Friday, January 13, 2017

Call Me Racist

Right now, here in Maine, a mini-controversy is brewing over the name of a major boulevard leading into the city of Portland's downtown area, the part where all the tourists go. It is being suggested that the current Franklin Street be changed to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, just like all those other Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevards in all those other cities that did it. Today, despite the more than 900 streets in America named after Dr. King, blacks still get pulled over for little provocation by police officers and are incarcerated more often than white law-breakers, so perhaps that whole street-naming thing might be falling short of the mark.

Oy, there's even one in Jerusalem!

I guess I could be called "a racist." I know these days we are all supposed to be "color blind," but I am not -- I actually see the color of people's skin. I try hard not to, but it keeps happening.  Further proof that I am a racist is that I don't automatically drop to the ground and kiss the feet of every person of color for no reason beyond skin tone. I actually wait to see if they are kind, or smart or have good qualities of any sort before I draw any conclusions about their character. This is apparently wrong behavior.

True, Maine has an inferiority complex about this whole subject since African-Americans make up about 0.7% of its population, making it our country's "whitest state." But does anyone (besides those die-hard, non-thinking, knee-jerking liberals) really believe that naming a big street after a dead black leader will fix anything?


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