[Mr 5 0]

On the original subject:

My dad was a dog breeder and trainer (as a hobby) for many years and had winning dogs (he specialized in Boxers) in the Westminister Kennel Club show in N.Y. many times.

I grew up around dogs (we had our own kennel) and I can tell you that dogs are colorblind and cannot tell a person's skin color so the whole charge is absurd and should be laughed out of town, but don't bet on it. That would be using common sense and take some guts, and when politicians are involved and the 'race card' is pulled, common sense goes out the window - quickly. A miracle if the police dog survives this controversy.

Josh:

I checked your post and edited it for a few grammar and spelling errors to make it clearer but the content was permissible although somewhat inflammatory. However, you didn't attack anyone personally or make any wild claims, you simply expressed the frustration of many that see the negative results of reverse racism today and naturally resent it. So do I.

Incidentally, black people would tell you that they need black-only organizations like the NAACP, TV networks (BET), magazines (Ebony, Jet, etc) a 'Miss Black America' and so on because American society is dominated by whites, ignores them and blacks want their own groups and organizations that represent and cater to them. That's segregationist and unnecessary but this is the mantra I've heard when discussing the issue with black people. They cling to the 'victim' mentality at all costs in many cases.

There seem to be two camps of blacks in America today.

One I call the 'Jesse Jackson' camp; race hustlers using their race and white people's guilt and desire for fairness to screw society over and be above criticism and accountability.

These race hustlers encourage (and then feed on) black's resentment of whites to exploit them and then blame every problem in life on 'racism'. Too many blacks buy into this as an easy excuse for doing nothing to better themselves and then they blame racism for their personal failures.

This in a country that offers unlimited opportunity to 'people of color' as well as many extra added benefits along the way, mostly ignored by too many blacks.

The other camp would be those like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who grew up in near-poverty in Georgia, managed to graduate from Holy Cross University with high honors, graduated Yale Law School with honors, was an assistant Attorney General for Missouri, and a federal Appeals Judge before being nominated and appointed to the Supreme Court in 1991 at age 44.

Justice Thomas did this in racist America? No, he did this is a country that is mostly colorblind and prefers it that way but that blacks and their 'leaders' like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are attempting to make a separate country with special rules for blacks that give advantages whites don't get. It's reverse racism and it's destructive to both races.

Blacks have voluntarily segregated themselves on many college campus' and in other ways less noticable. The 'ghetto culture' is becoming the norm for way too many blacks and an alarming number of white kids who think being nasty, low-class, violent and without a shred of morality or decency is 'kewl, dude'. Sad.

Josh's anger and frustration is palpable and understandable. Unfortunately anger itself doesn't get us very far. I prefer to mock and laugh at a lot of the excesses of blacks in public forums, such as the councilwoman in PA wanting the police dog, Dolpho, put to sleep because she assumes he attacks black people due to their race when in fact, the dog cannot see color or have any understanding of racial differences in humans. It's stupid and needs to be called stupid. Loudly and often.

Most whites are not racist and object to being painted with that brush whenever a black person wants to excuse their own bad behavior or some personal failure.

Look at the wild success of a Michael Jordan or an Oprah Winfrey. Successful because white people - the majority - watched them and supported them and made them mega-millionaires in the process. That doesn't look like white racism to me.

White liberals in the media and government has fostered this victimization mindset among blacks for decades as it gets them elected and makes them feel oh-so-noble to 'point out' perceived racism in America, none of which they would ever stoop to, of course...they looooove all 'people of color' we're told.

Of course, these same politicians and media types live in expensive neighborhoods and never have any real contact with the people they claim to love so much but we're not supposed to notice that. Well, I do. I also point it out when debating this issue with liberals. So should anyone else who wants to make a point when some movie star goes on TV to yak about race or a politician proposes yet another law that gives one race an advantage over another due simply to skin color.

Race is a thorny issue and will never be totally resolved, especially on this or any other internet messageboard, but the U. S. has far better race relations than any other country on earth, despite the race hustlers and politicians feeding on and attempting to exploit racial differences.

Look at Africa and the deadly tribalism there that has torn that continent apart for generations. Even lily-white Ireland couldn't stop fighting each other for about 30 years. The Balkans, the middle east, wherever you look there are racial/tribal divisions and fighting. Americans did that 140 years ago. We called it a Civil War and we managed to kill 600,000 of each other, mostly in hand-to-hand fighting, too. Not pretty.

We got over it, eventually, matured, moved on as a nation. The fact that we did probably has a lot to do with our emergence as the most economically and militarily powerful nation on earth within the next 80 years and we remain so, today.

In America, we get along fairly well with each other even though we may look different and come from different 'cultures'. Almost half of the blacks in America are middle class today and we have a black Secretary of State and National Security Advisor as well as black congressmen, mayors and police chiefs, college professors, bankers, stock brokers and physicians. The doors of opportunity are open to those who will put aside the victim mentality and perceived race differences and simply get to work.

The opportunities are better for black people in America than any other place on earth and that fact needs to be trumpted when liberals try to call us 'racist' because we disagree with Jesse Jackson or don't wish to see our tax dollars wasted on welfare programs that keep black people poor and needy.

No, it's not a perfect country and there will always be some latent racism alive in people's hearts but most Americans want equality and freedom and we resent being told that we don't and that we're 'racists' when we point out the 56% incarcation rate for blacks (with 13% of the population) or the 70% black illegimate-birth rate (35% for whites so don't feel too smug, folks) that all feed into making life more difficult for black people. That's not racism, that's reality, something too many blacks and whites don't wish to deal with but we had better, and soon, if we ever expect to have better race relations in America. Unfortunately, the game today is to attack the motives of those stating unpleasant facts, thus deflecting attention from the unhappy truth and putting the person who dares to speak the truth - based on facts - as 'racist', thus effectively shutting down the conversation entirely while neatly avoiding the truth. This leads to bad consequences for a nation and we're well into this name-calling in lieu of dealing with reality that masks the facts. Personally, I'm sick of it, thus these lengthy rants.

Let's hope the dog lives, anyway.