Race

I am so sick and tired of Reverend Wright. I wish he would just shut up and care for his church members instead of spreading his brand of racism like a disease. I can't believe that someone would honestly believe that the government would introduce a disease like AIDS into any community as a means of controlling that community. How ridiculous is that? Granted, our government has pulled some real doozies but that is so far out of the realm of reality that I wonder if Wright isn't on something. Perhaps his 15 minutes in the limelight is just too much for a "humble" man of God. Rather than seeking to solve problems of inequality among blacks and whites, people like Reverend Wright serve to stoke the fires of racism. They don't want these problems solved because that would take away their excuse. As it is now, they can blame the white man for their lack of opportunities - never mind that a black man is running for president of the United States. Now, most of the black people I know agree that Wright is a crackpot. But the fact that he and others like him are even getting media attention is sickening. I am tired of people blaming everyone but themselves for their lot in life. Yes, some people seem luckier than others and their lives just a little easier but personally I will take my life over anyone else's any day of the week. I remember a woman who grew up in Fort Hall, ID (a Bannock-Shoshone Indian reservation) coming to speak to my PoliSci class in college. I still find the irony of her talk funny. Here she was, a doctoral candidate at ISU with a BA from UC Berkley, complaining about how educationally deprived her people were. She stood there and blamed us for the plight of her people. I was so taken aback by the audacity of her comments that I just sat there. I wish I had raised my hand and said something. There is no question that the US government has treated the Native American population unfairly. There is no question that they were deprived of their land and rights. But to blame me and my classmates personally for the current plight of her community was ridiculous. If the reservation school system is so poor, how did she manage to get into Berkley? In reality, her life was proof that anyone can do anything as long as they are willing to work for it. There is no such thing as a shortcut. The only way to success in life, spiritual or temporal, is through work. When people complain that it is a white man's world, I simply look at my co-workers. Of the six us in my lab, I am the only white male. You can walk through the halls in the hospital and see people from all over the world. The chances of hearing a conversation in Chinese or Russian or Arabic or Spanish are pretty high. Most of the grad students in my department are women. How is this a white man's world? I realize that my point of view (as a white man) may be skewing my perceptions of how things really are but this is how I see it.