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The Race Entry Part II

Marcellas Reynolds by Photographer Gabriel Goldberg
Marcellas Reynolds by photographer Gabriel Goldberg

It’s late, or is it early? I’m experiencing mind-numbing insomnia. Since I returned from Chicago, I can’t sleep. Actually, I couldn’t sleep in Chicago. There I thought it was the time difference. Insomnia is the worst. I can’t get to sleep until 5 or 6 am, but I sleep till 1 or 2 in the afternoon once I do. It’s vampire hours. It’s 3 am, and I’m headed to bed, but I just checked my email. I got what I consider an ugly response to The Race Entry, my most responded to and read blog entry thus far. Yeah, I keep track of that. At first, I didn’t want to publish it, as it was anonymous, which I don’t like. I went as far as to not publish it under comments. I hit the reject button, but these replies get emailed to me so I had the copy. I walked away from it and came back. Here it is:

Black has left a new comment on your post, The Race Entry.

I agree with anonymous. It’s hard for me to think of dating a white guy without thinking about the systematic rape, torture, and murder of millions of Africans and people of African descent. We are only two generations from lynchings unless you count Diallo, Dorismond, and others killed by police. In my mind, white boys are colonizers, and to have one touch my body reminds me of the black men who were raped in the past against their will by gay slave owners. I have had white friends tell me that they wouldn’t marry any woman of color because they didn’t want their kids to lose white privilege; I respect their honesty. Segregation wasn’t so bad.

It’s ugly. I can’t decide if someone was mean or if this is their truth. It’s well written, contains facts, and there are no misspellings. But it’s hard. Cold. Segregation. Rape. Brutality. It’s all there.

There are so many things that make us, us. I wish we were all blind, or it was 200 years from now, and we were all that wonderful mixed-race human. The one scientist say we are headed towards becoming. She is beautiful, and he is handsome, and they don’t think about race.

2 thoughts on “The Race Entry Part II”

  1. Here! Here! I too believe that it’s learned. You see it everyday now. This modern mixing of friends of all races. You also see it in this new approach kids have to homosexuality. I meet so many young gay kids who are out and have friends and tell me it doesn’t matter. Believe me it wasn’t that way w/me growing up. I’ve been called fag more times than I care to recall!

    As far as this poster and the whole gay slavery thing: inflammatory speech. It’s never crossed my mind that gay slave owners raped black men. That sounds like a bad gay porn. Not that it didn’t happen. Anything is possible I suppose but why would that be relevant to anyone now? Not slavery itself but the thought of it precluding someone from being touched by… It’s just too much.

  2. I find it sad that someone is so unhappy in their own life that they cannot see people as individuals and instead must assign them to a group in order to deal with the world. I’m reminded of my birthday party when I was in 1st grade. I had a black friend, Rachel, that I wanted to come over for it. I think there were about 10 kids at my party, and she was the only black child. I didn’t notice; all that mattered to me was that Rachel was there because she could make me laugh like nobody else. It was only years later after I got older that my mom told me my parents wondered if it would be ok AND Rachel’s parents were concerned too.

    The point is, as children we don’t see race. We learn it. And I’d like to believe that it becomes less and less of an issue with each generation. Were segregation still in place, race would always be an issue.

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