I would go to those places, but honestly how do you think my message will be taken in a black/Latino community or as a white Yankee that moved down south? The people who should be addressing this are people within the communities that don't buy into racism or lies.
Have you ever considered that a black man from urban Memphis has had a racial experience in life that is utterly unfathomable to you? And thus, their experience of racism isn't a "LIE," it is a difference that you can't conceive, because you have no idea what it means to grow up black in America.
I bet you have never experienced people not looking you in the eye, fearing you, locking car doors around you, assuming you're a criminal in stores.
Have you? But a lot of young black men have, for no reason other than the color of their skin.
Maybe, instead of dismissing their experiences as "lies," you could listen.
I'm a white woman from Missouri, and I've had very little problem working in the hood anywhere in the U.S., including in Memphis, because I've worked in those areas long enough to know what kids there deal with. And, I didn't have any problems when I was your age, because instead of telling people about race, I realized I didn't know jack **** about what it meant to be black, and I took the time to learn and hear their experiences.
You haven't, and you have no idea. Your ideas about race are shaped by the media, not by any actual experience of being a minority. You have no clue what it's like.
And I understand that a 19 year old black man from Memphis may have a different experience, but what about the white kid who is denied aid and scholarships because of his skin color (me)
What scholarship were you denied? I hear these claims often, but they are rarely substantiated.
or who is told that my ancestors were wicked slave drivers and that it's my responsibility to atone for the sins of the white race?
You've been told this, in actuality?
What irks me though is the race card being played far too liberally (I am not talk about liberals, just using the word). The government and media play the racist card to ignore a group's message or paint them all as backwoods radicals. The leaders (like Sharpton and Jackson) have power and make a killing on accusing people of being racists (heck, Jackson even said Obama deserves to have his nuts cut off for acting too "white"). I think the media and the leaders like Sharpton and Jackson only add fuel to the flame and further divide the country ethnically.
You play the race card every day when you walk down the street as a white man, and have no idea how differently you are treated, or the social advantages you receive because you were born white.
For the record, I don't believe in affirmative action, and I think this country has come a long ways, racially. I also believe that Sharpton et. al. aren't particularly helpful.
However, it's also not helpful to distort the problem or pretend that it doesn't exist anymore. Sharpton et. al. don't speak for most blacks, and never have. That doesn't mean that most blacks don't regularly experience being treated differently because of their skin color, however.
Where's the whites only scholarship fund?
