Honest Race Discussion

I don't know what's going on with me...but race keeps coming up in my posts. Here is a letter to Andrew Sullivan which candidly discusses upper middle class white prejudice. I hesitate to call it racism, because it doesn't bear resemblance to racism of exclusion, etc, but this is the type of thing that does exist and implicates the entire white community, liberal or conservative.

If I were the coach of the white team I would excoriate any parent or team member complaining about getting their ass kicked - particularly because of the race of the other team. I hate this both on a racial and on a competitive level. What kind of pussy complains about being outmatched in a sporting event? You start playing harder, tougher, better. We're teaching our kids to become pussies.

We wonder why the NBA is all black and European these days? Maybe it has to do with upper middle class white communities obsession with making everyone FEEL like a winner, having kids play sports against inferior opponents to give the perception of excellence, without actually being excellent. Disgusting.

I've seen this myself as an adult when I played on a co-ed indoor soccer team in San Francisco. *note - this is one of the reasons I am typically adverse to co-ed sports.

We were playing a game one night and I made a hard fair tackle on a guy. He wasn't a soccer player and wasn't good. So he started whining about a foul. I made fun of him for being an idiot and having no clue what he was talking about. The other team started to dislike me and take cheap shots at me. (which was incidentally pathetic because they were even incapable of dishing out good cheap shots). I didn't respond because it would've been like fighting a girl, but I called them out on it and continued to play hard.

After the game, an ugly, self-righteous girl from the other team came up to me and said, "You're a great player, but a really bad sport." I started laughing. She totally and completely didn't get it. There was nothing that could be explained to this team. See, playing hard and being good at the sport, to this other team, was unfair. They didn't understand that playing hard and playing fair are two totally exclusive concepts and that playing soft and playing unfair tend to get together moreso than the other way around. The ramifications of this attitude are too awful for me to contemplate...it makes the world all upside down.