On Race.

There is no way to win. Whether you have white, black, yellow, or red skin. We all fall under the burden of white supremacy. We all shoulder this burden of guilt. We all stop ourselves. A culture of racism lives below the surface in all of us.

Among the minorities, the constant reminder of oppression forces us to at once hate and yearn for white help. We want to be individual, special, but in doing so we alienate ourselves from everyone else. But if we stand together we have lost; we have become what we have once hated. We succumb to our own stereotypes. You can only be truly black if you are a thug, you can only be Hispanic if you work low paying jobs, and you can only be Asian if you are incredibly intelligent. We buckle under the weight of these half truths. To break these stereotypes, you lose your heritage and risk alienation. To become a black policeman, to become a Hispanic lawyer, to become an Asian athlete, is it worth it to risk the loss of your family and friends for not being ethnic enough?

As a white, you feel the pain of your past racism. It's a painful reminder whenever we see the statistics on poverty or all those affirmative action stories. We wonder, are the mistakes of our forefathers really so great as to cut me out of that job or that college admission for the same reason they were discriminated against, the color of my skin? Or have the lasting effects of our dominance over them cost them their dreams and is that lost opportunity a fair price to pay for all that has been given to us at birth? We wonder at the perfect balance of payment and loss and our white guilt keeps us from viewing anyone as equals. It's an impossibility. There is no way to trust those taking your forced kindness, especially with those who have such an alien culture to our own. Who's to say whether or not they actually deserved their gifts or if they are just taking advantage of the color of their skin.

We suffer from the inability to find balance, even when one group achieves it another group shifts it out of whack again. The sad truth on race is that we will never be able to view each other as equals. Everyone is too different and too reliant all at once. We suffer from the dominance of the white culture and the self segregation of everyone else.