Righteous indignation

Do you know any white people? Because I don’t. Largely ten years spent in the relative anonymity of quasi middle class America has thought me that only one truth is constant, blacks and whites live separate lives. We go to different churches, we worship differently, and we have different values while pursuing the same goals. We all aspire to a better life but differ strongly on our paths to that life, the generic certainty of suburban serenity will not be the lot of most inner city blacks. Where I can understand the fears of the average black person; poverty and random violence. I can’t really relate to fears of “keeping up with the Jones" and "Investing in the wrong 401K or IRA", when your present day is fret with immediate and present dangers you are less likely to be stowing away excess nuts in the eventuality of a long winter. Tragically, the farce that is race relations today is designed to guilt trip you into believing that all is well, after all we do have affirmative action and the civil rights bill to protect our constitutional rights. But you cannot legislate away prejudice, I can’t count how many times little white ladies jump back when I suddenly come around a corner despite the fact that majority of the perverse sexual misadventures visited on white women is by white males. I could vent on the hypocrisy of churches that supported segregation, then turned around and went on missionary trips to Africa to save the souls of the primitives in need of salvation. The religion is good enough for their souls but thier asses not good enough to seat in the same pews as a white person. According to a Justice Department report released in July 2003 about 10.4% of the entire African-American male population in the United States aged 25 to 29 was incarcerated, by far the largest racial or ethnic group—by comparison, 2.4% of Hispanic men and 1.2% of white men in that same age group were incarcerated. According to official data in 2000, there were 791,600 black men in prison and 603,032 enrolled in college. In 1980, there were 143,000 black men in prison and 463,700 enrolled in college. You see, the thing is that I know a lot of white people, we work together, go out together, root for the same teams and curse out the horrible economy and the evils of human indifference together. But I don’t consider them my friends, because of the same reasons people worry when they sight someone wearing a turban on a plane since 9/11, you just don’t know what their intentions are.