Black, white, brown, blue, green, whatever. People will always have a racist mindset because humans engage in associative thinking. They associate behavior with race and class, as much as they associate cake and ice cream with a celebration. Doesn’t mean those associations are accurate or understandable or permissible, but it means they exist as part of the cognitive thinking process. It’s not about getting people to understand race divisions and the existence of a problem, it’s about getting people to stop associating behaviors with race.

Person A doesn’t play basketball because he’s black, he plays because it’s economically efficient in an urban setting (if that’s the case), and because Person A is tall and athletic (scarcity of tall, athletic people in this world) and because it can provide a benefit from a personal passion/interest.

It’s the approach of analysis that is key. I’m done baking my bread, might as well call it sour dough.

(How do the Lakers look now?)

Anyway, to indulge your point, it didn’t exactly help matters that most of the political right carries the tarnish of being on the opposite side of pretty much every civil rights and civil liberties advancement that has ever been put to paper in the last 100 years, before the world ever heard of Dick Nixon.

Whites of your kind were not ‘written off’–they, like yourself, were pretty open about not wanting to be a part of that kind of democracy, and more than often backed it up with your actions.

I’m white enough to be clear, and a Republican. I also don’t care too much if anyone else thinks I’m racist, because I know where my head is at. There’s absolutely nothing here to be getting worked up over.

Yep, I plead guilty to not knowing squat about race issues. And as a Right-wing Republican, nobody can teach me anything about it.

This is due to the obvious fact that we were written off, as far as “teachable moments” were concerned. After all, our most hated Presidential candidate ever (Richard Nixon-not even GWB can approach that sort of hate) decided to race-bait a bunch of Southern redneck voters in order to achieve victory in ‘68. The GOP was a dead-letter up until that point. After that, everything we did was automatically assumed to be racist, so we were exempt from trying to please “the right people.” And since we couldn’t please anybody, we Right-wing Republicans were free to implement things like Racial Profiling, and the media essentially ceded the floor to us.

It’s not my fault that folks like Bob Costas and Will Leitch forever lost opportunities to peer-pressure us Right-wing knuckle-draggers into having “proper attitudes” about race. And I frankly wouldn’t listen if those same white commentators were to regain said opportunities.

But then, why bother with me, Bomani? I’m a known racist quantity, right?

I also watched the Costas town hall thing.

Bissinger was friggin’ hee-lurr-eee-us to me, but on point.

By I like people in general, but I have a prejudice—I HATE STUPID PEOPLE..and that’s regardless of race, creed, color, sexual and/or geographical orientation.

Many blacks don’t want to hear it because for most of their lives they’ve had white people look them in the eye and say that racism either 1) doesn’t exist any longer or 2) if it does exist it is so small as to be negligent and blacks are whining over something that they need to get over. Now, this does not excuse whomever you have tried to talk to for summarily dismissing you simply because you’re white. I’ve had many fruitful discussions on race with people of varied ethnicities and classes; what is required is an openness on both ends. If you can’t get that, then everything fails. I’m sorry if you’ve run into people who are afraid to think and listen, but I would hesitate to say that this is the majority of black americans.

What happens most often, in my experience, is when white people want to have a “substantive conversation” on race it becomes quite evident that they approach the conversation mired in white privilege and they often refuse to accept the fact that they have white privilege. Now, your post shows that you seem to be aware of some aspects of white privilege when discussing race. That automatically puts you ahead of the game for many white people who won’t even recognize the idea of white privilege. I don’t think that means you have to “live” as a black person. I think that you just have to be willing to try and set aside one’s privilege and take a big view.

Now, most commentators, Bob Costas included, don’t recognize this. Thus Bomani’s post. They don’t have enough knowledge about race to truly talk on the subject precisely because most of their analyses reek of white privilege. It’s not their fault, usually. It’s not like our educational system attacks ideas of white privilege. Its not like the media tries to truly contextualize the ever-so-popular race discussions we are continually hearing. The point is that everyone needs to do more than just pontificate without information, bloated with white privilege or black angst, and look at the history and data that is out there. This requires everyone to leave their comfort zone and actively try and pursue this knowledge.

I’ve never felt more out of place than I did stepping into a seedy bar/strip club in Kathmandu. The Middle East was strange, but I didn’t get into the real parts of the cities - away from the airports and fancy hotels.

My friend just came back from South Africa and he says it was honestly one of the weirdest/coolest experiences he’s ever had. A big chunk of that was his experiences with race (he is white and was with a Chinese friend in a not-quite-Western place where blacks are the majority).