Family offers a reality check on race

Last Tuesday, I printed an e-mail I'd received from a reader named Carolyn, criticizing a column of mine from years ago. She'd come away from it believing that I considered most whites insensitive racists and that I felt blacks should always be on the lookout for something to be angry about.

I don't feel that way; I couldn't have said that. And because Carolyn didn't remember "the particulars" of the column, I couldn't defend myself. So I didn't answer.

She was mad at me, which made me mad at her. Which was probably why she ignored my public invitation last week to write back. Or maybe she's no longer reading what I write.

I did, however, hear from almost 100 other readers, sharing their stories of racial slights, strained friendships and awkward moves toward -- or away from -- reconciliation.

Many were Carolyn's defenders. They, too, have felt wary, tongue-tied in the presence of blacks, afraid one wrong phrase innocently uttered -- "the blacks" or "you people" -- would mark them "racist."

"Carolyn is right on the money," wrote Richard Eide. "Blacks will always, always, no exceptions, play the race card if they don't get their way."

Arcadia resident Jack Muleady, "a 46-year-old white male who grew up in Southern California," insisted that "colorblind" people like him have been muzzled by Jesse Jackson-types. "Civil rights mouthpieces have literally pounded the white community into submission, due to past sins of other people and generations."

And a reader named Peter spoke for many when he complained that too many blacks go around with a chip on their shoulder, "inflicting 300 years of history on everyone they come into contact with."

Not everyone was so negative. Many readers welcomed the chance to share stories of interracial friendships. Others were gratified that they'd been able to forgive others' transgressions -- a racial slur uttered by a white neighbor; a childhood beating by a black bully.

Still, it was clear the column struck a nerve among readers who are weary of the nation's recurring cycle of hand-wringing over race, and what they see as my preoccupation with the subject.

"I don't mean to offend you in any way," wrote Vicki Tamoush of Tustin, "[but] I too stopped reading your column after I felt that it caused more rigid racial lines to be drawn among us . . . as I began to feel that non-Blacks were always being reminded to put race first, to recognize and tiptoe around a Black person's Blackness."