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I was raised in a small town in which there were no black people. By the time I was 14 I had seen two black people, one a student from Africa that my mother went to college with and invited to dinner and another was an exchange student in high school.

When I was 14 my Mother and I went to U of I and lived in student housing while she got her Doctorate. There was a black girl my age raised in a small town in the south who had never been around white people. We became close friends.

We were amazed after seeing things on television and reading things that we were so much alike. We liked the same foods, music and read the same books. We would play canasta and try to fix each other’s hair. That is where we saw the most differences is in our hair. I had blonde fine hair and she had thick black hair. I could do anything with her hair and it would stay with a little pommade. She couldn’t do a thing with mine.

We started walking to school together. Once there she would go with her black friends and I would go with my white friends. This was in the 60s. One day I went to pick her up and her mother said she had sent her to live with her grandmother. It turned out that the blacks in the school had said if she didn’t quit hanging around that white girl they would hurt both of us. Her mother decided it wasn’t the best place for her to finish junior high.

I have been exposed to racism but it has always been towards me. In high school the hispanics made one of the bathrooms for Mexicans only. If you tried to use it they would take their knife out of the scarf around their ponytail and convince you never to use it again. I can’t imagine that happening the other way around during that time.

Yes, many of the blacks and hispanics have also been victims of racism but the only way to stop it is to stop it. No one is automatically racist unless them proclaim such. It has gotten so people can’t discuss race. If we were able to talk about it there wouldn’t be those divides. We are left with what the left and the media want us to believe.

Great post. Should be a column, too!

The most despicable thing I have seen in recent days is two former southern governors (then presidents) identifying opposition to Obama as being grounded in prevalent racism.

Both Carter and Clinton are beneath contempt. Carter is looney and has developed a “crazy uncle” reputation, but Bill Clinton’s blabberings still find a wide audience. For him to “play the race card,” after being on the receiving end of that tactic (and complaining about it) during his wife’s presidential run, is truly sickening.

And it continues today. We live in suburban Indy, and my son’s high school is mostly white but there are a fair number of black students at the school. That doesn’t bother me; my high school in Indy had about the same mix.

Last year some of the black students decided that there was an intersection of two hallways that they wanted as their own. There were fights and intimidation, and white students would not go there. My son told me they called it “42nd & Post” after a street intersection in Indy known for drugs, gangs and violence.

Since I know members of the administration and school board, as well as having some pull with the local constabulary, the problem has been taken care of. But if left alone, you can see what will happen. I am convinced that no significant race problem exists in this country on the part of white people. For those who would say that even the term “42nd & Post” is racist, my reply is “tell me you would go there at night.”