Lvingdead and JellyJim, you make the valid points ... well done !
However, every last damn one of us ancestrally stepped foot out of Africa and spread across the globe from there. This is why I am both angered and tired about racial issues. We ARE truly a brotherhood of man and fcuk the bogus 'five degrees of seperation' myth that has been put about for too long - scientists have known this fact only too well through DNA/modern geneology for the last 25 yrs, yet they have laregly kept shamefully quiet on this critical info.
I feel that certain socities, where ever they are in the World, largely seek to distingiush themselves from eachother. Recent history ( I'm largely talking the last 2 /400 yrs ), plays it's part to greater and lessor degrees in many places.
Although we often talk of justice and fairness for one and all, the worst aspects of human nature are brought forward in terms of false assumptions about whom and what we are both in the here and now today and with regard to our ancestry. Yes, we must always learn from the mistakes of the past so as to avoid doing the same rubbish again, yet we must always seek out new truths which refute older perceptions, especially when it comes to matters of false racial stereotypes in particular !!
And, Nym, and I one of those 'Europeans' you mentioned and believe me, brother, I know more than you could possibly imagine about race and racism. I am of a mixed Irish, Carribean and English background ( to use modern racial profiling, which I am not in agreement with necessarily ). Here where I live in London, we are pretty much fully integrated and you can come and just view the substantial number of 'mixed' people like myself as a testament to this fact ( largely also relected in the vast majority of cities around the UK ). I grew up with all manner of perspectives on race and racist views. First up, my Irish ancestry suffered at the hands of the bBritish for over 800 through subjugation, that four hundred years longer than modern black slavery lasted. Infact, the only difference between your black slave and white irisj slave was that you had to put your Irish paddy in an outhouse ! Over this period of subjugation, nearly 1.4 million Irish were murdered and their land taken under racial laws, that is almost equivelant to the total number of black slaves that were taken from the West Coast of Africa across to the New World throughout the entire course of modern black slavery itself ! I read an interesting book called 'How the Irish became white ' ( sorry, can't remember the author name, but just google the title ) about 12 yrs ago now and it relates to early irish settlers in America - it is an interesting read alone for the insight it gives you into the early seeds of seperate development that more or less occured in the US from that point on !
Then, I loook to my Carribean side of the family ( mainly Jamaica ) and these people were invited here in the 60's to fill jobs. Socially, they found themslves being housed largely in social housing estates ( or, 'projects' as you call them in teh US ), where they came up against the poor disenfranchised end of the british white community. So, racial friction soon developed there, with BS views sprouting up on all sides of the racial equation. yet, we worked through this crap as a society and I think the UK was helped by the fact that it did not have directly racist laws being in place to disadvantage anyone on the grounds of race explicitly ( unlike in the US at the same time ).
So, swiftly moving on to the US. Your country is a land based solely on modern immigration ( last 200 yrs ). Throw into this mix, a dreadful painful history of theft ( Injun Lands ), displacement and entrenched slavery, with a shameful failure by your political sysyems and processes to end and redress racial issues until very recently in political terms, and it is no wonder that America has the divided approach to it's development and it's socities that it has ! I would also say that Black history in America is of the most painful of all the experiences in modern US history and I am too pleased that you finally have a president that shows that anything is possible for any American. it does bother me somewhat, however, that everybody overlooks the fact that he is infact as much white as he is black ( although, again, temper this statement against my own statement about us all being ancestral Africans anyway ), but perhaps this is again becuase of the slanted 'one drop' policies and entrenched attitudes of the American past ?!
Listen, I do apologise to those of you whom took acception to my 'God this and that ' statements in my first post, but I am a spiritual and religious brother in life, U know - no offence intended ! I just know that we are all a brotherhood of man and it pains me deeply dau in and day out to see us ever moe striving for seperation globally.
Peace is my one prayer for you all and myself.
Give a little more, expect a little less ... but always put number 1 first !
Live life and do your best to make it fit around you in a loving and productive way ....
It is about the Beat Kangz, no?!