I'm a Racist, You're a Racist, We're ALL Racist Now

I am so tired of talking about racism. I'm tired of hearing about it. I'm tired of it being a word that still exists. I'm tired of people making an issue out of race even when there is no race issue happening.

I'm tired of people turning non-racial situations racial just because a person of color was involved. Take the Martin/Zimmerman case. Now, whether or not Trayvon was innocently wandering home (he wasn't; he was darting between houses and staring intently at a couple of them) and whether or not George Zimmerman followed him with intent to shoot (he didn't; he followed Martin to get a better idea of where he was headed so that he could tell the 911 operator where Martin was), the fact remains that this wasn't a case of a racist white guy shooting an unarmed, completely innocent black kid because he saw the black skin and hoodie and decided the kid deserved to die. He didn't even draw his gun until that "little kid" (who was taller, stronger and quicker than Zimmerman) was on top of him pounding his head into the pavement, and even then he screamed for help first.

But none of that matters to the race-baiters of today; the Al Sharptons, the Jesse Jacksons, the Ben Jealouses. All that matters to them is that Trayvon Martin was black, and George Zimmerman is "white" (even though he's not; he's mixed-race with black, white and primarily Hispanic heritage, and looks every inch the Hispanic. If he counts as white because his father was, then Barack Obama is white because his mother was). If Zimmerman had been a black man and Trayvon Martin was EITHER color, this story would never have made it past local news. It certainly wouldn't have been touched by Sharpton, Jackson, the NAACP or the Black Panthers. And it never should have anyway, because race was NOT a factor in the incident.

Whether or not you think Zimmerman's actions were appropriate, the fact is that the story spread is full of misrepresentation and outright lies. The best article that shows all this can be read here, but I'll give a few details here. First, the area Zimmerman lived in had many black families living in it, so it's not possible that Zimmerman saw a black man and decided "he doesn't belong here so he must be up to no good." There had been a series of break-ins in the area and the B&E artists had been seen on several occasions. They were young black males. Zimmerman saw a tall, muscular black man (not a small, cherubic-looking child). The man was behaving suspiciously, as I outlined above. It was Trayvon's BEHAVIOR, not his skin color, that caused Zimmerman to get on the horn to 911. What's strange is that if Zimmerman intended to scare, confront, shoot, wound or kill Martin, why on earth would he call 911 first? No anti-Zimmerman protester can answer that one.

I'll leave the rest of what happened to the article I linked to, and I encourage you to read it because it really puts into perspective just why the jury could have found Zimmerman innocent of murder. Now, I'm not putting Zimmerman on a pedestal. He's no saint. I understand he is twice divorced and was once arrested for battery. Plus, he's a liberal Democrat who voted for Barack Obama.

I was kinda joking with that last one, but it does go toward my next point, which is that, whatever Zimmerman's other sins may be, there is nothing in his past or present to indicate that he has a problem with black people, or a history of getting out his gun willy-nilly. If I had been in Zimmerman's shoes that night, I would have called 911 as well. The only thing I would have done differently is stay in my car, and even Zimmerman has said that's what he should have done.

But ultimately, in the eyes of the media, any among the public who ate it up, and especially people like Sharpton, George Zimmerman wasn't a man being put on trial. He was an ideal being tried and convicted by the court of public opinion. Sharpton wanted Zimmerman sent to death row (either legally, or by mob justice) not because he was convinced Zimmerman was racist, but because he could use Zimmerman to paint all white people as racist, the same game he's been playing for decades.

A Hispanic man named George Zimmerman who lived in a mixed race neighborhood, took a black girl to prom, has black relatives and even took up the cause of a black homeless man unjustly beaten by cops, was never the one on trial. Instead, the idea of George Zimmerman, whose name might as well have been Whitey Whiteman, a white racist hair-trigger who shot a black kid for being black was the one on trial. This man only existed in the minds of Sharpton and those like him, and those they misled. And he was a stand-in for every white person in America.

I'm white. I was on trial. If you're white, you were on trial, too. And we weren't on trial for murder, at least not in the minds of the Sharptons out there. Whitey Whiteman was on trial for being white and daring to be the survivor in an altercation with a black man. Because Whitey Whiteman is a racist. You and me, we're all Whitey Whiteman, and we're all racists.

Now, you may be saying to yourself "but I'm not a racist! I was hoping for a conviction! Plus I have black friends!" But that's the problem. You say that last part, and it just proves you're racist. In fact, the more you try to prove you're not a racist, the more racist the Sharptons of this world are sure you are. For that matter, you're racist if you don't have black friends. You're racist if you happen to have to cross the street and a black man happened to be walking your way when you did. You're racist for moving to a primarily white neighborhood because you wanted to be closer to your job. You're racist if you apply for a job that a black person has also applied for, and you get it instead of him. You're racist if you pass a black stranger on the street and don't look him in the eye. You're VERY racist if you DO look him in the eye.

So, how do people like Bill Maher or Chris Matthews NOT be tainted as racists, despite the fact that both have said blatantly racist things? Simple; they vote Democrat, support Obama, and make it clear that they hate themselves for being white.

Let me share a personal tale about racism. Once upon a time I was hired at a job that employed a pretty healthy mix of races. The guy who owned it was Oriental. Board members were Arabic, East Indian, Oriental and black. None were white. Among the employees at my level, a few were white, a few were Indian and a couple were black. My immediate supervisor was white, but I rarely actually saw her. At no point did I feel uncomfortable about working there.

A few months after I was hired, I noticed that one of the black employees that I worked with semi-frequently stopped speaking to me. I wasn't sure why, but I let it go. A short while after that, I was called into my supervisor's office and told that there was a formal complaint lodged against me. At first they asked me if I had any idea why that would be. I had no clue. I was upset, because I couldn't think of a single incident where I might have caused offense, and if there had been there surely wasn't any intent. The supervisor then explained that it was the black co-worker I mentioned above who had lodged the complaint. I then realized that was why she was no longer speaking to me, but I still had no idea what I had done to cause offense. I had worked several shifts with her before she had clammed up, and we had always gotten along before then. We had laughed, joked and shared stories. I wouldn't say we were friends but we were colleagues who worked well together, before she suddenly refused to acknowledge my presence.

It turned out, the SINGLE incident that caused her to lodge a complaint, and turned me in her mind from a friendly co-worker to a hostile one, happened during a call I was taking with a client where I was asked a question I didn't know the answer to. I put the client on hold briefly and asked the other two people in the room, the black co-worker who was sitting several seats away and a white co-worker who was closer. The black co-worker answered first, but she was sitting far enough away that I didn't hear her answer. I asked her to repeat herself, but before she could, the white co-worker, in a louder voice despite the fact that he was seated closer, answered instead, saying the same thing she said. He likely just wanted to make sure I heard it. Considering I had the client on hold, I said a general thank-you to both of them and went back to my call. The incident was such a nothing situation to me that it never occurred to me, even when I learned it was she who lodged a complaint, that she might have taken my actions as anything other than that I didn't hear her the first time. But no, she was convinced that I had deliberately decided to listen to the white person, and ignore her, because I was racist.

Now, I ask you, does any of the above sound like a racist action to you? Have you ever been guilty of not hearing what a black person said? Apparently, in any situation like that, if the first speaker is black, well then, congratulations, you're a racist!

Now, here's the thing. I didn't want to be the cause of trouble in the office, so I voluntarily went to her, explained what had happened and said I was very sorry for any hurt I had caused. She seemed to accept that, but still didn't look happy. After that, she didn't ignore me anymore, but she treated me like every action I took was suspect and wrong. Once, after that incident, I said something to her that was work-related, but made the cardinal sin of not addressing her by name. Later, when she was the only other person in the room, she cast a harsh glare at me and growled; "My name is [name withheld]" in a tone that suggested that the very fact that I had not said her name while speaking a very short sentence was a racist act. Later she and I were the only two people working on shift, and she was the senior. I had to go to the bathroom. I should explain that the job I was at didn't give formal breaks, and you basically snuck away whenever the work flow died down for a bit. So, I went to the bathroom during a slow period. Apparently, it got busy before I came back, so she decided to write me up for "abandoning" her and making her do all the work. I told her to go ahead, because I knew this time that I had done no wrong and that she had just decided that she had a problem with me. Nothing came of the incident. I'm pretty sure the supervisors understood by then what the real story was.

So let me ask you; who was being racist there? According to Sharpton, I am by default the racist, and at the very least I probably deserved to be fired, if not sued for millions of dollars in emotional damage. And all because ONE TIME I couldn't hear something she had said and someone else beat her to the clarification.

Would I be a rational person if I decided that every time a person of color appeared to be slighting me (whether or not they actually were), that this was absolute proof of "reverse" racism, and I decided to treat the person accordingly from there on out? Do any of you reading this, regardless of your color, think she was in any way justified to lodge complaints and treat me as she did?

Since my teens I've worked in a variety of jobs, and with a wide variety of people. I've worked with Protestants, Catholics,  atheists, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, practicing Jews, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, men, women, senior citizens, very young people, heterosexuals, homosexuals, people who loved to drink and talk about drinking, people who got offended very easily, people who got a kick out of causing offense, and, of course, every racial group or nationality imaginable. At NO OTHER POINT was I accused of any form of discrimination by ANY of them on ANY grounds.

Again, I ask, do you think the incident described was in any way a racial slight by me? Do you think the lady in question was justified? Do you think that whether or not there was any intent on my part to slight her, the mere fact that she felt slighted still makes me the racist bad guy?

Or do you think she was the one being racist? Now, some of you are probably laughing at the very idea, even if you don't think I was being racist. After all, racism is white people hating black people, isn't it?

No. It's not. And it never has been.

Racism is what you call it when you consider a person's skin color before you consider anything else about them. If you walk into a room and note its racial content before you note anything else, you're a racist. If you are in a small group of people and it matters to you whether or not they're a different skin color from you, you're a racist. If you watch a TV show and notice that most or all of the characters in the cast are the same race, and that bothers you, you're a racist. If you hear about a black kid getting shot by a non-black and you think "of course, because this country is so racist", it is YOU who are the racist. If a person of a different skin color than you does something that offends you, and you decide that they did it on purpose just because you're not the same race they are, you're a racist. Even if it turns out that they DID offend you because they don't like your race, it doesn't make you any less racist that you assumed it before you had the facts. It just means you're both racists.

And, for that matter, if you think black comedians are hilarious when they make fun of white people, you're a racist. If you like it when movies make white people into the idiots or villains because white people deserve it, you are a racist. If you are a boss who hires a less qualified black person over a more qualified white person because you want more people of color among your employees, you're a racist, even if you're white yourself. If you assume your black co-worker must be a great dancer/basketball player/lover without watching him dance or play, or sleeping with him, you're a racist. If you know nothing about two candidates for office other than that one is black and the other is white, and you vote for the black guy because you like the idea of more black people in office, you're a racist. If you continue to praise and love a terrible failure of a politician because they're black, you're REALLY racist.

And of course, all of that is still true if you reverse the colors. Because racism doesn't mean hating black people. It may not even involve hate at all.

Ever heard the phrase "the soft bigotry of low expectations"? It's not a very commonly heard phrase these days but it is probably the most prevalent form of racism in America today. It's the attitude that we should hold people of color to a different standard based on nothing but their race. And don't tell me it's because of abuse they suffered in the past. Unless they're still suffering that same abuse today, and they're not, you're basing it on nothing but their skin color.

"Oh, but they are still suffering today!" shout the racists reading this. These are the people who look at cities like Baltimore or Detroit, cities that are violent, dangerous urban wastelands, and declare that it must be white hatred of blacks that have forced so many of them to live in places like this. It can't be because the black inhabitants of these cities are for the most part racists themselves, and continue live there because they've been told that to do otherwise is "trying to be white" and being "a traitor to your race." They look at the fact that there are so many black people in prison and shout "victims of white racism!", without ever considering that those black people are in prison because they're actually criminals, and some of them are definitely racist criminals who mug and kill white people for being white.

Many black people freely use terms like "race traitor", "Uncle Tom", "House N----r", etc. and freely describe self-made, well-educated successful black people as "trying to be white", which of course is a horrible thing, even worse than gunning each other down. Just imagine for a moment if white people did that. Would we be racist for that attitude? Of course we would.

Black people with this attitude hold each other down, tell each other that success is wrong or to go work and live among white people is "trying to be white" and that makes them "Uncle Toms". They shoot each other in gang wars, impregnate and then leave their women, force their children to grow up without fathers. And they call any black person who wishes to escape that lifestyle race traitors? It's they who are the race traitors, and racists to boot.

Al Sharpton once said: "White folks was [sic] in caves while we was [sic] building empires.... We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it." For some reason, when a black man says this, it's not called racist (or homophobic). This statement basically makes Al Sharpton the black Fred Phelps. But for some reason, he gets his own show on MSNBC and personal invitations to the White House, and nobody goes on TV and calls him what he is; a horrible, evil, homophobic, racist monster.

Back to the soft bigotry of low expectations. Ever heard of Affirmative Action? Of course you have. Affirmative Action is the practice of hiring in the work place and accepting into colleges and Universities a certain percentage of black workers and students. They do this, ostensibly, to level the playing field. The underlying message is that black people cannot succeed without the help of benevolent white people. Somehow, this means that a black man who uses the system to get ahead is less of an Uncle Tom than a self-made black man. Huh? Which one accepted the hand-out from white people?

Affirmative Action may as well call itself Affirmative Bigotry. Sanctioned Low Expectations. Because that's exactly what it is. It keeps black people in a victim mentality, decided that the only way they CAN succeed is to work the system, or just simply ignore the system and stay poor and living in violent, drug-infested war zones. It sets a different set of standards for black people, telling them that they don't have to work hard or better themselves; the system will choose whether or not you succeed and you definitely don't have to succeed on your own merits. And now, a man who coasted through his life using his race to get ahead and never learning more than he wanted to learn, never bettering himself, is president of the United States. The message that the first black president should have sent is "It doesn't matter what your skin color is, you can work hard and achieve anything." Instead it was "milk your race to the system and you can coast your way along, even to the White House." The black population may not acknowledge that about Obama, but they see it. Don't tell me they don't. That's why since Obama has been elected, racial tension has only been heightened.

It's easy to just simply call white people racist and blame that on everything, and the biggest problem is, it's worked so far. But the good news is, it can't keep working. More and more, people are waking up and realizing that the problem isn't that they're racists. It's that racist black people, who feel completely justified in their racism, wish to keep the race war going.