Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Dear White Friends

It has been brought to my attention that some of my Caucasian friends don’t know if they are a racist or not!  I know just the idea of this post is probably making some of you gasp and the rest of you salivate knowing me as you do.  Well, this editorial will hope to enlighten you that “don’t know” and bring to light to the rest of you what you already know.  Let me be clear, this is not intended to shock or offend you, this is just to educate you, because you just don’t know.  Let me be clear, I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him..., (insert wink, only if you understand).  So here we go, “Dear White friends”…, 
Take this quiz to LEARN if you are a racist or not.  Don’t be afraid, and please feel free to share it with others who also don’t know who they are.
  You are a racist if:
1. You have Black friends, but they are the “good ones”.
2. You think “those Black guys who the police shot would be alive today if they had only complied with the cops orders”.
3. You don’t want all of those Mexicans in this country.
4. You don’t believe Obama was born in America.
5. You feel that racism ended in America when we elected a Black MAN as President.
6. (Bonus) you think racism got worse in America because of how Obama did everything for only Black people.
7. You think Black people need to “get over it” about slavery.
8. You think Trump was right for saying there were “very fine people on both sides” of the unrest at Charlottesville. 
9. “These Black people who had the police called on them may not have been doing anything wrong, but it is okay for the cops to be called because, well, you never know”.
10. You think “those Black guys in Starbucks should have just bought something”.
11. You see an mixed race couple and think it is “a shame”.
12. You think the Confederate flag and monuments are about heroes and to removes them is un-American.
13. You think Santa Claus IS White and should be portrayed and drawn that way.
14. You have a lot of good Black friends, but you would NEVER date one.
15. You think the NFL players should just shut up and stop kneeling for the flag because it is turning the protest into a racial issue that is dividing the country.
16. Your definition of “Make America Great Again” is to roll things back to when “all the good jobs went to all the right people”.
17. (In lieu of the Roseanne situation) You think ABC was unfair to fire Roseanne Barr based on just a tweet.
18. Now, this was just a quiz.  How did you do?  Do you think you could do better if this quiz was “more fair?”  (That was a trick quiz question)

Look, racism is a hard discussion in this country, and there are some sincere folks on all sides that want to make things better but harbor racist ideas themselves.  Heck, I myself feel some kinda way, based on some certain situations.  I ain’t proud of it, but I work hard at trying to be a better me, every single day.  But if you don’t want things to be better between all races in this country or you think that you and your “people” are better than “those people”, you will never live in a better America, you just want to live in your own version of it.  But as I said, it is a hard discussion, but it IS a discussion that we need to have if we are going to make things better.  Discussion is part of what makes America’s Democracy the envy of the world, we need to embrace that factor and stop retiring to our own silos and complaining about how bad things are.  Democracy was not created in America, it has just been defined here better than anywhere else.  But Democracy is not the exclusive property of some people; the Constitution was not meant for SOME of the People.  It is said that slavery is America’s “original sin”, but it is not.  The “original sin” of this nation was to steal land from, subjugate, and relocate the indigenous peoples of this land and to this day, keep them from achieving socio-economic equality here.  Racism does not mean you have feelings of superiority against just Black people.   It means you feel that regardless of who anyone else is or does or how they treat you, YOU always know that “they” should not have more than you and you will work to do whatever you can to keep perpetuating that belief.
Let me let you in on a little secret, we are ALL in this together, ain’t not a one of us getting out of it alive.  We might as well love, respect, and get along with each other because hating someone else just gives you a reason to make your life poorer for the few minutes you have left.
Oh, and as for scoring the test; how many do you have to “get right” to be a racist?  ONE!

As my good friend used to say: America is a tough town, you snooze you lose, you can’t get everything you want, sometimes you can’t get nuthin’, but you can ALWAYS get somethin’, whether you want it or not!