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.