Am I Allowed To Talk About This?

I’ve heard a lot today about the need for dialogue on the subject of racism. Most of those speaking seemed to feel that a dialogue should bee them telling everyone else what the facts are. I’ve wondered about this stuff for a long time, and I hope I paid attention because this is what I’ve come away with.

1. Only the recipient of the offense is qualified to identify the situation as offensive.
e.g. Vogue’s recent cover.
2. Caucasian people are not a race and thus can not be the victims of racism.
e.g. Duke lacrosse.
3. Sound bites from the presidents speeches are sufficient to identify his positions. But, we must hear the entire sermon and maybe a whole series of sermons to under stand the Black Church.

Let me stop hear a minute. One of these sound bites, as I understood it, claims that AIDS is a genocide plot of the United States Government. (I didn’t know Jimmy Carter was into that sort of thing.) Still I don’t see how further context could change my opinion. That’s pure paranoia.

I remember when Rodney King happened that I believed that the cops acted more out of fear than out of racism. I had personal experiences on which to base this opinion, but when I shared them with any black person I ran into I was told I couldn’t know what it was to be black. Correct, any more than they could understand what it’s like to be a scared white cop. Cops of all colors generally like to be in control of things. When the means that they employ to get control don’t work, they get a little uncomfortable. When the person they are trying to control continues to attack, adrenaline takes over. I’m not saying that it went down that way, only suggesting an alternative to the race card.

What the race baiters in this country have to figure out is that there are more sides to the story than theirs.


4. I have never met a black person that I didn’t like. (Check that, when a group of three black guys knocked me down and kicked me in Thailand for no other reason than that they could, I didn’t have much love for them. But, aside from those guys I like most black people.)

5. I used to think that there was such a thing as racism in the black community, over the last week I’ve been informed I’m wrong. (So I won’t tell you that I think Obama is a racist.)

6. The only bright spot in this weeks discussion was on a financial talk show on Saturday morning. A successful black investor said something to the effect that when a young black person breaks into the business world he had better get the chip off his shoulder before it gets in his way. (I have always felt sorry for those black people who let their culture force them to fail)

7. Finally, "He’s not really black." what’s up with that. Can I say some white guy that doesn’t behave exactly according to stereotype (typical white woman) isn’t really white.

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