Thoughts on a thorny issue.

Yes, it's still a thorny issue--racism. I assume most of you (whoever you are that read this if anybody does) are not racist at all and will agree with what I say. Well, agree or disagree, here we go.

The biggest thing I have noticed over the years is that racist people are extremely inconsistant. For example, if a football with mostly black players wins a game, the white racist says, "The whole team is great!" If they lose the next game, the white racist says, "It's those black people on the team that caused it!" It's terribly inconsistent.

Of course, racism can go the other way as well. To let everybody know, I'm white. I remember my first racist insult. When I was in Elementary School, I remember celebrating a victory of a football team with a black acquaintance of mine. I specifically remember him walking up to me and giving me a high-five. It was great! We won, the rival team lost. That always elevates your mood if you're into football.

However, the "us and them" mentality the next year went a little too far. Middle School came for both I and this guy. I remember seeing this same guy in the hall and walking up to him to greet him with a big ol' smile on my face and was about to ask him if he still remembered the victory. No smile came from him. He walked up to me and began to diss me because I was white. The basic message was, "I'm black, you're white. We don't hang out together. Stay away you worthless person!"

Needless to say, we never spoke to each other again. Black people have shared similar stories of their first racist insult with me, only theirs tend to be at a much younger age than mine. Looking at American history, this problem has significantly gotten better over the years in many different ways. However, there's still a ton of work left to do.

Let's look at another thorny part of the issue: family. There's enough racism going around that makes me believe that most families have at least one racist member. I also believe that one of the reasons interracial marriage doesn't happen very much in America is because of fear of losing relations with racist family members. They may be racist, but they are still family. The thought is, "Why be hard on my own family by marrying someone of the opposite race when I can marry a person of the same race and have no problems in that area?" In addition, people are often told be family, "I don't want you marrying a black/white/asian person."

And those are my thoughts.