My home life was wildly dysfunctional, as well, and I have faced so many personal challenges (homelessness, mental illness, child abuse, rape, betrayal by family members, a father who sold drugs and pornography to my high school friends) that it gets a little tiresome listening to others tell me I don't know what I'm talking about. Don't get me wrong: I've done very well for myself and have reached out to help others, because of my life experiences.

I also spent 20 years in Washington, D.C., where I was thrilled to go and have a chance to work on progressive issues I cared about. It was my chance to make a difference and although I am very proud of the work I did there, I also got to the point where I had to leave in order to hang onto my beliefs. Living in the city, though, taxed my beliefs and values when I experienced, again and again, a local political system, a local government bureaucracy, and a school board that operated more like the segregated 40s, 50s and 60s South than the post LBJ Civil Rights era. It was frequently the Black leaders (including Marion Barry and his cronies) who fed off the backs of the poor, mostly Black and Latino residents, and who smirked at and scorned whites in the city, while he kept on "living large" and being reelected every four years. And Black mistrust and outright hatred of Latinos in D.C. was just bottled up by the power elite. Latinos were kept "marginalized" by and large in one corner of the city, smoldering until a riot finally broke out in the area.

Yes. We do need an honest and ongoing dialogue about race and its effects and repercussions. But we really can't have it if there's only one mindset about what constitues racism, and only the PC way to address it.

God help us all...

"I won't try to excuse or justify that particular bit of conspiracy nonsense. Its a prevalent thought within parts of the electorate, so the most you can do is take it for what it is and work to change the dialogue to something more rational."

Which of course Wright isn't doing.

"Then again, given the company McCain keeps and the worsening instability we're seeing these days, the whole "End Days" mythology Hagee and company preach may prove to be a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Yeah right.

"I'll consider myself fortunate then, although you may want to think of getting a ticker skin."

I have a very thick skin and a broad back. I just believe in returning insults. It's good sport.

"Except I was, and in comparison to the nuclear panic Reagan caused and the decline of American political discourse and mores since then, the late 70s were positively calm and idyllic."

Sure. Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Islamist seizure of Iran. An energy crisis. A hostage crisis. Stagflation. Double digit interest rates and unemployment. The economy in the crapper. America being prepped to be a second-rate power. But, hey, it's okay because Carter bought the right 'tone' to the discourse.

"This is just a slightly more explicit version of what one hears on so much right-wing talk radio, beginning with conservative hero Rush Limbaugh. Why is there so much hatred and extremism in black churches? Let's talk more and more about all the racism and radicalism among isolated black people and ignore the endless bile that has long spewed forth from the far more powerful appendages of the right-wing noise-machine, exemplified by Instapunk's Easter meditation on race."

"Isolated black people"? That would refer to all the blacks you know. It is tolerance that exists only among isolated black people.

"While the dominant political faction in the United States built itself and continues to feed and nourish itself with this sort of endless exploitation of racial resentments and grievances -- and while it openly embraces far more powerful religious fanatics [like who?] who espouse ideas at least as radical and repugnant as anything Jeremiah Wright has ever said -- let's spend the next eight months talking about the controversial comments of a single, comparatively powerless black preacher and have our presidential election decided by that.

Jeremiah Wright "comparatively powerless"? What rot. He is one of the most powerful preachers in America. Since Wright's genocidal beliefs are shared by Barack and Michelle Obama, our presidential election should properly be decided by the electorate's acceptance or rejection of those beliefs.

Meanwhile, if the essay at Instapunk made your ears burn, the following one will set your hair on fire.

"Racial Dialogue in America"

http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/

2008/03/racial-dialogue-in-america-racist-rant.html

I would add to the mix of embarrassing associations episodes the re-raising of Sean Hannity's support of neo-Nazi Hal Turner. That, too, should stay in the public eye as much as possible. Democrats probably have stronger guilt-by-association attack opportunities--which I fully endorse--in the current climate than Republicans because Democrats have been so cowed and Republicans have been so unconscionably bold in espousing their more extreme views or backhandedly supporting their more extreme brethren.

Like Books? Visit www.newhavenreview.com

"It's always about the damn pants, isn't it?"

Yeah.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3zcrrutoVs

I read the above posting with the comments from Instapunk and the updates with interest. Folks, you need to get out a dictionary and get past the first definition of the word "nigger". Dictionary.com's second definition reads " a person of ANY RACE (caps are mine) or origin regarded as contemptible, inferior, ignorant, etc." With that in mine you can name off a few other "niggers" minus the black skin: Adolph Hitler, George Wallace, Karl Rove, George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, maybe even Instapunk. I could go on way past the 1000 word posting limit, but I hope the point has been made. So Instapunk, how does it feel to be amonst the rest of us "niggers"?

In boot camp at Parris Island, a friend of mine from Philly got raked over the coals, as we all did, by one of our southern DI s(drill instructors).

My friend, who happened to be black, muttered something I could not hear and the DI turned on his heel and got in my friend's face and screamed at him. "You *&^%$%^&*&, you think that I yelled at you just because you are a black person? You are nothing but a low-life recruit, nothing more or nothing less. You have a decision to make in life, Boot. There are white people, ignorant white trash, black people and stupid niggers in this life." YOU decide which one YOU want to be." I never forgot it and I bet my buddy didn't either. My buddy went on to receive some of the best awards handed out at the end of our training. How you view yourself is one of the most important things we need to learn in life and that's what I learned on an island in SC one hot and muggy day in August.