PaperDog wrote:Chaeya, what remains is a very big and critical question.
There are many of us, who truly are sorrowful for what those generations suffered. We, in today's generation, cant undo those terrible things...
But there must be something that we can do today......How can we (White persons) make it right today? What must we change and how shall we change it ...to earn the Black person's forgiveness. ...Is there hope of forgiveness?
And Chaeya, You are wanted...! 
You got a man and a daughter who love you...and nobody can take that away...You were made for that and for all the love you can derive with it. ...
Thanks for your kind words, Dog, but I've already forgiven them. What I don't like is the lack of acknowledgement. The "oh quit whining and get over it" attitude. What I want is just to know I have as much chance as anyone else and not have to feel like I don't have it. I just want any and everybody to take ownership of the past - every race, not just white. No amount of money or a casino or whatnot can replace just getting some respect. Right? I mean, when I hear whites say "I wasn't born then and I had nothing to do with slavery," but I look around them and see that they won't afford non-whites the same opportunities as they would themselves, then yes, they are just as bad.
Hollywood and the media has done an excellent job of racially profiling and imprinting that image onto people to the point where you do see a black man walking down the street in a hoodie, you automatically think - oh crap, that guy's up to something. Heck, I even think it and I'm ashamed to say so. But yet, just as many white guys in my neighborhood walk around in baggy pants and hoodies, but you think "oh, he's okay." Honestly, I see anyone in a hoodie, I'm on my guard now.
When people see a predominantly black or Hispanic area they automatically think there's tons of crime. But I live in a predominately white area. And if you look at the police blotter for Huntington Beach and Newport Beach there's just as many thefts, stabbings, and shootings done by white people! A few years ago, this guy was at a party, and he fell asleep on the couch. This gang of kids dragged him outside and kicked the crap out of him for nothing, and the girls laughed and filmed it all. He was darn near killed - and this happened in an upper class white neighborhood. I never even knew about this until one reporter wrote a small editorial about it. But they make sure they put all the black and Hispanic crime in the paper so people will go: "see how violent they are?"
There's a whole white gang underground in the beach cities who will flippin' kill you if you get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's filled with drugs, prostitution, and all sorts of crime. But the media has convinced everyone that it's in the "urban" cities where these problems exist. Because I live across the street from an illegal alien community, they joke and call my area a slum, yet the problems don't come from them, they mind their own business, but the problems come from the white meth heads and their tweaker girlfriends fighting and carrying on in the area in back, breaking into people's cars, sheds, and houses.
Hollywood and the Media constantly casts blacks and Hispanics as thugs, hoodlums, drug addicts and other undesireables, and people refer to the neighborhoods in their own backyards and go, "yes, that's true."
A lower class neighborhood is a lower class neighborhood. It doesn't matter what color you are, you're dealing with people with little education and little drive to make their lives better.
I've had people automatically assume that I'm a single mother, I'm on welfare - I've always worked, I've never been on welfare! They think I don't know who the father of my children are. They think I grew up in the ghetto. I grew up in an all black, middle class neighborhood. But I had a normal picket fence existence. The men worked, the women stayed home with the kids. We had club houses, played ball, and outside of the normal fisticuffs here and there, we all got along. I went to summer camp, vacations, and did other fun stuff. But you don't hear about these black people, you just hear about the ghetto, so the image in the public's mind is Black people = Ghetto. Hispanics = Bario. Native Americans = Drunks.
But on the flip side of all this, the truth be told, I think that black people have regressed somewhat from 30 years ago. Many of the nice black neighborhoods around when I was growing up in St. Louis, got swallowed up by the ghetto element. Somewhere along the way, many stopped trying and bought into the negative element that rap music brought with it. I mean, I see how the whites in my neighborhood are trying to buy into that same element and many of them are making the same mistakes. They don't go to school, they don't work, they walk around with that "attitude" that they're entitled to something. And it's wandered over to the Hispanics, and the Vietnamese. White girls are getting pregnant as teenagers and not caring, many of them strung out on drugs. There are so many children of drug addicts around me, it's sick.
And since all the other forms of black music have gone by the wayside, like R&B, Jazz, Blues (that white people have taken over), etc., rap is all that's left and it mistakenly drills into the heads of young blacks that becoming a rapper or a sports star is their only way to success. These kids aren't even trying to stay in school or go to college, or try to make their way. There's still some, but not like it used to be. I get angered by the fact that at least other races have garnered some solidarity and their own networks, and black people haven't. If you want to talk about Hispanics, there are a number of Africans migrating here now, and so now, American black people will not have to compete with not only the illegal workers, but these Africans who are living in the ghettos and most likely taking the lower wage jobs.
When I was coming along, there was an element of black pride about educating yourself. You had black leaders like Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, Angela Davis. Men had pride in getting a job and earning for their families- despite the typical ghetto element that got rammed down everyone's throats.
So what to do? I have no idea. If I open my mouth, people get mad because you want so much more for the people, and you get told to shut up because I'm light-skinned, I'm half-white, I'm not one of them. Can you imagine how many times I've been left banging my head against the wall? I've already accepted that things aren't going to be fair and that I have to make my own way, and it's made me a very strong person because of it.
Maybe we're just in a dark ages right now and that we just have to do what we do and ride the tide until a new awakening comes along. I thought it was happening in the 1990s when something spiritual was happening, especially in music, and then when 2000 hit, it just died. Now it's just this stagnation and entropy, I feel.
Everyone of all races have bought into this "victim" mentality and this utter helplessness. They're so busy demanding that everyone accept them and respect them, but then they're not doing the same for themselves. So now, everyone's angry at the other and the walls go up. And again, the media perpetrates the problem by setting one side against the other, all in the name of sensationalism. I refuse to buy into the madness or allow the media to control my feelings.
Chaeya
