My Black Friend

Posted by Jack Stephens | July 6th, 2008 | Crossposted from The Blog and the Bullet

Renee blogs:

How much longer do white people believe they can use the I have a “black friend” card to cover their clearly racist behaviour? I would like to know the name of the black kid that goes around befriending racists so that I can smack him. Really though, I think I have finally figured out the mystery of the black friend…he/she is imaginary aren’t they? …Yep, your “pretend buddy” that you can whip out every time the word racist is thrown your way.

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5 Responses to “My Black Friend”

1. Aaron V. Writes:
   July 7th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

   I like the snarky poster who said “Shelby Steele”.

   But there’s a big difference between a comment that can be construed as racist and burning a cross on someone’s lawn.

   One of the paradoxes is that the more one’s exposed to people of various colors, the more opportunities one has to say or do things out of ignorance or frustration than can be considered or construed as racist. People I know have said really awful things, but have also treated individuals well…

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2. Renee Writes:
   July 7th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

   I get what you are saying Aaron but there is simply no way that it can be legitimately believed that he did not know that burning a cross on someones lawn was not a racist act. If that was the case why the cross? There are so many other symbols that he could have chosen to set on fire. He chose it knowing exactly what he was doing and exactly what it stood for, so that “I have black friends” defense is just ridiculous.

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3. Joe Writes:
   July 7th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

   Well, there is the possibility that he’s so lacking in both intelligence and social awareness that he really didn’t know what he was doing. But there’s nothing in the story to support the existence of a severe mental defect. While I’m sure he’s an idiot I think they’d have mentioned if he were severely brain damaged.

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4. Ari Writes:
   July 9th, 2008 at 11:07 pm

   As long as people let them get away with it?

   I think the appropriately snarky thing to do is to tell them you have a bigoted friend, which is why you’re so sensitive to conservative issues and how they really aren’t racist. ;)

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5. BananaDanna Writes:
   July 11th, 2008 at 4:29 am

   I think by “friend”, they more often mean “acquaintance”, a title that seems to have fallen into disuse. I once saw a study where people were asked if they had many black friends — the results were statistically highly unlikely, if not impossible.

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