OK - let's talk about Racism. Not just sound-byte about it.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6h5967

On the TV we see....the angry white men, the angry black men, and not one of them ready to solve the problem. To stop racist behavior, we need to know why racist behavior happens. We need to look at various examples. Multinational racism against Jews, Jewish racism against Palestinians, White Racism against other Whites, White Racism against Blacks, Black Racism against Whites (the habit of lumping all white-skinned people into one group, and calling them racist.) We can also discuss Black racism against Blacks. Many blacks were sold into American slavery by other Blacks. Also we can talk about Japanese racism against Chinese, and Chinese racism against...well... everybody. After we talk about all those varieties of racism, then we will have a place to start in getting rid of racism.

I personally take offense at Blacks pointing accusing fingers at whites, without always specifying which whites and where. To a black man I might look like an old white guy. But, I am half-Armenian. My grandfather's first wife and all his first children were cut to pieces by Turks with swords. Just over 100 years ago. That is only one lifetime ago. So my bloodline also knows about racial violence. And, I am not alone. Ask older Irishmen, or Hungarians or senior citizens from the Czech Republic what they know about oppression.

Some young angry black men seem to have no knowledge of the oppression of other races--- and our current sound-byte media encourages the idea that blacks are oppressed everywhere, and other people just don't understand their suffering.

We see the unarmed black man shot to death on the evening news.

And what happens next? Nothing useful. A whole lot of angry noise.

The useful thing would be to get a leading white supremacist on PBS, or on 60 Minutes, and give him a full hour to say why Blacks need to be eliminated from our civilization. By the end of that hour we will all see just how stupid and fanatical and ridiculous that kind of talk is. And there will be no further need to discuss the views of any white supremacist.

PBS and CBS will never do this, because they are afraid they would be accused of promoting racism. Or worse, few thousand people will agree with the white supremacist, and want to sign-up with his group.
So large media prefers not to broadcast the unedited views of leading extremist whites. To that, I say: How else will we know what they think unless they tell us? After they tell us, we can all decide whether or not they are worth one more moment of our attention, or one more second of airtime. My guess is 20 million viewers would no longer want listen to anything any white supremacist has to say.

And, if the goal is to change the behavior of racists, to change their world-view-- that is not possible if we do not know exactly what their world-view is, and how they got that view, and learn why they are compelled to hate other people. That is the heart of the matter. All racism-- all the varieties I mentioned earlier are forms of hate. I hate you. I don't care about your life. So I will destroy you, or I will use you to my advantage. Because I hate you. Because I am better than you. I might not even hate you. I might just think you are worthless.

Such hate gets inherited, often silently from one generation to the next. Are we ready to get rid of hate? Yelling really doesn't change people's minds. Giving people an opportunity to make fools of themselves works a lot better than yelling. One group of anti-racists showed-up at a white supremacist rally wearing clown masks. That's a perfect response to nonsense.