Over the last few months, I have become radicalized. Some have expressed surprise, but this was building over a period of years. You see, at the tail end of puberty, people start to be able to understand things at higher levels than they were able to before. It's like a revolution in your mind, this is why you often see teenagers do strange things. While I was aware of the racial divide, and of racial problems before and during this time period (time period 15-19) I was repressing it a bit. My personality type is such that I am a stuffer. This incidentally reminds me me of a mad tv skit when a man (incidentally this was a black man) was not annoyed by some dude smashing into the back of his car, and he's like I just stuff this incident into a little tiny ball of rage and put it deep deep inside...

Anyway, so I'm walking along, aware of racial issues, and slightly bothered by them. Mostly I am bothered by them when others draw attention to my race. I think the n word incident radicalized me, although I am unsure of the mechanism. I think it is because it made it obvious that whites don't grow out of racism. This may sound strange but when I was a kid, I thought people were racist because they hadn't grown up enough. So basically the lid on the pandora's box became unlocked, and I am sorting through the problems.

You will see a lot of anger here. This is because when I was a child, I was raised around white people, and so I have a lot of slights here, and even now I go to a white college, and some of the whites don't have any home training- this is why there is so much self segregation at my school, I think. I mean, I know I'd rather have a nice lunch with someone I know has some sense, than worry that someone will say something stupid. This is also because I am from the south- like I always read the newspaper even when I was a very small child- while the worst letters I think were put in the crank file, there were plenty of stupidity coming out there. Also, it's like racism is in the air somehow- people wear confederate flag shirts, people act like thinking about school consolidation is like raping babies, and there's a lot of white flight. So it's like it's everywhere somehow.

And when you keep it inside, it kind of festers, and that's why I'm so angry, not to mention the lying that often happens and adds to the problem of anger. There's also a shame layer. Somehow I experience whites being racist as embarrassing. This may because I embarrass easily- but somehow it's like wtf? act right. I may have other emotions, but since I'm young, the anger is very intense and present.

But then again, there's like two reactions you could have to this big problem. You could try to pretend everything is ok. I'm not that type. It'd be constantly eating at me, and there wouldn't be a healing part afterward. Or you could pay attention and feel annoyed. I think that if you pay attention, and try to work through it, somehow you'll find a way to help fix the problem. Even if you yourself can't help much, you can help raise someone else's consciousness who might be able to do something.

If I can get just one person to understand that there's a huge difference between being annoyed at mistreatment and coming out of nowhere and making stuff up about people, my life won't be in vain.