Racism? Maybe not.

At work, I think some of the black guys we used to work with thought I was racist. I know I can be dodgy and I know that it may seem disrespectful to not want to put on a big smile, wave and exchange pleasantries EVERY SINGLE day - especially considering that the work week seems more like one long day than a series of different days (so 99% of the time my status on Tuesday is exactly the same as it is on Monday, nothing new can happen, nothing exciting or worth mentioning has happened. This is what you get when you work 10 hour shifts.  I don't have anything new to report, so what's the point in asking?  What's the point in saying "hi" EVERY DAY?  It's nice, sure, but to me, the "Hi" I said on Monday applies for the whole week.) Forgive me for not wanting to talk about my exciting morning making my lunch.  Should I talk about the amazing dream I had last night?  No.

I can't really blame them for thinking I was racist. I'm a hard worker with a good work ethic, some of them are lazy and don't really care, or they just want to take their damn time, no matter the effect on other people. That's fine. But don't interpret my distaste for their laziness as racism. It's not. It's an individual judgment based on their individual ethos.

Now as a child, I was also subject to a lot of peer abuse. And I've listened to the radio and heard black people talk about racism in school (40 years ago). I listen to some of the things they say and I can't help but get pissed off, because I say to myself, "This guy was subject to many of the same thing I was". Maybe the kids were racist. Maybe they weren't. See we white people tend to treat each other like absolute GARBAGE. Black people, probably didn't grow up in a community like this, and so when they are subject to this abuse, they automatically think it's racism.

What it is, is a bunch of white kids who are simply finding the most obvious difference between themselves and the person they want to ostracize. Race is just the most obvious thing. If it wasn't race they probably would have been picked on in other ways - their hair style, the clothes they wore, the way they talked, etc, etc, etc.

The culture we live in is built to destroy people who deviate. Black, White, Yellow, Brown, Red, it doesn't matter. If you do something that is "unacceptable" to a certain group of people, no matter what your race, they will find a way to destroy you for it. Just because the issue is the color of your skin does not mean that this is the only reason they hate you. Hell, I bet they may not even know why they do. They are, simply put, psychopaths.