08-05-2009, 05:23 PM
While driving I radio surfed to a talk show. The caller was a 30ish black man who was describing the despair in certain black communities. According to him, life is cheap there because you are going to die anyway when you get old. It is the quality of life that is important, he said. If you know the past 40 years were crappy, why live another 30 crappy years then die? His point was they engage in dangerous behavior which tends to shorten the lifespans, to die now and avoid the next 30 crappy years, using my example. The host got sarcastic and ended the call instead of trying understanding his point. Agreement wasn’t necesary. I put music back on. But it was an interesting, and useful point for me to hear.
This doesn't sound like your garden variety, knee-jerk racist to me.
An earlier paragraph -- mostly written in street vernacular -- appears to be the work of a racist when taken out of context, but I am not going to judge the man on the basis of that passage alone, or even the rest of his "diary."
(I will, however, judge him on the basis of his actions of shooting up a gym full of people. But I don't particularly have a ton of time to devote to this.)