Sorry, Race Baiters; White America is Simply Not Buying it Anymore. We’ve Spent our Guilt and Moved

Until we get rid of the race baiters, the virus will continue to destroy lives that would otherwise be rich and full and successful

Mike Jensen / Canada Free Press

In 1984, I lived in North Philadelphia.  At that time (I have not been back for several years, so I can’t speak of the area’s current status), the area was almost entirely populated by black and Hispanic residents.  I’m white, by the way, and there were literally weeks that went by when I didn’t see another white person in my neighborhood.

I grew up in a small town in Idaho.  I had a few Hispanic, Native American, and black friends growing up, although I didn’t think of them that way.  Mario Hernandez was simply my friend, just like Johnny Hansen and Rusty Green were my friends.  This in my view is a good thing, but it’s not a good thing for those who want to perpetuate racial strife in this country.  More on this in a bit.

However, I will freely admit that most of the people I knew growing up were white.  That being the case, when I moved to Philadelphia, into a largely black and Hispanic neighborhood, it was my first time being the minority race in the neighborhood.

My first week in North Philly, I was walking down the sidewalk when a black man across the street shouted, “Go home, white boy!”

This took me by surprise.  To begin with, I WAS home, for heaven’s sake, or at least a couple blocks from it.  But what really shocked me was that here was a guy who didn’t know anything about me, and he had strong negative feelings against me simply because I was white.

Over the next couple of years that I lived in the area, I had a few similar occurrences.  Sometimes I was called names by black neighbors, sometimes by Hispanic neighbors.  However, these occurrences were far outnumbered by the acts of kindness of love I received from the numerous friends I made among my non-white neighbors.

Racism is not the sole domain of any one race

And on more than one occasion, when one black or Hispanic person shouted racially motivated comments at me, another of the same race told the first, in so many words, to shut up and go away.

What I learned from this experience is that, contrary to what The Most Unreverend Al Sharpton would have you believe, racism is not the sole domain of any one race.  Anybody of any race can hold negative views of others because of their race.  It’s pretty universal.

But what I also learned is that racism is a minority belief system.  Yes, there are those of all races who are racist, but they are vastly outnumbered by those who are not.

I have learned since those days as a “white boy” in Philadelphia that racism is largely a result of fear and lack of knowledge.  People fear what they are unfamiliar with.  They see something new and different, and they have an irrational, negative reaction to it.  (Actually, we could argue that from an evolutionary standpoint, this is not irrational at all, but that’s a debate for another day.)

The good news is (at least for those of us who do not have a vested interest in keeping racism alive), as our modern, “information society” expands, so does our familiarity with things that would have remained unfamiliar to those in generations past.

Especially for “millennials” (those reaching young adulthood around the year 2000), there is very little in the world that they have not seen on TV or the Internet.

It’s no surprise, then, that 91 percent of millennials believe in equality, and a majority says that their generation is “post-racial.”  In fact, in a recent study, 67 percent stated that race is not a barrier to accomplishment.  Most millennials aspire to “color blindness,” where society no longer even looks at a person in terms of race but instead sees all people as equals.

This is great news, right?  The upcoming generation believes in equality and color blindness!  Finally, a generation worth putting our faith in!  Fifty years from now, racism will be gone completely! For anybody who cares about race and racism, this should be music to his or her ears.

ONLY IT’S NOT.  In fact, this attitude really, really frustrates some in society.  And this, to me, is simply mind blowing.

For example, Blue Boat of Youth and Young Adult Ministries quotes Jamelle Bouie ofSlate Magazine, noting that the millennials’ desire for color blindness causes them to, “fail to see that of the majority of Americans living in poverty, the majority of people in prison, the majority of people targeted by restrictions on voting rights and the majority of people receiving a substandard public school education… are African-American.”

At the online magazine, Latin Post, Nicole Akoukou argues that “millennials are committed to a standard of colorblindness that’s so precarious that it leaves them uncomfortable with race, unable to take measures to reduce racial inequality, and can even leave them confused about what racism is.”

read more at CFP:

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/65584