Politics and Racism

As I've written before, the Foster Parent Association is in the process of accepting nominations for officers. There is only one person who has said for sure he wants to run for the president position. Of course it's not the person CPS intends to have be president, but that's another post for another day. The guy who wants to run is Mr Ling. He has indicated concern that he may not get elected due to his being a different nationality. I can completely understand, given our location and the makeup of the association, but I've been encouraging him to run anyway. He would be a refreshing change and is a hard worker. We have a lot of talkers but not a lot of doers and Mr Ling is a do-er.

The current president calls me up on the phone.

Her "I don't think Mr Ling will be elected president."
Me "I'd rather it be him than Mr Superficial Fundamentalist Gossiping Hypocrite."
Her "Do you think people will discriminate due to Mr Ling being Hispanic?"
Me "... uhh ... umm ... Mr Ling is Asian."
Her "Oh, he is?!? I thought he taught the Spanish classes down at CPS.?."
Me "He did. He is multilingual."
Her "Wow."
Me "Is there anything we can do to advocate on his behalf to the association membership so they won't feel compelled to judge based on ill conceived notions and assumptions about his skin color?"
Her "Huh?"
Me "Nevermind"

And then we went to the budget meeting and the woman who is BFF with Mr Superficial Fundamentalist Gossiping Hypocrite was there. She is running for my position, vice president. Everyone else already knew but didn't tell me. They didn't mind letting me take charge and get our budget done. They didn't mind tasking me with our newsletter, again, since the secretary is basically useless. They didn't mind asking me to change the wording in our by laws, type up minutes from a board meeting that the secretary failed to document, help with the physical work at foodbank, take over cleaning the resource center again since the woman who took it from me has now quit, and they certainly didn't mind hanging out after I left to gossip and/or complain about me. It wouldn't have killed them to give me a little heads up that someone was gunning for my non-paid job. Tell me again why I do this?

Oh yeah, to stay in CPS's good graces and keep my resume active.