Walking Away From Racists, Whenever Possible

MY MOTIVE was to engage in a moment of pleasant conversation, over a cup of coffee. So, thinking no harm could possibly come of it, I broached the seemingly most innocuous topic imaginable. I asked whether the gentleman to whom I was speaking were a sports fan, and if so, whether he rooted for the athletes of our local university, like everyone around here. Seemed harmless enough, sure to engender a few smiles and male bonding. "Oh hell" he responded, "I don't give a damn. Its just their niggers against our niggers anyway." so much for the harmless chat. Life is full of minefields. I guzzled my coffee, enjoined the gentleman to "have a nice day", and got the hell out of dodge, aka our local senior center. might as well go look for conversation online, maybe read Trump's most recent tweet, or log on to a white supremacist site, or maybe try the alt right site. Racists, most the most part, have gone into hiding in modern politically correct America. When I was a child, fifty some years ago, my racist family members were openly proud of their folly, as was most of conservative white America. but over the decades, they've been driven underground, forced into public denial, while, and this is the crux of the matter, remaining unchanged in their hateful attitude. I have an elderly uncle who lived for years in Minnesota, and when he visited us in the lower Midwest, ridiculed us for "talking like a bunch of niggers", referring to what he thought were our suthin' accents. Now, he's reigned it in, and has become a closet racist, like the rest of them, except for the alt right and fringe lunatic groups, and hides his views around his extended family, knowing racism has never flown with us - but, his own children testify that, yeah, he used the "N" word early and often regarding Obama. The prevailing notion now among the right wing is that we now liv in a "post racism' America, in which racism would never ever rear its ugly head were it not for trouble making liberals who manufacture racism out of the blue by merely making mention of it. a clever ploy for our right wing post racist racists, among whose ranks racism has always found its home, and still does, albeit in disguised guise. the proof in the pudding is that right wing America elected a racist president. yes, racist. Donald J. Trump spent several years telling anyone would listen, and it was the conservative branch of the body politic that listened, that Barack Hussein Obama was in fact not an American citizen, that he had in fact been born in Kenya. There is no other motivation for this than hatred, and racism. Bill or Hillary Clinton would never have been accused of having been born in Ireland. Nobody would have cared, including those who hate them, and tried every lie, trick and tactic known to humankind to destroy them through false attacks, and are still doing it, even after twenty five years of failure. the key ingredient in the claim of Obama's Kenyan birth is Kenya. The motivation is racism. My fellow citizens, our president is a racist, and oh that it were only possible to walk away from the idiot as easily as I walked away from the racist at my local senior center.