Hi Marska,

Thank you for your response! It is always nice when someone takes the time to write, especially about such an important subject. So, let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we?

Let me start by answering your question. Yes, you are a racist. That much, at least, in not in dispute, based on your response to this article and your listed responses to other articles on this site. You are a peddler of racist fears and racist objections, and apparently you are unrepentant about this. That’s the bad news. The good news is, you have a choice to make. But first, a little about me.

I am not a racist, by choice. I grew up in the American South, so I had plenty of opportunity to choose that path. Black people were not especially welcomed in my home town. Indian people and Asian people were more tolerated, but mostly because the white people simply didn’t have the cultural background to hate them; they had not been programmed by generations of their forefathers to despise them as much. Nonetheless, there were and likely still are some unkind words and deeds that those folks had to endure.

And then, when I was a teenager, the Hispanic migration started in earnest. Suddenly my home town had a very large contingent of people who not only did not look like the white folks, they spoke a different language. That was intolerable to quite a number of people, who muttered openly about how this would cause English to become a secondary language and lead to the demise of American culture if left alone.

My family wasn’t immune to these ideas. Several of my relatives talked openly about such ideas, with much bitterness and shaking of heads. And of course, our local politicians made much political hay over the situation. I had plenty of opportunity to make the choices, and the arguments, you have made, and I didn’t — because I didn’t for one second believe that they were valid.

Now, fast forward twenty years. American culture (such as it is) is still fine; the people who came to the country integrated, and added their own contributions to our tapestry of food, art, music, and conversation. English remains the dominant language, but now more people *can* speak Spanish, which is nice. Democracy did not crumble, crime did not noticeably increase (white people were and remain the greatest source of crime in Appalachia) and no one really notices a difference aside from the fact that there are more people named “Gomez” in the tax base. The white people can still do their white people stuff, and no one cares.

My point: none of the shit that apparently worries you came to pass, and that’s been true for the entire American experiment. The only thing that changed is that we had some new, different people. The country stands; indeed, the greatest threat it’s recently faced is the potential takeover by absolute morons who ran on a platform of racism rather than sane policy. We do not “cater” to people of other races, but we do work to afford them the same opportunity that white people enjoy. And that is a key difference; it’s racist (and dumb) to deny people opportunity based on something so trivial as skin color, and I think you know that.

Now, as to the idea that Poles (or whoever) will no longer look white in the future. I know you care about that. I just can’t for the life of me fathom why. It won’t happen in your lifetime, or that of your children or great-grandchildren. And when it does eventually happen, assuming it ever does, it will be because the human race in your area has gradually adapted into a new form generally. That isn’t something you can stop, and it’s not something that needs to be fought. Cultures and peoples change over time; trying to stop that is like trying to hold back the tide, and similarly productive. The trick is to ride the wave, not repel the ocean.

Now, to come back to the start — you have a choice to make. You can choose to be an asshole for no good reason, or you can choose to simply not harm people based on the way they look. Because, and this is a key point, there is no one who looks like you. There are some other white people, sure. But none of them have your precise facial features. None of them have their eyebrows in exactly the same place, or the exact arrangement of freckles that you have. Few of them have your precise skin tone, and no one has exactly the same shade of hair that you do.

Scientifically, there isn’t really any such thing as race, and I think you know that too. There are differences in melanin, minor differences in facial features, greater resistance to some diseases, greater susceptibility to others, all based on the environmental pressures of someone’s generational “home” area. But none of it is significant proof that one group or another is superior or inferior. Genetically, you’re pretty much the same, and totally unique at the same time, compared to everyone on Earth.

I recognize that this isn’t something that makes “common sense,” as they say around these parts. Part of being an adult is getting away from that shit and making decisions based on science and reason, not common sense or it’s unholy twin, “what everyone knows.” Racism is one of those things. It’s just your brain playing pattern-matching games and reporting that Someone Else is Different. But they aren’t, not really. That’s just your brain fucking with you.

Pretty much everyone on Earth, and I’ve met a fair few folks from a fair few places, have the exact same goals: prosper, raise their families, do the best they can with their life. There are some cultural differences between one group and the next, but so long as everyone is obeying the law, and so long as the law is legitimate, that’s just flavor to the mix.

So please, choose. You can do your part to make the world a nicer place by being nice to people and refuse to make arbitrary judgements based on someone else’s skin color. Or you can be an asshole. There are too many of them around already.

Choose.

And thanks for reading.

-Allen