Is Racism Really a Thing of the Past?

To answer the question that the title of this blog post asks, I say HELL NO! Racism is not a thing of the past, but it is much less of an issue now. The one thing that is keeping racism alive, in my opinion, is ignorance. I say this because I've come across several ignorant people in my 23 years of life. Living in the south, we do move at a much slower pace than say the northeast (New York) or the west coast (California) and because of that, we are much slower to adapt to new ways of thinking. I can't really say that those specific areas are less racist or ignorant, but I can say that I believe that they are more accepting of the changes in race relations.

I got the idea to write this blog post by watching Remember the Titans last night with my roommate, James. James is white, I am black. James is also a very very good friend of mine, one of the best. Now if you live under a rock and haven't seen Remember the Titans, it is a movie about how integration brought an all- black football team and an all-white football team together to play for the same team. I'm not doing a movie review so you can watch it if you want all the details, but there was racism and ignorance on both teams parts. But the white people were just TOO MUCH. Calling the black people all kids of names like monkey and negro, and saying that Gerry Bertier (the white football captain) went to the zoo and made new friends. Now and THAT some ish? Anyway, its that ignorant way of thinking that keeps racism going till this day.

I don't want to seem like a hypocrite and make its seem like I am not guilty of racist/ignorant thinking because I'm not. I am almost always the first person to blame white people for most, if not all of my misfortunes. BUT the difference is I don't actually believe that white people are the root of all evil. But, I have been noticing some disturbing behavior from people that I have known for a while now. More degrading black jokes, using the N-word for no reason (I don't believe white or black people should use this word), more stereotyping all black people to look, act, talk a certain way... more IGNORANCE, basically. Honestly, its not ok to joke about it. Yes, I do laugh it off because trying to talk sense into an ignorant person is like trying to sell shoes to a person with no feet... pointless.

All in all, I can't expect everyone to think the same way, and I have accepted this fact. Some people are just so set in their own ways are resistant to change and that's all good and well... I'll just let that be your downfall. If you think this post is about you, it probably is. I just thought I'd put that in here so you don't come up to me and ask. Also, if you would like to discuss anything in this post with me, please feel free. You all know I am not one to keep my opinion to myself...ever.

I keep it 100,

Jonathan Trevon Lemonjello Holden