[mburbank]

You like the way folks you are. You don't like the way other groups of folks are. They like the way they are. They don't like the way you are. Simple, basic tribalism and VERY hard to rise above. It's also scary.

I'm not saying it's not an issue. I'm saying that if people of good faith in all tribes don't make a serious effort to think things through instead of raising their hackles and brandishing clubs at each other we have a permanent stalemate. Vinth thinks we didn't evolve from primates, but on the oter hand, he accepts this kind of tribalism as basic and unchangeable human nature.

Race relations are never easy and they're very tense right now. If a movie screen illuminates a small group of people and one of them is your own dad, even if all the rest of them are black, I'm pretty sure blackness can't be involved. So stop concerning yourself with the blackness.

As to your desire to express your anger at behavior that annoys you for fear of being thought a racist, When I was kid, I suffered the same fear of expressing my anger but the people who would have beat the shit out of me would have done it because I directed my anger to them. They were all as white as me, but they'd have happilly beat me to a pulp. People are awful, and where race isn't present, they'll cluster into potentially violent groups along other lines, and find other compelling reasons to justify beating the shit out of each other. This is the human condition, and while difficult I suggest struggling against it. I think Race is a convenient way for us human/baboons to define tribes, but we always find a way. You can't make anyone else fight that tendency. You can fight it yourself, and while I may not be Catholic, I think this is our moral obligation, and what jesus was talking about in the sermon on the mount when he said "Love your enemy".