Racism Part Deux: Letter to a Friend
Posted March 25, 2009

http://radnichole.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/racism-part-deux-letter-to-a-friend/

What you'll find below are three comments made as replies to the "Racism" blog of last week.  I've held the comments because ... they amazed me for awhile, but they shouldn't have done. They are in most ways all entirely predictable as a group, as a pattern that's easily discernable when someone takes the time to look. One of them I replied to privately. It was from someone I've come to like. And I replied to her because I know her better than I do the other two posters and found something interesting in her questions.

What I found interesting was what I call "the turning." How we turn away from whatever it is that makes us uncomfortable in a discussion or a situation. We like to assert an innocence within ourselves, or assert a flaw in our interlocutor, or something ridiculous about the subject of the discussion. Perhaps that a person may not write as well as I, or that they are drunk or silly or that they, member of a minority who is supposed to be discriminated against, doesn't buy that they are discriminated against. Or that we have suffered someone's backlash anger and, thus, are as much victims of discrimination and racism as are they.