Just An Observation I Happen To Agree With

No Politics

If you were given the opportunity to have a conversation with the leader of your country (no politics allowed), what would you choose to be the topic of conversation? Politics is too much of a dividing subject matter so to keep the conversation civil, I would prefer for you to steer clear of politics. The challenge is to choose a topic that would give you and your leader something in common.

For me, if I could talk to President Obama, it would take place in the White House. I would like to discuss movies. I would like to find out what his favorites are and why and what kind of movie he might make if he had the chance. I would also turn our conversation into a blog post.

Who is the leader of your country and what would you talk about, if you could?

Prejudice

You know by now that I traverse the web commenting on at least ten blogs a day to help increase traffic to my site and perhaps make new friends. Several weeks ago I came across a Xanga blog. The post “I Would Never Be Friends With A Black Person” was the one I read. It received almost 19,000 page views and 500 comments. I didn’t hit 500 comments until early last week for all my posts totaled. I was impressed and after reading the  post I wanted to share it with my readers. I cannot find my comment out of the 500 that were left, but the author, RadCookie just gave me permission to reprint her original post.

After you finish reading her post please leave a comment answering her question. I think prejudice is just a big a problem today as it was when I was a kid, despite having a Black president.

---

I Would Never Be Friends With A Black Person

One day, it was a Wednesday as I recall, I was sitting in chemistry class, filling out a lovely worksheet on gas laws. My table partners, Landry, Chris H, and Brandon seemed too occupied in some odd conversations about friendships to realize that the blank worksheets resting on their desks are due by the end of the period.

As soon as I found that the pressure equals to 4.91 atmospheres, at the glory of my founding, I listened in on the boys’ conversation. However, I listened in at the wrong part.

“I would never be friends with a black person,” Brandon proudly and cockily states.

My ears shot up, the pupils in my eyes dilated, and my teeth gritted. “You would never be friends with a black person?” I slowly repeated as if to make sure I heard correctly. Chris and Landry went silent and looked nervous.

Brandon went on, “Yeah, they’re just weird and I don’t like them.”

As these words came out of his little mouth, I weighed my two choices.

Choice A: Pull my fist back and punch his face with all of my force, causing his two front teeth to fly out. As he would be dazed by the pain, I would kick him in the balls… Wait, he doesn’t have any, which was proven by that comment he said. So scratch that, instead of kicking him in the balls, I will punch him in the stomach, causing him to scrunch in pain, turning into fetal position. To finish it up, I would drag his little body into the girl’s bathroom and leave him laying there, writhing in pain.

Choice B: Take a deep breath. Be cool. Finish your chemistry.

Choice B seemed the most practical, so I went with that. But instead of turning to my chemistry worksheet, I calmly said to that little boy, “My dad is black.”

Brandon nervously laughed and said, “Haha. Yeah, right.”

Chris turned to him and quietly said, “Yes he is.”

Brandon’s face turned the color of a grapefruit and his eyes shot down on the floor, avoiding any eye contact with me. Then, as if on cue, the bell rings and Brandon storms out of the classroom.

Now Brandon’s comment about not liking black people caught me aghast. I thought that racism in United States was something in the past, something that only senior citizens would participate in. Especially growing up in Washington State, nobody seemed to look at your skin color or make a comment about it.

Now, in China, a little white Texan boy crushed my Utopian thought that racism was a thing of the past.

Hearing Brandon announce his dislike for black people, my next thought was, What did black people do to him?

Of course, Brandon is from Texas, maybe it’s just the whole Southern idea? After all, they did lose the Civil War. But Dustin is from Texas too. Chris is not from Texas but he is a Southern boy from Louisiana. Landry is from Georgia, which qualifies as the South. So many of my friends are Southerners but I have never heard them utter anything about disliking black people.

Or maybe Brandon is just a plain a**hole?

I guess I’ll never know why Brandon, a sixteen-year old boy, doesn’t like black people. But I know that his comment hurt me, even though I am not black but my step-dad is, and I truly wish he hasn’t said that.

Do you think that these racist remarks come from the family?

Our Guest blogger for March is Nathan Pralle from PhilosYphia. Saturday March 6, 2010 Nathan’s topic is Time. If you’d like to, first stop by his site to get a feel for the kind of reading, insight and humor you can look forward to this Saturday.

.