How do we talk about race?

I have come to the growing conclusion that at some point we'll have to deal with issues of race in America.  I've been watching with growing unease how Americans have been making race an issue.  I've been seeing more and more stories that are far more horrifying than the ones reported.  If we show Zimmerman as he was, a bumbling ne'r do well, then we must also show Martin as he was, perhaps once he had been the sweet loving child that was paraded before us, but when he and Zimmerman had their fateful encounter he was anything but.  Even beginning to detail his slow slide into the violent thuggish life so glamorized in popular culture leaves us shaken that one so young could become so bad so quickly. 

Even more troubling is when you read a whole host of incidents documented on American Thinker.  It really starts to beg the question who are the oppressors in our society.  I hold no ill will towards anyone based simply on their skin color, and I can not comprehend anyone that does.  It's a concept that I really can't wrap my mind around.  In all my musings on the subject, I can not honestly tell the difference between the Klu Klux Klan and the New Black Panthers.  To my mind, it seems that if they were not so hateful of each other, they would get along famously.  I could almost imagine the long ago Chapelle Show skit called the "black white supremacist,"  and the hilarity of the Klu Klux Black Panthers, if such people didn't horrify me on an instinctual level.

Why is it we are not allowed to point out the abysmal state of both Black and Hispanic communities.  Why is it that we are not allowed to point to the violent crime statistics and ask the simple and obvious, if painful questions, that arise from the numbers.  If we talk about the police racially profiling someone, and the over representation of the prison population by Black males, shouldn't we also point out the violent crime statistics that state who is more likely to commit crime?  If we talk about harsh sentencing based on racial bias shouldn't we also talk about who is getting sentenced and for what? 

I have seen equivocation after equivocation explaining away behavior that we should all find appalling.  For all the wrongness of the Rodney King verdict, that does not excuse the riots that followed.  Displeasure with the Zimmerman verdict does not excuse beating up or even killing random white people (which Zimmerman is not).  When do we demand individuals take responsibility for their actions and cease allowing anyone to claim that they're a victim while committing horrific crimes.  Society can be harsh at times, but for all the aspersions and judgements cast upon us, it can not make you beat someone into a bloody pulp.

There is this sub-culture growing in America.  A culture of violence, intolerance, racism and misogyny  by all means we should as a society point out the horrible damage it is doing to a whole generation (perhaps even several generations now) of Blacks and Hispanics.  The thug life so idealized in Rap, Hip Hop, and, R&B  places no value on the life or love of a woman, constantly refers to drugs, and brutish behavior.  Killing someone because they wore the wrong color, just to prove that you're "real" strikes me as a pointless waste all of America could get behind in wanting to see gone.  It fills me with a sense of emptiness to see so many people acting willfully ignorant, willfully stupid, being praised, while those that work hard and try to actually succeed are treated as beneath contempt.

Worse than that we are forced as a society by some unwritten set of rules never to challenge or question the escalating conflagrations.  Were we to call out those who are the worst offenders, the worst chargers of racial epitaphs, we are instead labeled racist.  Is it racist to point out that the very songs that are churned out in some horrific assembly line process and blared in clubs and bars across the country could well be labeled as hate speech if spoken by the "wrong" people?  Nor that an entire generation of young men have unrealistic expectations that they'll be the next big thing rolling in $100 bills and have faceless women randomly grind up against them.  It has become racist to point out that a whole generations idols are slowly duping these fools into following empty roads that lead to an early death leaving behind 20 or so "baby-mommas." 

I've had several friends point out to me that I'm White, so of course I wouldn't get it.  Such people completely ignore the logical inconsistency of saying I can not understand racial issues because of my race.  I do get it.  For generations "leaders" in the Black community have told them that they are victims.  Perhaps once that was true.  At some point however, you are the victim of your own choices, your own bad behavior.  In an almost Shakespearean way the ultimate causes of our miseries are usually ourselves.  You are no longer a victim if you are a willing participant.

So this is where I am.  I am confused.  The very idea that the amount of melatonin in one's skin  might somehow affect the outcome of that person's life is a concept foreign to me.  I believe your own actions, talents, and decisions, even the manner of your barring are the only real measure of whether your life outcomes are justified.  I don't understand how people could accept that they are victims, when their grandfathers just a few generations ago fought hard for the freedoms they enjoy.  I can not understand a whole culture that treats women as disposable and interchangeable.  I can not understand forcing us to remain in a cone of silence while the problem festers and gets worse.  Most of all I can not understand why a culture that is clearly suffering wouldn't want to fix itself, why it would want to doom its children to an underclass.  I can not understand racial issues.  For that reason, I think it's time, and past time we have some serious conversations as a nation on the subject.