Sheku Sheriff's Blog : Last Week in Racism

Magic Johnson

Being black in America is sometimes real challenge. I know it, because I am a black man who looks real black. No brown, no light skin, black as ebony. Oftentimes you come across some overt or covert racist attitudes or statements, but honestly you just don't let it bother you, you are who you are, the salt of the earth, nothing can change that.

I remember one of my first tastes of these attitudes when I came to America. I had gone to target to look for something and was standing in the aisle behind this middle aged white couple. Suddenly the man saw me and quickly whispered something to his wife. That poor woman jumped sharply away from me like Michael Jordan, tightly clutching her purse. I was just shocked and amazed. I had another incident in which there was this Russian lady who was really friendly with me at work. One day I met her at K-Mart and came to her to just say hello, my African manners. However, I was surprised because her body language was so different and she was so cold. It was only when I looked around that I realized that I was the only black person in the big store and this poor woman was very clearly uncomfortable talking to me!

The prime of place goes to a job supervisor of mine at a place I used to work called SimonDelivers.com. When I was accepted into a very competitive health care program at my college, it meant that I could no longer continue in my job as their times conflicted sharply with my classes. I had no other alternative but to either drop out of the program or resign from my job. I decided to do the latter, it was a no brainier.

Donald Sterling

I happily went up to my supervisor and told her that I had been accepted into a program at my college that would no longer permit me to work. So, I was handing in my two weeks notice. She looked at me very surprised and said, "Oh, my cousin too has been trying to get into that program for some years, but she has not been lucky. I guess as a minority you guys have species privileges." I was really taken aback by this statement. Here was this lady who did not know that I had a perfect GPA of 4.0 and had been an anatomy and physiology tutor at the college for over three Semesters!

Some people let these racist attitudes bother them so much that it affects the way they view society and it affects their own personal and social development. I don't let these attitudes bother me at all. In fact I just shrug them off. The thing is there are millions of white people and people of other races you meet everyday who do not have such attitudes, who see all human beings as one. When my wife was going through a difficult pregnancy, guess who was sleeping with her at the hospital, her white friend. She was with us everyday until that baby was delivered.

Sometimes prejudice is what we tend to see and concentrate on so much that it blinds us to the genuine good that is in all people. I had an Asian friend when I came newly to this country. I can safely say that had it not been for him, I don't know what my life would have been like. There are good people and there are bad people. There are people with racial prejudice, and they are in all races. These are sorry people. They have made their world small and would never enjoy the benefit of an open mind. They don't deserve scorn, what they deserve is pity.

Rancher Bundy

These past few days, racism has been so much in the news because of stupid incidents by stupid men. First one fellow who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan decided to go and kill people at a Jewish Community Center. Compounding the tragedy, the people he killed were not even Jewish but justsome innocent white people who had gone to the center. This person actually thought that only Jews go to Jewish community centers.

Now, why would you let hatred against other people build inside you so much when nobody decides their race? We are all born who we are, black, white or Chinese, purely by accident. You have no role to play in being black or white, it is purely a biological probability. So why hate somebody so much for being something they played no role in becoming?

Then there this Bundy rancher over in Nevada who has been squatting on government land, letting his cattle graze and behaving as if America was still the Wild West. Unfortunately the Fox News Network which has an agenda against any government that is not Republican threw their support behind this idiot, who to them was a symbol of their usual cries against big government. Unfortunately some one gave a megaphone to this new leader of the new anti-government revolution only to learn that he was a racist through and through, with demeaning statements against Latinos and Mexicans and telling us blacks that we were better of as slaves picking cotton. To him, every black in this country is a bum living on government handout. Even the fact that the President of his country is black makes no difference. The fact that most blacks in America work hard like every other American makes no difference, because that is not what he hears on Fox News.

Which brings me to the statements on tape attributed to the owner of the L. A. Clippers, Sterling, a man with a girlfriend of black and Mexican descent, who went on this crazy rant against his girlfriend just because she put a picture of Magic Johnson and herself on Instagram. I mean how crazy can you be, being a leader of an NBA team and making racist statements against blacks? How can you tell somebody not to bring a black person to an NBA fame when almost all the players in the league are black?

Prejudice is just blissful ignorance, most of the time. As President Barack Obama rightly said "When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk. That's what happened here."