[KaptKaos]

The term "Race" to me is a misnomer. I don't know its origins, but it makes no sense. We are all the same species, proven by the fact that we can procreate with other humans of different genetic makeups.

At the root of all of this are cultural differences. "Race" becomes an issue when the cultural differences are easily defined by physical attributes. Then "racism" follows. It's actually ethnocentrism, but its not observed as such because technically, we are all Americans (apologies to non-Americans cruising this forum, but not to you Canadians, eh?) and supposedly of a single culture, but its not true.

Within America we have hundreds of sub-cultures, and the largest ones are most easily defined by genetic differences. Why? Because we profile. Profiling is a polite way to say we're prejudiced. We have pre-judged a person by their appearance. It happens in all walks of life, and its stupid to think we can eradicate prejudice.

What we need is assimilation of cultural norms. That is a give and take. White kids wearing baggy pants, black kids speaking with mid-western accents, Asian kids getting bad grades, whatever. And make no mistake, it is the children that assimilate, not the parents.

The problems arise when this assimilation seems to take all of the negative aspects of the various cultures and none of the positives. The dominant WASP culture doesn't like it when their kids wear baggy pants and say "wazzup snizzle", the black culture doesn't like it when kids "talk white", the Latinos don't understand when you want to continue on to college rather than get married and have 8 kids, and the Asians hate art school. These are just examples.

Reality is that anyone that calls someone a racist, is just as bigoted. The cry of racism is a knee-jerk reaction to silence sometimes (not always) legitimate discussion and criticism of the various cultures in our society. You can not ignore the differences, and we have developed a weird construct in society to deal with it. For example, as a white guy, I can't comment on the illegitimacy rate in the black community, but Bill Cosby can. It's like when I was a kid, my brother could beat me up, but if anyone else tried, my brother would take care of them. Until was get past this behavior, we can't fix these issues.

There was nothing wrong with Tony's anecdotal observations. He may have an agenda by bringing them up, but on the surface he said what he saw and asked a simple question: "why?" There is nothing inherently wrong with that. However, we are all hyper-sensitive to "racism" and cried foul for merely asking the question. It's not a slippery slope, asking the question doesn't lead to lynchings.

I worry that since we call everything "racist" that we won't really know it when we see it.

/end rant
//thanks for listening
///the thread killer strikes again!