I appreciate your comments,
and unfamiliarity and negative stereotypes feed into everyones assessments. I guess the question here is are we going to PERPETUATE the WORSE stereotypes and enflame each others fears and allow it to become a habit in thinking and writing to assume the worse at every mention of others races or religion.
Or do we try to cultivate the assumption that we're all human beings and we all, for the most part, just want to have a safe place for our families to live, to prosper and to enjoy life at peace with those around us whoever they are.
As far as fearing other groups is concerned, well we all could do that, there are far more whites in the U.S. than blacks and there are in fact real white racist out there, sites like stormfront , neo nazi groups etc., .
congressional leaders are speaking to groups of known white supremacist. Kath and Jim tell me that Ron Paul is a racist. so by their account white racist are running for president. and the news says R congressional leaders and ron Paul have some broad support. So how are blacks to know the "good from the bad"? should we
assume that ALL whites are racist? and be in fear? would that fear make me a racist for making that assumption? would it make living with whites BETTER if i made that assumption every day every time i saw a white person i don't understand?
negative group labels and generalizations don't help make GOOD relations.
they may protect you in a bad situation but frankly most of the time we aren't in a bad situtation.
I remember someone here a while back mentioned that when she's in a store and a Black male salesman approaches her that she's afraid.
Now that's uncalled for, there's NOTHING in that encounter that should instigate "fear". It's based on race so ...frankly put...it's a racist reaction.
She mentioned that she didn't like sales people approaching her in stores in general, that's fine, but she added that since many were black it made it WORSE because the aisle at shopping malls and big box stores are "dark places"
(for those who might think i've made this up... link).
just an example of how someone's blanket negative assumptions spill over into areas where truly ALL black people are affected negatively.
So anyway I don't want to label others and don't want see others labeled in a broad brushed way negatively. it doesn't help improve any situations that i know of.