaaaaaaaaay too much bullshit and hypocrisy to pile on top of our foundation. Eventually it's going to crumble. Now, if you'll excuse me I have an email to write to the Village Voice classifieds department. Because yes, I'm unemployed and have nothing better to do.