I know this one is going to get me in hot water with those who don't actually read every word of a post, but I have to give my two cents worth anyway.

My outward skin color is white. When I was in retail management, the majority of my employees were outwardly black colored. Why? Because in Germany, the vast majority of the military is of outward black or brown color. It was such a pain in the ass getting the right number of "ethnic" Barbies in my toystore. I kept telling the stupid manufacturers that I had three black women to every one white woman, so why in the hell would I need 4 times as many white Barbies?!?!? Anyway, let me get back to what I was saying.

I had to make damn sure that I had every incident of misbehaviour by a black employee on video. Why? Because every time I wrote up a black employee for misbehaviour on the job, they would come back with me being racist. I couldn't figure it out. I got so pissed off once that I actually asked an employee if her taking a 45 minute cigarette break in the middle of lunch rush would not be considered WRONG if I was black myself. She couldn't answer that. Finally, after having written up one teen black employee numerous times, I caught her on security video in the back of the toy store area with children running around, dry fucking her boyfriend! They were fully clothed, but they were basically grinding their junk all up and down each other and kissing passionately. Mind you, she was on my time, not hers, and in my uniform! So I fired her on the spot. I told her to remove the uniform put on her clothes and get out. HEr parents came back an hour later screaming profanities at me and I simply called my boss. She is also outwardly white. We all went into the office, me with a video tape in hand, and they proceeded to call us all racists bitches. To which my manager pulled out the picture of her BLACK daughter, and her BLACK husband. Well, they got so flustered that they then started yelling that I was the racist at least, that I always give my black employees a hard time. (I had three german employees, and one white male employee, so most of my employees were black) At this point, I produced the video showing their 17 year old daughter in full freak, and the father apologized to me and they got up and left. No other words were exchanged.

I give you this example of my experiences in the business world because wherever I have worked, I was the minority. I am am outwardly white, I am not white, but they don't know that. They see white skin and automatically, everything out of my mouth will be racist. That to me is a pretty fucking racist way to think. I have been the minority to hispanic businesses, Hindu businesses, and black businesses. Only now am I in the majority, because I am in a field that has very few if any black men, let alone any women of any color. I have yet to be accused of racism for any thing I say, but damned if I don't see it in mnay of those in this field. When Ray Charles passed away, I nearly punched a fellow intern. The words out of his mouth made my blood curdle. I have an uphill battle in front of me, because I no longer have to be the one accused of being a racist by racist blacks, now I have to listen to racial slurs from racist whites.

It's hard to be the odd woman out. It's hard to be the ONE person in a group that sees people and not what their amount of skin pigmentation is. When I tell people I am not white, the don't believe me, simply because my skin pigment is white. Racism is alive and well in this country, but you dare stand there and believe that it's whites against blacks. It's also blacks against whites, blacks against jews, hispanics against whites, whites against hispanics, blacks and hispanics get along only in some places, but they still are against each other in most. People in this world simply suck. Racism is not a problem endemic to America. Intolerance and hatred is endemic to humanity.

Racism will never end as long as people are taught to be outrageously proud of their racial heritage. As long as we espouse the virtues of race, then racism will exist. Instead of teaching our children how this great BLACK American invented something, or this great CHINESE American invented someone, let's lose the references to racial background and just show the damn picture. Stop mentioning the importance of racial background and just start harping on the fact that he/she/it was a great HUMAN BEING, a worthy human being. I am not saying that we need to stop teaching about the history of slavery in the world, to include the brief time that black slaves and white indentured slaves were in America, (and let's not forget the current foreign national slaves working the American underground), but let's stop shoving race down our children's throats and let them see PEOPLE, and not COLOR. Children learn from us, and if we harp on skin color all the time, they will too.