Jamaica Gleaner
Published: Friday | November 14, 2008
Home : Letters
Switching colours and all that jazz
The Editor, Sir:

Black or white, brown or coloured, African-American, Caucasian or whatever, good grief, if we all aren't sick enough of all this 'racial garbage and hypocrisy' by now, I predict we soon will be, especially now that Barack Obama is going to be President of the United States.

The news media should be helping but it isn't. On one hand, journalists typically condemn racist comments and, on the other, they glorify by exposure, every racial incident, issue, and poll question they can find, deal with or create, while expressions of 'racial pride' are only acceptable coming from the minority. I say, if you want to be proud of your race and run around calling yourself one thing or another and talking about it all the time, you'd better be prepared to take on all its failures and shortcomings as well.

For example, if you're proud of being white, then you'd better know what to say about the Nazi Holocaust, New World slavery, or the Ku Klux Klan. If you want to be proud and you're black, you'd better know what to say about the large percentage of young black men in prisons in the US, the recent genocides in Africa, or the fact that Jamaica, for example, has such a high murder rate.

Now, our dear Barack, who is both and neither, can be proudly claimed by either and almost anyone. So why not let him be white on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and then black on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday? On odd months, he could switch days to avoid discrimination. Then he could take Sundays off and be a human being to anyone who remembers what that is.

I am, etc.,

Ed McCOY

mmhobo48@juno.com

Bokeelia, FL

Via Go-Jamaica

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