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I'm not prejudiced. I could be, could have been, easily, had I chose that course in life and decided to blame others for the evils that have befallen me. From the first time I got 'jumped' in Junior High by four 'youths', to the riots in the first couple of years of High School, I could have chosen a different course in life.

But life is what you make of it.

My black roommate in college and I got along quite well, although admittedly we haven't kept in touch. But for that matter, I haven't kept in touch with anyone from my undergraduate years. That is simply how it worked out.

Part of not being prejudiced, I discovered, was to not treat one's self as perpetually being 'put upon': I am not a victim.

I can honestly say I haven't had any troubles, but then I avoid situations which lead to trouble as much as possible.

There is no way anyone could tell me that I would not be greeted with suspicion (if not violence) while walking through a predominantly black neighborhood at night, even if I had just gone to the 'corner store' a mile away in the rain for an RC and some potato chips.

If I find I am not constantly looking over my shoulder, perhaps there is a reason, unlike a Rev. Jackson who admitted he'd be relieved to find the folks following him down the sidewalk on a dark street at night were white.

It is time to end the victimhood of being victims, however. It is time to level the playing field, remove the checkboxes which ask what my racial/ethnic background is, because, after all, in the absence of racial preferences and quotas where only ability counts, all that is irrelevant. While we are at it, let's get rid of "hate crimes", too. Not one was perpetrated out of love for the victim, and even the phrase is redundant (as well as flies in the face of 'equal protection'.

Sorry folks, but inequities of the past cannot be erased by heaping counter-inequities on people who were not involved in the inequities of the past, anyway, to benefit people who were not born yet. All that does is start a fresh set of inequities, a new grievance, and foster hatred for generations yet unborn.