Thankfully No Blacks

I am your average everyday Dad, nothing special, just trying to make it through this world seeing, doing and being the most I can. I was born in Stillwater Oklahoma and was raised with good old Okie values. I grew up in church and even went to Christian schools for most of my education. You maybe wondering why I would even bring up this monotonous information but it does have a purpose.

Not to many days ago I was in West Hollywood waiting for a meeting to start. There were around 60 people there and the meeting was starting late. We all started talking amongst ourselves while waiting when the topic of racism came up. Here was a room of 60 people of all different colors, accents and creeds talking about the marvel of the US being a grand melting pot.

The idea that the west coast was the only enlightened people seemed to be popping up over and over. The word "sophistication" was used to describe Southern California residents. Then the talk turned ugly, they started trashing fly over country and even picked Oklahoma out as the main target. They spoke of the hicks, rednecks and inbred hillbillies of Oklahoma and how we must be the most racist people in the US.

I have played this game many times, you have someone who thinks they are smart but leaves the meeting giving the "hick" everything he wanted plus more. I also thought it was amusing that not ONE person in that meeting was born in Southern California but they all acted like they were.

The rant on racist kept going on and on and on till somebody said "look around, we have people from Latin America, Asia, Middle East and Europe and we all get along fine". I then started to notice that there was not one black person in this large group. Since I am a bit devious I pointed out the lack of the "black color". People jumped on that and started to explain how people from all over the world get along, just look at us, unlike Okies we are not prejudice. I once again made mention of the lack of black people and finally an Arabic looking man said "we all get along fine as long as there are no blacks because we are not prejudice."

This really was not a big deal because one bigot out of 60 is not bad but what happened next stunned me. Men and women from all over the world started to explain how they were open minded and loved everyone but "thankfully no blacks" were around that they had to deal with.

I decided that while Oklahoma has its share of racist that this conversation would never have occurred there because we may not be open minded like those in West Hollywood but we do at least give a man a chance before publicly announcing that they are all bad because of the color of their skin. In Oklahoma people would have lost business, friends and even jobs if they said these things in an open business meeting but not in sophisticated open minded West Hollywood.....

Have a great weekend!