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I'm sorry, this will be the last thing I address to you on this thread, but this sounds like a whole bunch of nothing.
Whether we like it or not, we do not have the say in where the damage begins and ends. We are dealt the lot of dealing with it. In my opinion, if we are not up to dealing with it - with acceptance, tolerance, understanding...we will never get past the point where a judge feels it is necessary to single out his own race for curative reprimands. It's like we don't want to address the very real impulses that led this judge to act the way he did. It just seems like total denial of what we all know is going on.
And to judge him for it, is just...on the internet, nitpicking - but in the bigger picture, irrational - to insert a self-preservative statement where none deserves to be. This is how it seems to me. And, it seems, to a lot of other people, as well.
The real issue is so much bigger than whether you feel like you are getting the significant attention you feel you deserve as a white person. I mean, think about it. What particular hardship in regards to your race have you faced in trying to go about your daily life? What psychological deterrents have prevented you from pursuing whatever you want based on your race, not to mention all the other anxieties we face simply by being human?
I think you diminish the after-affects of centuries of discrimination because you simply don't want to deal with it. But 'dealing with it' is the most significant step to countering it. Because once you do that, you can just concentrate on reality and how you, as an individual, can contribute to countering that ongoing anxiety. Forget guilt, forget resentment, forget your own exculpation. Once you just accept the reality, then and only then can you truly start forgetting the past. I'm absolutely convinced that acceptance is the only way we will get past this. There is no denying the collective experience of millions of Americans. Just get over it.
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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce
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