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Let me be candid and honest here my man. I cannot be sympathetic to your comments because this is how adult life has always been. From the moment I stepped out of my home and headed off to college I have always been a small percentage of the population. Outside of Atlanta, the more money you make, the further away from the Black Community you are, and it happens really quickly. Every job you take. Every community you move to. Every school your kid goes to. All the same. So you have two choices. Make people walk on eggshells around you at the office all day long, or crack a couple Black jokes and watch the "oh, I can kinda be myself around this one" expressions as nervous laughter turns to comfortable over time. This may not seem ideal from the outside looking in, but it's how we have to operate if we wanna break the color lines for the next generation. As a Black guy out here you realize pretty quick that you are "the Black friend" to your White coworkers, neighbors, and your kid's friend's parents. So in the interest of civility you go out of your way to make everyone in the presence of you comfortable with you, as you are the outlier to their otherwise regular existence. If there is one thing Trump has shown me it's this. People can say it's tax cuts. People can say whatever they want. But for a large majority Trump is protecting their fragile view of what America is supposed to be. Where certain demographics are supposed to be in the pecking order, and where they are supposed to live. That is why they can excuse all the bullshit. All the rhetoric. All the illegal activities, and efforts to turn the US into a dictatorship. They want to make sure they don't have to walk outside and look around and see faces that don't look like theirs. They don't want to deal with other cultures. They don't want to have to watch the things they say, or think about how they are offending someone. For a lot it's not so much racism as it is an aversion to tolerism. Trump embodies anti tolerism and they love him for it. Thus they will follow him anywhere, even to the depths of hell.

Let me first answer the question in bold. In my best Joe Biden voice, "Now here is the deal..." I am not uncomfortable with that at all. Code switching is part of my DNA. Walking into a room and seeing people feel uncomfortable is part of my DNA. It's kind of like being a father and walking into a room where your kid and their friends are and it goes silent. It's just kind of expected at this point. I will tell you what is exhausting. Knowing that you have a different standard of conduct in the workplace, especially with people working under you. No matter how long you've been there, and how long you've been nice, the moment you show any anger your name might as well be Tyrone Jackson and you have corn rows. Lol. But let's get to the real meat and potatoes of what you are asking. Racism is really not a fight for Black America. What I mean by that is we can protest and open your eyes to systemic issues, but past that point it's really up to you for these reasons. We are far to few at only 13% of the population. As such, most White Americans goes days without really spending any time more than simply passing by a Black person during their daily grind. In the few instances they do come across us, they are careful about what they say, and so no real honest dialogue is being had. However, you hear their thoughts and feelings. You hear the comments and slurs. You hear their fears and see their fragility. You make up the majority in this country, and it does not change until YOU say it changes. So to answer your question the best thing you can do is be our voice when we aren't around. Don't attack, but tell your barbershop story when someone has something negative to say about Black People. Make them understand that their world view is going the way of the dinosaur even in their own communities. After that, do what you are doing now. Vote in people who will pursue equality. Black people don't want handouts. We will pull ourselves out one generation at a time.

I voted D or D endorsed in every race because the Republican Party must be ground into dust for enabling this shit.

Wide right.

From the battleground in Pennsylvania, wearing my Andrew Yang 2020 shirt, voting for the first time.

The GOP is full of terrible people and a death cult. Not a hard decision.

Conservatism needs to exist and be an oppositional force against unchecked liberalism and vice versa. I hope we have a viable conservative party in the future that does not come laced with racism, white nationalism, anti-intellectualism, anti-science and so forth. A conservative party that does not distort reality for political expedience. I would love to have a choice between candidates that have different ideas for how to handle things like global pandemics, climate change, police brutality, etc... Instead, I have the choice between a liberal view of how to handle these problems and the denial that these problems even exist. My hope is that the GOP gets throttled so badly in this election that they are faced with irrelevance if they do not significantly correct their course.

this is a fantastic and insightful post. if i may ask you for a follow up...what can i do as generic white dude to make you feel more comfortable as a member of society, and not feel white people side-eye all the time? i hate that things are this way, but i learned a long time ago about code switching. i've told this story before, but i used to work summers out in east texas. i grew up fairly comfortably in a dallas suburb that was majority white, but had some minorities, mostly of indian and pakistani heritage. very few black folks. anyways, going to town in gladewater was the first time i really noticed the "across the train tracks" kind of segregation. i must've been 20 or so when i went into town for a haircut. the barber on the highway was the main advertised barber in town, so i went there, but there was a long wait, so i figured i'd drive around and see if i couldn't find another. so i crossed the tracks and drove a few blocks, and saw a barber pole on a pretty ramshackle building. i figured, what the hell? so i went in. man, i guess i had known the idea of a black barbershop, but i had just walked into a real deal black barbershop. i could hear laughter and boisterous voices before i opened that door, but when the whitest white boy in town opened that door, it got silent. the kind of silent you can hear. there was one barber chair in the room, and there was a guy in it. there was another guy waiting. everyone stopped talking and the barber did his best "the fuck are you doing here white boy" look, and said, "um, can i help you?" i looked around and simply said "yall cut hair here right?" and my goodness, the man's laughter was infectious. i don't know what they expected out of me, but that seemed to undo the tension. he shook the tarp they put on you off the guy in the chair, and shooed the guy there out, and motioned for me to sit. i said, "no, i'll wait,' and pointed to the guy sat in the waiting area, and they all laughed. "no, son, these men are here all the time, this one don't need a cut, and he's just here." so he put me in the chair and started talking to me about what it was i wanted. it was one of those old school haircut and a shave with a straight razor kind of places. it was awesome, but everyone was super polite and kind of quiet. anyways, when i went back the second time was when i felt that i was actually welcome. the record didn't scratch when i walked in, and they started talking more comfortably around me. to the point that i couldn't understand half of what they were saying for awhile, until i got used to it. and the funny stories and ribbing came back, and i didn't feel like they were walking on eggshells like the first time, and they even started giving me shit. anyways, that led to my first black church experience, because the barber was a pastor at a church in town. that's another story, but for a whitebread suburb boy, it was all quite a cultural awakening. tl;dr, anyways, that was the first time i realized that black people talk differently around black people than they do around white people. it was a truly eye-opening experience.

I don't think you're following along, okie. What is being said here is that we don't actually find entities like Joe Mixon to be human. I know I personally don't give one iota of fuck about him being humanized. That piece of shit could get run over by a car today and I'd shrug and say "good riddance". I'd think the same about the people within the police department in Norman and the legal system there who hid the camera footage and covered for him for multiple years. You see, while I value human life, I wouldn't lend the sweat off of my balls to people who foment corruption and abuse and those who protect such behavior. Society would be better if we could just put the proven female beaters, rapist and child abusers into a spaceship and launch them all directly into the sun. Maybe pack a new one up every Tuesday and repeat the cycle. I realize you're against that kind of position under the guise of "but we should hold hands and love all humanity" while it's quite obvious to the rest of us that you know fully well without the female beaters and other violent criminals, OU couldn't regularly field a fucking football team.

Switching to something stronger

Until this election I have been a largely republican voter when it comes to the president. Grew up an army brat, did 6 years of service in the Army, rolled into a defense contractor job after service. Voting republican buttered my bread, but that's as far as my ties to the right extended. I've never been on board with any of the social side of the party and would probably consider myself more libertarian if it wasn't for their staunch isolationism. I would usually vote R for president and my local congress person, vote D for most state stuff, especially any positions tied to education. All that being said, I voted for every democratic candidate on this ballot. The republican party needs to be purged. Its not just a punitive vote, the party needs to be wrestled away from the christian right and the tea party/freedom caucus/Q nut jobs. I have little hope of that happening anytime soon, if at all. The party is only amplifying guys like Jordan, Gaetz, Cruz, and Cotton. Kasich was the last guy that aligned with what I consider a good presidential candidate from that party. 2016 accelerated the loss of guys that were remotely moderate or principled. They knew Trump was the end of their party. I wont say never, but I don't see me voting for another republican unless the party goes through substantial changes. I'm talking completely breaking with the christian right type of seismic shift, which is about as likely as Jim Jordan wearing a tie.

I am not voting necessarily against Trump, I’m voting against you. I’m voting against every Trumpkin, every Karen, every lifelong bully, every anti-science dolt, every blatant uncaring racist and every asshole that hides and weaponizes their bigotry in the name o religion. Fuck all y’all And he isn’t perfect, that’s not the standard, but yes I am voting for Biden because he is honest and rational andI believe him.

I didn’t watch, but for all of you saying that it was a good night for trump when I just know he didn’t answer any of the questions specifically and explicitly shows you how fucked up this is that trump gets away with having a “good night” when his good night would have been an automatic disqualification for anyone else. Stop giving this nigga a pass.

I voted the way I did because I am against treason. That's kind of important to me.

Yes, I too am upset with social media censoring it. I say after seeing the tweet from Twitter that you just posted. Jesus you're such a moron.

Thats my sentiment as well. My University belongs to the students of today, let them create thier traditions. We still have the hook em, coolest thing in sports.imo Fuck that. Hundreds of thousands of people have attended The University, including me. It doesn’t “belong to the students of today.” It belongs to all of us.

Ok look Minstrel shows were a big form of entertainment for quite a long time. Thousands and thousands of songs were played at minstrel shows of all kinds. Patriotic songs, religious songs, popular songs at the time. Just because it was performed at a minstrel show once doesn't mean it is associated with minstrel shows. Surely it should at least have some insulting slang or racist language or something in there to really have that association. The tune we took the song from "I've been working on the railroad" DOES have that at least in its 1890s form. So that is a thing. But even so people don't associate it with that. It is a children's song. It is the school song of UT Austin. That is why we were "requiring African Americans to stand at attention" (I mean sort of, it is a school song, you stand and put your horns up and sing) because it was the school song. That is what is it associated with. That is what we have recordings and pictures and memories of for thousands and thousands of performances. We have no pictures or film or even minstrel show type lyrics or anything to link it to a minstrel show besides an account of one incident. Now it could be this discovery of this incident from the distant past is so upsetting we can no longer continue this tradition. That would be a shame, but it is what it is. But for you to spin this like we have been forcing this horror on our African American friends for decades out of a racist love of humiliating them with minstrel show associations is just a little bit bullshit. And you know it. That was certainly not what was going on. And certainly now that this issue has been brought to our attention we are not going to require anything of the sort. Once we review the full history of the song and we get the context and sizeable amounts of our students and alumni decide that the song needs to go then I will abide by it. I am not interested in dividing us because of the song (though I am not so naive to think that no longer singing it wouldn't in itself be divisive). But it kind of sucks that that moment where we all sang the Eyes of Texas at my graduation is no longer a beautiful moment of unity. It sucks that one incident from over a century ago that no living person attended and for which no direct images or anything else exists beyond a text record, has far more meaning and importance than the thousands of powerful moments that hundreds of thousands did attend and remember. But that may turn out to be the case. If indeed we are going to make this sacrifice and go through this long and divisive and difficult conflict to make this happen, I sure hope it leads us to a better and more just place. To something worth the price that must be paid. But one thing I do know is that I have zero interest in having some song just for a certain political persuasion of Longhorns and one for another. That is not going to work for me. We need to work this out one way or the other.

Uh, the $40 oil and slow recovery should have had them already thinking about their jobs.

Straight D. If you are an R and aren’t speaking out against this administration(none of them are), fuck you.

I voted straight D for human decency. I don't understand ticket splitting this time around unless that R has explicitly spoke out against the monster in the WH. The entire party deserves to be punished for enabling what has happened with Covid, the border, Russia, the hate, the division, the economy, etc..etc. Trump doesn't destroy the country without a party of enablers...so I hope every Republican gets voted out of office.

I don't understand why the media isn't covering the fact that enchubben has sex with sheep. Social media should really allow people to see this story. The people deserve to know the enchubben has sex with sheep. Watch, other posters here will confirm my story and still the media will not cover the fact that enchubben has sex with sheep. Why?! DO SOMETHING!

This is great. Not sure about you but I was taught at an early age to code switch for some of the very reasons you’ve brought up in this reply and your initial post.

Here is why everyone are cucks People are freaking out about Biden saying we need to transition to Renewables and ignoring Trump saying immigrants are idiots who follow the rules or Trump melting down over Wall Street, Facui, Children in Cages

Texas needs to face the fucking reality that renewable energy is what needs to happen.

Let’s Go. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Another refill

Man, that's tough man. I have a young guy I am working with currently. Good dude, but not that polished. I got him a year ago. He got promoted in August. I told him we operate under the each one teach one clause. Best thing you can do is pass on what you know now that you know it. It also helps to keep me grounded, and remembering where I came from. I am not rich, but last thing I wanna be is 50 cent who benefited from all the people before him, who fought for the rights for him to get where he is, only to take the "fuck you I got mine" stance when you get there. Each one teach one.

Thoughts and prayers to the bridesmaids in your wedding. Hope they made it out safe.

I dont care about the band, but the band isnt the trouble. The trouble is a section of people deciding on a whim what is and what isnt socially verboten for the rest of the populace.

All of this. That was such a surreal game. Texas scored on the first play of the game and it's going to be a blowout, right? Kansas didn't even look like they wanted to be there. It's still a remarkable loss. Foreman ran for 250 yards. Texas had 6 fucking turnovers. It took all sorts of dumbfuckery in the fourth quarter for Texas to lose but if anyone was capable of that level of dumbfuckery, it was for sure Charlie Strong. I remember thinking, "Thank god it's over. There is no more discussion to be had. Let's move along to the next guy." And here we are with the next guy. Our team plays just as stupid fucking football as it did under Strong. Terrible bone headed penalties of both the overly aggressive (i.e. late, cheap hits) and overly soft (offsides/procedure) kind. Awful, self-destructive special teams. Horribly inconsistent blocking and tackling. Just incompetent, stupid football. I could take the losing a lot better if the other teams we were playing outclassed us. But watching these dipshits shoot themselves in the dick over and over against complete scrubs makes me want to pull my hair out. The first half of the OU game, I was frustrated, but chalked it up to it's just how the OU game goes sometimes (ignoring for the time being all other data including the Tech and TCU games). But by the end of the third quarter, I was completely out on Tom Herman. The only thing that's changed since Strong was here is that the talent is better and the piss is clearer. They need to get rid of this clown and if it takes a virus-ridden, no practicing, band of rape enthusiasts from Waco to get on with it, then so be it. I will never actively root against Texas, but as far as I'm concerned Herman's fate is sealed and the sooner we make the move, the better off this program will be. Let's rip the fucking band aid off.

I see it as a no lose situation Texas wins, fuck ya! Go fuck yourselves Baylor! Texas loses, fuck ya! Go fuck yourself Herman!

This statement right here tells me you have spent very little, if any time outside of the country. The rest of the world is far more racist than our country. We are by far the most racially inclusive place I have ever lived or worked. Idiots like you who have no perspective outside of your bubble think America is some awful, racist place because you have nothing else to compare it to.

Tiffany probably got fat just to avoid getting molested.

Switching gears

In its entirety after football except on the West Coast.

The Admin granted or at least addressed in meaningful ways nearly ALL of the items in the athletes’ initial list. What the fuck is that if it isn’t “comprise”? Myopic dumbfuck

1) I voted D or D endorsed in every race because the Republican Party must be ground into dust for enabling this shit. (pescado rojo) 2) I don't trust Rs on the environment.

I'm a libtard, and the current resident of the White House is a fucking idiot.

There's no way we lose to Baylor based on how great our practice was on Sunday.

The people who say that generally mean "a government that only does the things I want it to do."

NSIAP