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The degree to which some will go to maintain their sense of innocence is nothing if not astounding. Nowhere is this truer than when it comes to white people (bless our hearts) and the desire to show our clean hands to all who might otherwise suspect them dirty.
You can see it in the insistence by white folks who have done or said something incredibly racist that despite our words or actions we are no such thing, and this we can demonstrate by virtue of our black friends.
That most who say this can’t actually name these black friends, let alone produce them to vouch for their racial ecumenism matters not.
Nor does it seem to faze them that even were their black friends real it wouldn’t acquit them of the charge of perhaps being racist. After all, as I’ve noted before, straight men are often quite sexist, and this truism is not diminished as to its accuracy just because we sleep with, date or even marry women. As I suspect pretty much all women can attest.
So too are we quick to deny racism on behalf of the country and the culture. As in, “Oh sure, once upon a time there were some problems” — the passive voice and understatement being things that white people…
