Upfront, I'm sorry this is a "life story". It's my way of breaking things down. I don't know how to do it any other way. It's NOT meant as any kind of "making excuses". It's just my way of explaining things; that's all.
I owe Dviss an apology for my Racism, by accusing him of being racist. This has been bugging me all day, and now that I finally have some time to myself online, I need to get this off my chest.
What I've been saying the past couple of days was never meant to be interpreted as racism. However, I understand why it was so.
What I've been saying was spoken out of ignorance, not racism. I don't have the benefit of worldly experience besides my own struggles. I've never been to a war zone, for example. I've never had crime committed against me. I've never had bad encounters with the police because of my race. I've never been denied rights because of my race. I've never had to march in the name of race, or protest police shootings.
I've never been followed by security around a store. I've never had people move to the other side of the street as I pass.
I've never been called a nigger. I've never seen loved ones and friends locked away, and wondered if I'll ever see them again.
In my life, I was raised with a strict code. It kept me on the strait and narrow, but it also kept me in a very narrow-world view. As a child, I was raised in Cub Scouts. As a teen, I was mentored in Boy Scouts by very wise, morally-strong white men. They were Vietnam veterans and retired police officers. And I loved these people more than my own father. There were no black kids in my Cub Scout pack or my Boy Scout Troop.
As a young adult, I went into Explorer Scouts with the Vancouver Police Department from 1997 to late 2004, shortly after I turned 21. In all that time, the post had exactly one black Scout, who was adopted by a female police officer. I considered him a good friend, and wrote him a letter when he left for military service. I never heard back from him though, and don't know what happened to him. The police officer he was adopted by and I had some differences, and that probably didn't help matters. I've regretted that for many years. I've especially regretted that I wasn't a closer friend to him, though we were closest than anyone else in the Post.
One of the best friends I've ever had in this life is a police officer with that department, who was my mentor while I was with that Post. I love that guy like a brother, and he was a friend to me when I really needed it.
During that time, I worked in various Private Security companies (3 total) over a period of 7 years, where my co-workers were former police officers and current-serving Reserve Officers. A couple were black, but not many.
In the last company I worked for, my boss wasn't much older than me, and yet he was a former SWAT officer and Special Forces sniper who did two tours to Iraq with the Army. There were no black people working there while I was employed with them.
My point to all of this is my perspective on life. My perspective on things has been very narrow in life. It's worked for me, but it's also left me pretty ignorant on the world AROUND me. (It's also costed me a lot of personal things, but that's for another discussion...). It's worked for me, because it allowed me to grind through all the mindless bullshit I've gone through in my own life. And it's helped me focus on work and working, by just focusing on what's in front of me, and not the drama around me. By doing so, I was able to get through long nights and the loneliness that comes with working alone for so many years.
I don't like that. And at 32, I'm only now starting to understand my ignorance on the issue of race in this country.
I'll never know what it's like to be black. I will never know, nor understand, just how difficult it is and the challenges that face many black communities.
I have always prided myself in not looking at people because of their race. I saw what was being said in the media about black people and the police, and I said "you've got to be better than that if you ever go into Law Enforcement."
As a child, I had one black friend who I was really close to in the mid-1990s, who befriended me shortly after I moved here at the age of 12. His name was Darnell. After I moved across town, after the 5th grade, we lost touch, but I never forgot him. Sometimes I wonder where he is in life today.
Before that, I never had a black friend. If anything, living in the Bay Area (San Jose), most of my friends were Hispanic. And race never was an issue. Or if it ever was, it certainly didn't register in the mind of a child.
As a young teen and young adult, I had another black friend, Marcus, and we were REALLY close. He was a guy who I knew I could trust with my life, and who I knew we could be friends for many years.
I haven't spoken to him since I was 19. We had an ugly falling-out over women. His girlfriend was a controlling, manipulative BITCH, and my girlfriend at the time didn't help matters either. He works 5 minutes from me, but I don't have the courage to go down there and bury the hatchet with him. And I really miss that dude.
I'm not playing the "I had a black friend" card here. I'm simply trying to explain that, to me, their race was never an issue, so I never thought about it, or considered their point of view. I never once asked Marcus about his views on race, and his struggles because of it. His father was an old man when I met him, and now I really wish I had asked him about his life experiences before he passed away.
Anyways....I don't have the answers to the racial divide we face in this country. Honestly, I don't think anyone does. And quite frankly, this topic is utterly exhausting, lol.
But my ignorance is no excuse for treating a fellow Blazer fan, and fellow American, with disrespect and racism. So I apologize for that, and I hope that we can move on and find something that we agree on, and even find some similarities with things that we like.
I want to thank Denny Crane for helping me realize this, and for making me think about this topic from a different perspective; one which I've never considered before. Because it's REALLY been bothering me all day.
So Dviss, I'm sorry about all of this. I don't know your struggles, and I don't know the problems of black people. And that's my ignorance, and I accept responsibility for this. If that comes across as racism, then I apologize for that as well. I never meant to be racist, but I better understand your point of view regarding that.
That's all.
