Some White Folks Get It

By Alfred Lubrano

Inquirer Columnist

Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about white racism. What about black racism?, dozens of you wrote me.

How come I didn't mention the inappropriateness of ESPN analyst Michael Irvin's opining that Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo (of Mexican descent) must have had an ancestor who copulated with a black man to account for his superior skills?

Irvin, who is African American, is foolish , but that's hardly the point. I didn't think I had to say this because it's so obvious:

America is a white-majority country. When one group has substantially more power than all others, its biases, prejudices, and mouth filth matter more.

And if whites possess the keys to the White House, the executive suite, the law firm, the construction company - not to mention the gun lockers in the police stations - then what they think about black people has greater weight and consequence than what black people think about them.

Of course, black people can be as prejudiced as whites. I've lived it. On a day I thought would be my last, a group of black guys beat me down on a New York subway train; years later, black demonstrators spit on me and opened my head with rocks. In both cases, my only sin was skin color.

But lots more black people than whites have endured systemic, organized violence in this country. And my ancestors walked off the boats that brought them here unchained.