Maybe it’s living in a social media world, a world of reality TV shows, or maybe I’m just getting old (life experience) – lol! But I can’t take any more shouting from the world. And I’m about to go off on a rant about…

All the special interest groups speaking as if the rest of the world is “entitled.” In fact, I was just reading Write, Submit, Forget, Repeat and, sure enough, he started talking about “White Entitlement,” a phrase I, honestly, do not care to hear ever again. And not just because I’m white. It’s because it doesn’t solve the injustice.

I get it. In fact, I not only get it, I’ve lived it. I read Black Like Me when I was in high school and it changed me forever. I was a kid in Orange County, California when the Watts riots took place in nearby L.A. I moved to San Francisco in the late 70s, the hotbed of the gay community, unusual in its time. I don’t need to be “enlightened.” I don’t have “phobias.”

As a white woman, I dated Hispanics and saw how the cops treated them differently. I’ve been in a car with a white man and have been hassled and threatened by cops. I’ve been a woman alone and a woman in a group of women and have been mistreated by cops. Heck, I’ve been a woman on a bus, a woman in a doctor’s office, and a young girl in my home when I didn’t feel safe from a man in authority.

But saying other people are “entitled” is the wrong approach. In fact, that’s looking at the wrong end of the problem. Bullying people who seem entitled about being “entitled” isn’t going to change anything. That implies they have something they shouldn’t. Taking that away from them isn’t going to fix it when feeling less entitled.

Call a problem by its real name. Not pander, prop up, or politicize it.

And, for goodness’ sake, leave it out of a book on how to be a better artist, musician, writer, etc. Art is blind. Make the music, paint the painting, tell the story. Message received.

My ears only listen to the music.