Pasadena, CA is far from "all white". There is a huge black population, especially in the northwest part of the city.

Ditto the previous poster's sentiment. I grew up in Pasadena, which turned out to have been among the most multiculturally-integrated suburbs imaginable--at least for those of us who attended Pasadena's public schools. It wasn't until many years later that I began to recognize how rare that experience was. Even now, when I speak with people I knew at some point in grade school/high school, we reflect on that aspect of our upbringing and give thanks for our good fortune to have had that kind of exposure during our formative years. When you grow up with friends, acquaintances, and enemies from every "racial" group, you live/learn the lesson that racial stereotypes are not only harmful and dehumanizing, but also useless.

Almost as much as I'm sick of white anger and obliviousness when faced with the issue of racism, I'm tired of hearing about white guilt. Being immobilized by guilt isn't helping to end racism, it's just another form of self-absorbtion. It's not solely the job of people of color to constantly confront and combat racism. White people who acknowledge the problem of racism also need to take action, speak up, and assume the risk of social stigma and censure that comes with confronting it.

From what I saw of the show(snippets on Oprah) and the interviews, it was the black family that came off judgmental, angry and mean.

Seriously, a whole freaking tirade about "yo bitch"? and "beautiful creature"?

Yes, the white woman is clueless and silly, and the white man wants to live in car dealerships in order to prove racism doesn't exist, but to be really ANGRY about it? Get a grip.

If you don't want to be called bitch as a term of endearment, just say so! Was it really necessary to drag it out and make the other person feel bad over and over again?

If you think that white woman is the worst poet in the room, just say so! Don't imply she is a racist because you thought her poem sucked.

How can we have any serious dialogue when some people are actually getting OFFENDED by the phrase "beautiful creature?" Am I the only one that thinks that's patently ridiculous?

They were given an extraordinary opportunity to really live in each others' skin, see the world through someone else's eyes and they squandered it on stupid petty arguments about language.

Ms. Havrilesky, I am a big fan of your acerbic wit and cutting irreverence. But your “deeply ashamed to be butt-white” rant regarding the show “Black. White.” is so wildly out-of-character, I’m wondering if it was ghost written. Heather Havrilesky whines, bitches, and snorts, but she doesn’t grovel.

I have not seen this show, so I can’t counter-analyze the antics of Bruno and Carmen. But I can ask you, Ms. Havrilesky, how would you have played it? Which version of “black” would you try to nail down with perfect verisimilitude before stepping outside in blackface?

Would it be the persona of the black woman from two doors down who’s name you don’t know because she is just as boring as the white woman three doors down?

Or would your model be the extremely-popular-with-African-Americans Lil’ Kim, who has earned a featured spot on the BET lineup for having committed a felony, and whose lyrics I will not be quoting here because I am not a sick pervert?

Perhaps you could imitate Dr. Loretta Long, the articulate and still incredibly cute “Susan” from “Sesame Street.”

Or would it be one of the 327,000 black women who spent their own money to watch that sequel to “Birth of a Nation” called “Soul Plane?”

Ms. Havrilesky, have you noticed that blacks have largely given up on the “You white people just don’t get it” routine? It’s a stupid comment to make in a cultural landscape so saturated with humiliating African-American grotesqueries that yesterday’s racism barometer can no longer be calibrated. When Bruno expressed surprise that he wasn’t called “nigger,” was he more surprised that he didn’t hear it from a white person or that he didn’t hear it from a black person? And if Renee believes that “Yo, bitch!” is not a part of “black lingo,” maybe she needs to put some Lil’ Kim on her iPod.

Based on your review of this show, Bruno and Carmen sound like fairly decent people. Save your patronizing rage and pity for the louts who deserve it.

The thing that resounds in most dialogue about “otherness” is a refusal on the part of those to whose advantage the system was devised to recognize the context in which the complaint, whatever it may be, is being voiced. When a white woman refers to a black child as a creature, it occurs in an environment in which black people have yet to have their humanity acknowledged by default. Black people’s humanity is contingent upon satisfying some number of white-defined criteria in order to transcend their race, to “not be like other black people,” which is somehow considered some sort of compliment. I’ve heard the same thing in discussions of Muslims and women, too. Would that I had a penny for every time I’ve heard someone express, with no hint of shame, how paternalistically proud they are that some moderate Muslim person or other is a shining example for all of the rest of those barbarians, without deigning to consider that those Muslims who are less than moderate have historical reasons for arriving at their stance. Is a “we were wrong” too much to ask before being, inevitably, further subjected to the willful ignorance and intolerance of the ruling class?

So, yes, they are entitled to their outrage. It leaves me bereft of any hope for our descendants that some people still don’t understand why.

"Of course, this show has Mamet's sticky fingerprints all over it, from the unrealistically sharp and somewhat leaden dialogue to the melodramatic, suffering-hero scenarios."

someone finally says it! to paraphrase Donne, "ask not for whom the metronome annoyingly tick-tocks, for it annoyingly tick-tocks for thee!"