Wishing a Classmate Would Say “No to Racism” 

by Ernie McCray

I got an email from an old high school classmate that read: “Here’s a really good look at the problem of race in America today” in reference to an essay written by L. Todd Wood.

I seriously doubted that it would be a “good look” at racial matters as my old school chum finds pleasure, for some reason, in sending me articles that “prove” how Black people go about trying to fit into American society in the “wrong way” – and every way we try is the wrong way.

But I read the writing anyway, a bit curious as to what an ex-special forces helicopter pilot with a degree from the Air Force Academy had to say.

And right-away I could see where this man was heading as he wrote about how no one around today owned any slaves and how the Jim Crow days were of another day, yet today, he asserts, “Black America, for the most part, is still locked in inner-city gang violence and economic hardship.”

And then he asks “Why?” and further asks “Is it because America is racist or because of some overhanging White supremacy?”

His answer to those questions is “No!”

He lays the blame for Black people’s problems with racism on us, saying we need to stop playing the “victim” and blaming White people for it and it would help, also, if we ceased aligning ourselves with the Democratic Party and the leftist multi-cultural agenda which is “destroying the country” – not to mention that we’ve always blamed the system, not White folks and, unfortunately, the Demos are about the only group who at least half-ass tries to give us a little help.

He feels the problem is one for Black folks to solve alone and that can simply be done by us paring down our criminal behavior so we can get along better with the police AKA: stop going around looking “beastly” and getting ourselves shot or suffocated by “Mr. Do-Right” for trying to sell cigarettes or allegedly buy the same with a fake $20 dollar bill.

Then he warns: “Don’t kneel when my anthem is played” because “too many people died for that flag. You are free to protest but not then.”

And we’d better recognize how good we’ve got it being born in America where we’ve “won life’s economic lottery.”

[Text that was erroneously attributed to Wood has been deleted.]

I can say, though, that L. Todd Wood’s thoughts really do provide a good look at the problem of race in America today, a good look at what Black people have had to deal with from the time we set foot in America up to this very day.

But I just wish my old classmate, in the waning years of our lives, would stop sending me hurtful expositions like this and find a way to rise above our generation’s attitudes about race and become an ally with those of us engaged in the ongoing struggle for equality and, with us, “SAY NO TO RACISM!”

Like the younger generations are saying today.