WHEN RACE BECOMES REAL

Unless you are indigenous to this land, YOU are the descendant of an immigrant.

Yes, we're back on this point because a whole bunch of "white" folks--and especially billionaires like the Koch brothers and the politicians they've purchased through the American Legislative Executive Council (ALEC)--are getting meaner and making themselves crazier because they think the "not white" folks are taking over.

Of course, it's understandable what with the President of the U. S. being Black and all the Brown folks whose numbers are rising exponentially not just in birthrates, but also as voters at the polls. Why shouldn't the whiteness alarm be as deafening as it is?

That's precisely why it's the perfect moment to refresh our memory on the whole issue of who "belongs" here and who doesn't, who's "American" and who ain't, and who's entitled to what, when, and how much.  Read More 

These days it seems the best way for many white folks to actually hear anything about race is to have it come from the mouth (or pen) of another white person.

Ten years ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and syndicated Miami Herald columnnist Leonard Pitts nailed this form of racially-induced diminished capacity in his essay, Crazy Sometimes, in WHEN RACE BECOMES REAL: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories.

Bob Cesca performed this service more recently in what I call a White-on-White-Each-One-Teach-One Moment (WoW-EOTOM).

In Tea Party Is All About Race, Cesca took a woman's anti-Obama indictment and used her own frame of reference to show what she was saying made no sense. Or it didn't until Cesca showed it through a race lens. Read More