Bad parenting is no excuse

I'm tired of excuses for bad behavior.  I'm tired of everyone blaming their parents for their own failings.  I'm tired of people blaming poverty for crime or the reason they're not as successful as they want to be.  I'm tired of the black community blaming the white man for why black folks in the hood don't act right. Enough is enough.

Poverty isn't the reason you're stealing things. Be honest.  Pretty much all the money gained from armed robbery doesn't go to pay bills or buy food.  It goes to drugs, alcohol and stuff you WANT, not stuff you NEED.  You didn't steal the copper from the church AC because you were desparate to make rent.  You did it to buy cigarettes.  And with all the welfare programs out there, even if you are desperately poor, you DON'T have to turn to crime.  You're a criminal because you WANT to be and NO other reason.

The white man isn't the reason the ghetto is a shit hole.  Race has ZERO to do with why you aren't respectful of your neighbors.  White people are NOT the reason you don't take pride in your neighborhood or why you don't do right.  They aren't the reason you refuse to wear your pants correctly or insist on using bad grammar.  The white man isn't forcing you to play your music that loud, drop out of school if you bother going at all, commit crimes, smoke weed, throw your trash on the ground, get pregnant at 16 or be confrontational to everyone (especially the police) to show how hard you are to your homeboys.  The white man isn't forcing you to do ANYTHING.  You CHOSE to act badly.

And it's not really your parents' faults.  Unless you live in total isolation, the world shows you what's good and what's bad.  There are billions of people on this planet and they are ALL role models.  It doesn't take a genius or even someone all that wise to recognize what kind of behavior is acceptable and what kind isn't, what actions get you ahead in life and what actions will guarantee you never amount to anything.  There is NO SUCH THING AS IGNORANCE.

You choose the kind of person you want to be.  There are no outside factors controlling your decision.  You either want to be a good person or you don't.  You either want to do good or you don't.  And if you choose to do bad and suffer the consequences, the only person to blame is YOU.

Cops kill white people too

The media has a double standard that drives me nuts.  When a white cop does something to a black person, it's national news.  One more case of white people oppressing black people. There are riots, social media goes wild and the rampant racism of our white majority is condemned by blacks and whites a like.  And the media plays up the racial tension to massive ratings, but it's not a fair portrayal and it isn't accurate.  Here I was thinking journalism was supposed to be about facts.  Guess I was wrong.

I don't condone racism and I won't pretend it doesn't exist, but when it comes to police brutality, I can assure you, cops are equal opportunity offenders.  And the media IGNORES it.

Take Gilbert Collar, an unarmed WHITE teen shot by Trevis Austin, a BLACK cop in Alabama.  Where was the media coverage?  Where were the cries of racism and the condemnation?  Only after the violence of Ferguson (an eerily similar event to Collar's murder) did ANYONE bring up Collar and the fact that his killer wasn't charged either.  And those who dared to mention Collar in relation to Ferguson were immediately deemed racists.  Because black people can't be racist and all white people must be.  Yeah, right.

Dillon Taylor in Utah, also an unarmed white man shot by a black cop. Where was the outrage?  The media didn't even give it a blurb.

Cops shoot white people too.  It's a fact.  Cops shoot Hispanics, Asians, Arabs and pretty much everyone.  It isn't just white cops that are too quick to shoot.  Black cops, Asian cops, Hispanic cops all do it too.  The media ignores all that.  They only care if it involves  a white cop and a black man because that's what gets the idiots watching their shows.  Double standard.  The media is the most racist entity ever.

Police brutality is not solely based on race.  It's CULTURAL.  It's in the training of police officers.  It's in the mindset and attitudes prevalent among police officers.  It's a by product of a gun happy nation.  If we refuse to acknowledge that, if we insist on making it all about race, we're NEVER going to stop the problem.

And the media should remember they're journalists and keep the opinions in the editorial column.  Get your facts straight and burn your race card.

Stop police brutality against EVERYONE.

Israel: Is it worth fighting for?

What's so holy about the supposed holy land?  What makes it more important than the rest of the world?  I don't think Israel is all that great as far as countries go and I definitely don't think it's worth fighting over for anyone outside Israel.

It's just land.  So it got a shout out in the Bible.  Who cares?  That was 2000 years ago.  Jesus doesn't live their anymore.  Muhammad doesn't live their anymore.  Neither of them imbued the land with any magical powers.  It's just dirt.

But we humans are petty, stupid little things and we fight over dirt.  Geez.  It's not even very pretty dirt.

Pay attention, sweeties.  God doesn't live exclusively in Israel.  God is everywhere.  You can talk to God from anywhere.  Israel is NOT the holy land.  The whole damn world is the holy land.

So give it a frickin' rest.  2000 years we've been fighting over this particular patch of dirt.  We're stupid.  Israel needs a reality check.  They aren't all that.  They aren't more special because they're Israel.  Jews aren't the chosen people of God anymore than anyone else is.

God made the entire world and He loves every bit of it.  Not just stupid Israel.

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherent the earth.  That's what the Bible says.

Israel, time to be a little more humble.  Time to come down from your self made pedestal and start being NICE to people.  Maybe then your neighbors would like you more.

Time to throw the race card away

There's no easy way to put this so I'll just come out with it.  Everybody's racist to some degree.

I don't pretend to know why.  Maybe it's just society conditioning us.  If behavior is learned, naturally our attitudes regarding race are also created by our observations of the world around us. We soak up the way race is handled by our parents, the media, etc and it becomes imprinted in our minds.  We then copy what we see.  The level of our racism would, therefore, be determined by our exposure to it.  So it makes perfect sense for rednecks to be more racist than liberals.  It's a matter of breeding.

Then again, it could simply be a biological predisposition to favor what is like ourselves over what is different in much the same way dogs prefer other dogs over cats. It's an unconscious reaction we aren't necessarily even aware of.  This could also explain our divisive nature over politics, religion and a host of other ailments, but some other time.

In the end, the reason behind racism doesn't matter.  The ugly truth is, there will never come a day when we look beyond race.  We're shallow creatures who form our first opinion of someone based on how they look to us.  Appearance will always matter.  The best we can hope for is a day when race doesn't bother us so much.

We need to stop looking at race as a whites only disease because that's not being honest.  Every ethnic group on the planet has it share of racists.  You may have been conditioned to not want to accept this, but it's still the truth.  Most white people aren't out to oppress black people.  A lot of white people aren't overtly racist.  A lot of black people are.  And so are a lot of Hispanics, Asians, Arabs, Aboriginals and anyone I left out.

It's not pretty.  It's hard to swallow, but there's the painful reality of racism.  Everybody does it.

But here's the rub.  You can't use racism as an excuse for you not making anything of yourself.  I'm tired of hearing about white privilege and the white man's trying to oppress you.  If it bothers you so much, get off your ass and do something about it.  Vote.  Better yet, run for office.  If you don't think the justice system treats your kind fairly, go be a cop or a lawyer or a judge.

Is it really the white man's fault that you don't take care of your own neighborhood?  That you throw your trash on the ground or are disrespectful to your neighbors?  What kind of person plays loud rap music at 3am anyway? Does the white man make you do that too?  Is the white man really forcing you to commit crimes (even smoking weed) or join street gangs?  Is the white man keeping you from getting a job or is it your lack of education?  Is the white man really keeping you from going to school or did you skip class today because you wanted to?  When's the last time the white man actually made you do anything you didn't agree to do?  You can think for yourself, can't you?

There are way too many successful people of color out there for your failure to be all due to your race.  These successful minorities aren't flukes.  They didn't pull one over on the white man.  Their skin color didn't hold them back so why should it hold you back?  You'll have to pull your pants and put more effort into school, but I think you can accomplish more than you want to admit to.

It isn't poverty or even skin color that makes the ghetto so awful.  It's the bad attitudes of the people living there and you chose to behave that way.  No one made you.  Hard truth is you're responsible for most of your own mess and you're the only one standing in your way to cleaning it up.

Listen, racism isn't going away.  There will always be someone out there who isn't going to like you, but you can't let that dictate your life.  If you want something, you have to work for it.  You have to say "I'm gonna succeed despite the haters" and keep trying.  Blaming your failures on someone else will never bring you success.

It's time to throw the race card away.  Time to stop blaming racism for you're own shortcomings.  It's not productive.

The real person holding you down is yourself.  Now fix it.