Racism (again)

Roseann Barr made some horrible comments on Twitter, and abc promptly cancelled her show.
Starbucks closed ~8,000 shops in the US to hold anti-bias training for their employees.

Just those two things, in one day, exposed racism as a continuing national problem. Go one week further, when the NFL announced its new policy on kneeling during the national anthem, and it's more than a trending news story. Is it sad or ironic that corporate America made the first moves?

It's a hard topic to discuss. We've danced around it for years, decades, generations. Those who insist we're post-racial (because Obama was elected POTUS, after all) don't seem to appreciate that racism can still live, and grow, in the shadows of culture.

We're in the midst of a new "culture war", with a president (and congress) that got elected by appealing to the fears of white people, as they become a minority group. There are probably other academic explanations, but that's the way I see it: the US is a historically racist nation floundering on its constitutional mandate toward equality.

What do you think?

Some personal anecdotes: my dad walked out of the James Bond movie (Goldfinger?) where a white man kissed a black woman. He made it clear to his (white) daughters that we should never date anyone but a white man, preferably an American white man. A good chunk of my childhood was spent in Detroit suburbs, and he drilled us in the dangers of (black) muggers. My mom took us kids along when she volunteered to take Thanksgiving turkeys to the inner city poor, and she'd turn her wedding ring around on her finger, while telling us to close the windows, because the (black) robbers might want to steal her diamond ring.

My parents raised me to racially profile. It took me a long time to see they were bigots and racists. It's taken me even longer to check my own biases and prejudices in that regard. In the end, I'm fearful of men in groups. White men included. Because I've had some exposure to college fraternities. And here's where the racist card becomes the gender card.....