Color

We’ve had a week of death, nearly all of it race-related. What can we do now? 

There are African-Americans who want nothing more to do with white folks. I knew a professor who didn't allow white folks in his home, because they made him feel uncomfortable. He couldn’t relax and be himself around people with pale skin (and white privileges). Black separatists and back-to-Africa movements aren’t new. There once was a town in the Santa Paula area that was entirely black. That’s fair, and I don’t go where I’m not wanted.

At the end of his life, William Faulkner was writing that the long term solution to American racism was intermarriage. Eventually we will all be a tan color like President Obama. Given climate change in  America, that is a twice-useful idea. In the meantime, my view is that adults of good will might want to team up and that we should care about the feelings of each individual person we encounter, even if her skin is a different color.