Jeez...enough already. Ya basta, know w' m sayin'?

Cyberspace really isn't the most productive arena for a dialogue with strangers on an issue as simultaneously emotionally subjective and politically loaded as "race and ethnicity." It's just plain untrustworthy. All too often, it seems to simply echo the tired refrains of American broadcast mass-media, what with the cliched conventions of reportage and editing, and the same old paint-by-numbers templates tritely exploited by the general run of its "paid professional" political pundit class ( vide Tim Russert, re: Harry Belafonte...who's next in line for that question- Oprah??)

In fact, the grim tone, lack of humor, and the vast amount of anonymous cyberspatial finger-pointing in this discussion is giving me the suspicion that the squabbling is primarily between self-selected teams of white liberals vs. white reactionaries- neither of whom have much personal experience of friendly acquaintance with actual black people. Although this being cyberspace, it's also possible that the abundant third-hand commentary and superficial anecdotes are actually being contributed by black people posing as clueless white people...or even the result of a disinformation effort by other minority groups, like the Eskimos, or the Russians...

Whenever one enters into a conversation on the Internet, it's imperative to bear in mind that interacting with text comments on a computer screen presents an entirely different setting than interacting with a human being sitting across a table from you.

To those sincerely interested in furthering cross-cultural dialogues and improving inter-ethnic communication, I suggest that the place to do it is out where human beings dwell in real space-time- not abstracting away about hypothetical situations; indulging in shorthand stereotyping- whatever the agenda; proffering just-so stories; name-checking from lists of famous/infamous pop-media celebrities; or other similar cheap-shot conjurations.

And make it funny, okay? I'm not hearing enough funny. That's no way to make progress!

You could start by accusing some of your black friends and acquaintances of their involvement in "sleeper cells", for instance...tell them that you're "hip to their game", "the jig is up", etc. You can try that routine out on your Latino friends, too, maybe some time in the mid-afternoon...warn them that you've finally found out the real reason for that "siesta" business...