Sunday, March 24, 2013


People of color can be just as racist, if not more.  (I won't go into the historical aspects...).

Having a fear of people of another skin color based on having been physical and emotionally traumatized repeatedly by persons having the same culture, skin color, ethnicity is not necessarily racist.

Branding persons with such past experiences as racist is blaming the victim and only deepens the trauma.

* * * * *

The one unambiguously racist incident that I recall over the past fifteen years was when I passed by a group of black men in the Central Area who making motions with their fingers pulling up the corners of their eyes, smiled jeeringly at me.

I did have a (white) neighbor who spoke disapprovingly to my building manager that I listened to television programs in a certain foreign language, though it was not the one she thought it was.

Most of the hostility and suspicion (80-90%) I have experienced over the most 20 years living in Seattle has been from African-Americans (12% of the local population).

* * * * *

But no one asks me for my opinion and I am usually too afraid to give others mine.

To tell the truth, I don't think people like me are asked for their opinions.

An  inconvenient truth.
We just reinforce the cowardice of society, that of others, and our own by not speaking.

Unfortunately for America, there is so much chatter (chit-chat, shooting the breeze...) that hides the essential truths and that passes for actually saying something.


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