Yes, lets do talk "race"

As you local hometown White Girl, I believe that it my obligation to let all of my white friends in on a little secret.  SHHHH...you heard it here first. 

The secret is:  There is NOTHING that white people will ever be able to do to redeem themselves from the ancestory of racism and slavery that they didn't even participate in.  Don't even try to redeem yourself, you're just going to dig yourself in deeper.  Don't try to appease - you just can't and won't be able to do it. 

Desegregating schools, buses, water fountains and lunch counters didn't do it.  The civil rights movement didn't do it.  Affirmative action didn't do it.  Disproportionate amounts of welfare distributions didn't do it, free college education didn't do it - and even voting for a Black President didn't do. 

White People, you will never be able to fix the racial divide but you will be taunted every step of the way.

What brings on this anger?

I don't know.  Maybe it started with Barack Obama's comments about pictures on the dollar bills.  Maybe it was Eric Holders comments about Americans being cowards about race.  Maybe it was the Black Panthers at the Election Day polls in Philadelphia.  Maybe it was Bobby Rush forcing Roland Burris down out throats in a race to get votes for the Stimulus Plan.  Maybe its James Clyburn stating that governors who don't want to take "strings attached stimulus" checks are against Blacks for taking a stance.

It could have also beeen when we were asked - as a country- to believe that Barack Obama didn't hear a word that Rev. Wright said in his hate mongering racist church for 20 years..not a word of it...nope!  But while we are talking about Reverends, we might as well throw Lowery into the bunch.  He tried to reinforce the oppression of Whites at the Inauguration. 

I can't quite put my finger on it..but its one of them and I am tired of trying to figure out which one of the moves that whites have  made towards racial equality that makes us more racist than we were back in the days of the Plantations and the Big Houses.

Why is it that when race was a real issue, nobody talked about it - and now that it is become a non-issue, every Black politician on the planet wants to crawl out from behind the woodwork and begin a fight over it?

hmmmm.....

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This is my addendum to the first part of this entry:

I'm going to tell everyone why race issues between Blacks and Whites will never die.  Its because race is TOO powerful of a weapon to be given up so easily.  For the last half-century, Whites have lived with the guilt of some very attrocious things done to Blacks for centuries.  Was any of it right?  NO?  Is it over, yes?  Aside from some crazy whacko KKK members forging their way through streets in some small American towns, there really is no real open presence of racism.

The problem with giving up racism is that it gives White people the right to be forgiven and therefore no longer obligated to do more for Blacks to make it up.

Don't believe me?  Read Shelby Steele's book "White Guilt".  Dr. Steele is a Black author who will tell you in the book the very things that I am typing here.  Allowing White people to be free from the guilt of racism allows them to be free from doing things to make up for slavery.

If the bar for being free from the guilt of slavery is ever-so-slightly risen everytime that Whites do something to right the wrongs and bring equality to all, then they will never be free. 

Who would have ever thought that there would be a day when we would have a Black President?  Who really would have thought that?  I know many elderly blacks, victims of discrimination, who would have never believed they would see the day!  So, what happens?  We get a Black President and now we have Black politicians running around talking about how Whites are trying to keep them down.  Keep them down from WHAT?  Barack Obama - a black man - is holding the highest office in the country.  What is there to be kept down from?

Please bear this in mind, both Whites and Blacks - that ALL have the right to have their voice heard.  If you're Black, you have a pretty good base and get a free pass on your opinions of racial issues.  The press wouldn't dare supress your voice or stand in your way.  If you're White, the case is not the same - but thats because you more than likely allow it to be so.  When no concessions are given to either side - then - and only then will we be able to have real discussions about race.