I need someone to kick me in the arse and tell me to bite me lower lip and take it like a man.  Take what, you ask?  A liberal professor that teaches at my University.  She’s not a bad person, just a woman that tries to push her views upon the rest of us.  I don’t think that politics belong in the classroom.  The class is supposed to be about Juvenile Justice. 

Everything she says revolves around race.  There are far more reason than race that cause juvenile delinquency.  Last Thursday, I had been sitting there quietly for half an hour whilst she ranted about race and how unequal things are in America between ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’.  Twenty or Thirty years ago I would have agreed with her, but not now.  A minority has just as much, if not more, of a chance than anyone else.  If you want to get technical, I’m a minority.  Blue-eyed people only make up 2.2% of the world population.  And, green-eyed people only make up .006% of the world population.  I’m somewhere in between, I guess.  Mind you, these statistics were taken from Wikipedia and are only estimates. 

There are several things that cross the line with me.  You don’t talk badly about the disabled.  You don’t make fun of Southerners.  You don’t make fun of Americans without expecting a retort from me.  And, you don’t make fun of the Irish without getting a counter from me.  I know what you’re going to say, if you’re Irish.  We don’t need your help, JD.  And, we didn’t ask for it.  I know you don’t need my help, but there is something at the core of my being that requires me to stand up what is right and to stand up for those that are not there to retort nonsense.  I’d stand up for a Yankee just as much as I would a Southerner, if I thought that he or she was unjustly being ridiculed.

Back to the professor.  She said that ‘white’ people try use the Irish as an example of Europeans being enslaved, but the Irish have never been enslaved.  “That’s a joke”, she said.  By this point, I had been listening to her for half an hour and my pulse shot up to at least 150 bpm.  I was so mad that my hands and arms were shaking.  If that would have been a man, he’d still be picking his teeth up off the floor with broken fingers.  It wasn’t necessarily what she said, it was how she jokingly played it off. 

With my arms still shaking, I went into a five minute brief history of Irish history.  After interrupting me several times, she finally said that the Irish weren’t scribed on the US Constitution as three fifths of a person.  So, I had to shut up deal with the rest of her rhetoric.   I didn’t have a comeback.  How in the effing hell am I supposed to come back from that one?

Then, one of the country girls defended saying the N word because it is in the media all the time.  The professor and her went back and forth arguing about it for thirty minutes.  There was no way I was going anywhere near that.  That would be political suicide. 

Going into her class is like pulling teeth.  It is the same old new age liberal bunk.  She has every right to be liberal and I have every right to be a Traditionalist with a tinge of old school liberal to mix it up a bit.   I know their playbook and she is reading from it word for word.  The 2012 election is drawing near, so they are pulling out every trick in the book.  One thing that they are pushing in the media is to perpetuate white guilt.  Why should I feel guilty about something that happened way before my time?  This presidential race will be about race once again. 

The sad thing is that most young people, black and white, know nothing about their families history.  How can a person make an informed decision without knowing their own history and the history of the country the live in?  How can we hope to not to repeat the past if we don’t know the past?  America will fall from the inside, if we don’t stop bickering amongst ourselves. 

The last thing I said to her was that we need to move on.  We need to know our history, but we should not be confined by it.  It is a shrine to visit, not a cell to be jailed in.  We are adrift on perilous seas with sails torn to shreds.  Will we let the winds push us into the craggy shore or will we work together and row towards the sandy beach?  Time will tell. 

I would like nothing better than to spend my life taking serene photographs and write poetry, but I can’t.  If I let the politicians and professors alike go unchecked, they’ll be no country left for my nieces, nephews, and my kids (big if there).  The old attitude of just letting them be will not suffice anymore.  I will be stomping the streets this election season.  Leave no stone unturned, I say.

So, onto my question, what is the best way to deal with this lady whom I respect but dislike politically? 

P.S.:  A few weeks ago, I contacted An Garda Siochána about interviewing a Garda.  They got back to me within a few hours and properly told me to feck off.  It was quite hilarious.