- Last month, Jerry Manuel was fired as manager of the White Sox. Yesterday, Bill Cartwright was fired as coach of the Bulls. Next in line will probably be Dick Jauron from the Bears. I never thought this city would see the day when the guy with the most job security is the manager of the Cubs.

- Yesterday I signed on to AIM and saw that there were less than half the normal amount of people on my buddy list that were signed on. Is this because all the college kids came home for Thanksgiving break, or was there some nationwide internet outage that I was unaware of?

- Tonight is the final episode of Real World Paris. Some people say that this series sucked because there was "not enough hooking up", but I thought it was very entertaining. I think this was actually the first season of RW that I watched almost every episode of.

*****

Thoughts on Racism

I hate racism. I think most of the civilized world is pretty much agreed that racism is bad, so there's not much point in writing about why it sucks. Instead, I feel like venting about what pisses me off just as much: when overly sensitive people overreact to certain things and call them racist, which aren't really racist.

Example 1: I was reading an article the other day about the dominance of Kenyans in the marathons around the world. A scientific study was done in 2000 by the Danish Sports Science Institute, to see if there was any genetic correlation of why marathons seem to always be won by Kenyans. The study, which provided conclusive results that Kenyans (specifically the Kalenjin tribe) do have a genetic advantage in adaptivity to long distance running, was immediately met with sharp criticism for being racist. In particular, a former champion from Kenya, Kip Keino, was "incensed" by the study's results for implying that Kenyan success in marathons was not purely due to work ethic.

Example 2: During the past baseball season, Dusty Baker was asked by reporters about whether or not the Cubs' schedule was a disadvantage because of all the day games. His reply was something to the tune of, black people were brought over here as slaves in the first place, because of their physical endurance and ability to handle long days in the sun, so he didn't believe the day games were a factor. His statements were instantly blasted by the media, white and black alike, for being racist.

Example 3: A couple months ago, Rush Limbaugh made the statement as an ESPN football analyst that Donovan McNabb was way overrated by the media, which was desperate to see a black quarterback succeed in the NFL. Within days, Limbaugh was out the door of ESPN and labeled a racist for his opinions on the matter.

Now, I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with anyone in the above examples. That's not really my point. The thing is, all three situations I mentioned involve people being way too sensitive and carelessly using the word "racism" to describe something that, in my mind, is clearly not racist. It just seems like some people are so eager to jump on anything that even remotely implies that different groups are unequal, and make a huge fuss about it.

I think a big part of this is because most of us learned all we know about racism through the public education system, in our elementary school years. All I remember from those days is the constant mantra of "All men are created equal", that slavery was horrible, and that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King were the heroes who made our society so culturally harmonious today. That's all fine and dandy, but I'd have to say that it paints a grossly incomplete picture of what racism is really about.

First of all, even though the founding fathers of this country told us that "all men are created equal", this is obviously not the entire story. If we were all created equal, then why do some of us have darker or lighter skin to begin with? Why are some of us more prone to sickle cell anemia, others to lactose intolerance? Do we all have "equal" amounts of hair, of equal color and texture, distributed in the exact same proportion on our bodies? Even if you just think about those few simple questions, it's easy to see that we are not created equal among races, if only in a sense of physical genetics.

With this in mind, why is it so taboo for people to accept or even discuss something such as the possibility that humans of African origin may have certain advantages when it comes to athletics? I mean, is it really a coincidence that there is such a disproportionately high number of black people in the NBA, NFL, etc.? I understand that a study such as the Danish one I mentioned implies that Kenyans don't win marathons purely because of their training and work ethic, but so what? Facts are facts.

You know, a Korean guy broke the long streak of Kenyans by winning the Boston Marathon in 2001 - where was this highly touted Kenyan work ethic that year, I ask? And on the flip side, doesn't the way the Kenyans responded to the study imply that they think Asians and Whites don't win marathons due to lack of hard work? I should feel insulted! (Of course, I'll be the first to admit that I am too lazy to train for a marathon, so I'll be keeping my mouth shut about that. But maybe Rich or Dennis would have a right to say something, being the marathon trainers they are... now's your time to jump in and give those Kenyans a piece of your minds guys!)

Besides being really annoying to hear the media or "activists" whining about everything all the time, I think this general hypersensitivity of our society towards racism hurts much deeper. When we are constantly calling things racist that aren't real cases of racism, it tends to trivialize the things that actually are racist. It doesn't benefit anyone to scapegoat Rush Limbaugh for the kinds of comments he made, which were, at worst, simply ignorant and misinformed. It might make Jesse Jackson or Louis Farakhan or whoever a hero in the eyes of the public to speak out in this cause, but how would this help the latest victim of a hate crime, for example? How does it help the guy who is about to be passed over for a job, not because he's not qualified, but because he's not white?

Not only this, when people overreact about anything that might remotely be considered racist, it ends hurting everyone more because it stifles any chance of us having a productive discussion on the heart of the subject. And this, in turn, breeds further ignorance and prevents us from ever achieving the one thing that could actually eliminate racism: the ability to fully understand each other and understand the truth.

The bottom line is, whenever the kinds of questions about race come up such as in the examples I mentioned, people should really take the opportunity to think about the situations instead of rushing to judgement. Calling for someone to get fired or demanding a full apology does basically nothing. After all, if someone makes a statement, he obviously must believe in it, otherwise why would he say it in the first place? So what good will firing him or forcefully making him retract it do?

Let's face it, we're never going to get everyone to suddenly stop being racist by simply forcing equality on the entire country. To me, fighting racism isn't about making everyone believe that we're all equal. It's about treating everyone with equal amounts of respect and giving everyone equal opportunities regardless of skin color. And as I mentioned before, the way to achieve this is to promote understanding of each other and of the truth. But if people are so sensitive about the subject to ever talk about or even think about the real issues, then this will never happen. This is why I say that I hate these overly sensitive people just as much as I hate the real racists themselves, because both are responsible for holding us all back from reaching a healthy state of race relations.

*****

Hopefully this entry made some sense. I realize that it is a more intense topic than one might expect on this short week of Thanksgiving, but for some reason I just felt like I needed to get these thoughts off my chest today. And now, it's time for me to go home.