Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
Got time for a small rant?	kindj	06/06/06
So I'm sitting in my office, recovering (slowly) from a long night of tending to my sick wife, who was up all hours of the night with some stomach thing. My secretary beeps me to tell me my 9 o'clock appointment is here. Stifling the urge to swear out loud, I push my personal fatigue and concerns aside to tend to the business at hand. In walks a young "gentleman" (a term I use very loosely), who happens to be African-American. I use that term simply because it's the current PC term of the hour. Whether or not the young man has ever even been to Africa is unknown to me, though after three minutes of conversation with him, I would be profoundly shocked if he could even locate Africa on a globe. But I digress. What really caught my attention was his T-shirt, which stated boldly with very well-done background graphics: "If you see the cops, warn a brother." It took every ounce of self-control I possessed to not lay into this obviously misguided young man. By wearing statements such as these, aren't members of the black community advertising themselves as someone who NEEDS to be warned if the police are around? If I, a white American (oh, I could say "Irish-American," but never having lived in or even visited Ireland, that would be just silly) wore such a shirt or made such a statement, I would be immediately crucified by virtually everyone for being "racist." If I were conversing with this young man about the missing baby from our town (who has been found and is safe and healthy, thank God), and said something like "it was probably some black person that took her," would I not be labeled a racist? Sure I would, and rightfully so. So is it just me, or does it seem like certain ethnic groups are their own worst enemies when it comes to race issues? In the circles where I live and have lived, which include military, blue collar, farming and ranching, law enforcement, faith communities, the "for profit" world, education, and institutes of higher learning, most of the white people I've ever talked to say that race is pretty much irrelevant to them, it's the quality of the person and their actions that matter. WHich sounds to me an awful lot like what Dr. King said in his most famous speech. I personally think Dr. King would literally vomit if he saw how a great many black people were conducting themselves today while at the same time praising him and his actions, and continually shooting themselves in the foot. Love me, hate me, disregard me. I don't care. That's what I have to say for the moment. DK
Answered By		Answered On
ETWolverine		06/06/06
Dennis, That was a good rant... I like it. Keep up the good work. Personally, I think that if MLK were around today, most of today's Black activists (I refuse to use the term African-American, since I don't say Irish-American, Italian-American, Israeli-American, or Chinese-American) would likely think of him as an "Uncle Tom". For all their professed respect for MLK, guys like Al Shapton, Jesse Jackson and especially Louis Farakhan are dividers, not uniters. MLK was successful because he got northern whites involved in his cause and brought whites and blacks together to deal with racism in America. Jackson, Sharpton and Farakhan are still stuck on "sepparate but equal" or "extra advantages for Blacks but not whites" instead of preaching REAL equality. And having rappers, who are the idols of young Black America, who sing about killing cops and gunning each other down over some slight (not to mention actually doing it in real life) cetainly hurts the cause of equality in America. Just what sort of appointment was this, anyway? I hope it wasn't a job interview... or if it was, that you showed this young, "proud", Black man a window to the world. Elliot

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