thank you ... much appreciated

thank you m.i.j. ... that's great to hear! (but maybe clean up the i'm-too-fired-up-to-proofread typos first?)

you "chose this comparison specifically because [you] get frustrated by attempts to equate being black with being impoverished and urban"?

you may be hopeless, given that you cannot see the profound difference between the state of being black in america and being a metal musician, but because you are "completely open to being convinced on this" (although evidently too lazy to at least dig into the discussion here), i will spoon feed you a restatement of…

racism isn't going to end by people of color asking "pretty please" ... it will only end when the racist order of things stops feeling so comfy for white people ... and as you can see by the owie feelings being expressed here, white people can be pretty thin-skinned

i agree ... it is shitty for all involved ... but still shittiest for people of color ... which is why people of advantage, whether it's because of the color of their skin, their ethnicity, their gender, their sexual orientation, or their economic class, need to work harder at undermining their own advantage

yeah, all this finger pointing is such a BUMMER ... but maybe you can console yourself with the fact that an ignorant, white sociopath can still get ahead in this world ... if you were black, you'd definitely have to try harder

unfortunately, this is how you usually know if you are "enough" of an epithet to use it: IT HAS BEEN USED AGAINST YOU!

i think the point, bananabutt, is that white people need to stop and THINK before they emulate or comment upon traditionally black experience ... not because it reflects racial animus on their part, but because they may be offending others

it's sad that racism, whether reckless or intentional, remains a barrier between people nearly 50 years after reverend king's "dream" speech ... because of it, people who might otherwise be "soul mates" do not become friends and lovers ... because of it, peoples' achievements in school and in the workplace are not…

again it is one thing for a black person to make jokes that "black people don't swim" — just like a janitor might say at a company picnic, "i feel naked without my jumpsuit" — and quite another for a white person to joke about black people not swimming or for a ceo to say to a janitor "hey, don't you feel naked…

if you are white and your friend is black, he/she does not do the same to you, because since the day you were born, you were not equal in our society ... by all means, make "black people" jokes to your friends — they'll probably laugh or ignore them, because if they started correcting/debating/beating the shit out of…

as a white person who has been immersed in a whole range of white culture (from appalachia to the ivy league to hollywood), i insist that the vast majority of white people DO suck ... they suck either because they are sincerely racist, or because they avert their eyes while their families, friends, neighbors,…