Racial tension yet again fuels talk radio tirades and agitates the masses.
Through it all, President Bush finally made his opinion on slavery known.
Despite a flubbed line that seemingly supported human bondage, the man truly dislikes the practice.
Yet, he failed to quell the masses.
A major league baseball manager ruffles major feathers when he declares the genetic advantages of black and Latino athletes. A Kentucky man opens fire on co-workers and some suspect racial hatred led him to target blacks.
And Bush visits Africa.
Some of these things promise to impact racial relations for a long time. In other cases, a bored media seems to be poking a stick into reliable sore spots.
Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker, coincidentally a black man, says those with darker skin can bear summer climates better than, say, people from Vermont. (We think he means white people.) Basically, Baker spouted misinformation and latent pseudo-science.
Oh, the games people play and the people who help coach them.
All the story seems to do is give an opportunity for whites to cry reverse racism.
“If he was white, they would run him out of town,” they say.
Lucky for Dusty, he is not.
Worst of all, the situation whisked away another lost opportunity to discuss issues of race that do not rehash the obvious.
It’s time to stop beating around the Bush.
Let us talk science. Let us learn the reality behind the hearsay that guided Baker’s ignorance. Let’s talk about isolated populations and the human timeline. Let’s talk melatonin.
Let’s talk about the slavery that brutally forced the coexistence of distinct cultures.
Bush talked slavery, but will not apologize for it. It was like that when he got here.
Good for him, because verbal apologies ring hollow in the chasm of time. Who cares that Bush still avoids a sit-down with Nelson Mandela, just because the civil rights hero thinks our leader is a doofus. If I refused to communicate with everyone who considers me a doofus, I probably wouldn’t be writing this.
A man ended lives at factory in Kentucky. The man once faced a reprimand for wearing a white hood to work.
Murder is murder, except this man might be a redneck.
Bush drones to an African audience that harbors a population decimated by AIDS and crippled by imperialism, both old and new. Parts of Africa teeter towards genocide and war.
Both instances seem easily explained at first glance. But these easy answers haven’t been helping very much.
Why do we kill? Why do we kill in packs? Think about the selfish genes that guide our destiny. Don’t take guns away. Don’t try to raise awareness. We Americans face the cacophony of pop culture. We won’t hear you.
I ponder the unanswerable, but I’ll be sleeping fairly easy.
After all, slavery is a bad, bad thing.
Amen.