I am a racist.

[ejbrush]

I don't want to be. I don't act out, I don't speak ill of people or tell foul jokes or behave rudely to others. I know the evil racism is, what it causes people to do, the total illogical basis of it. The irony of my being 1/4 Native American and the closest thing to a minority my high school ever had is not lost.

Yet, in the far back of my mind, where the selfishness and lust and gluttony come from, it lives.

I am consious of my interal dialog and snap judegemnts when I meet folks who aren't cookie-cutter Up Nort' Wisconsinites, which pretty much encompasses everyone with a trace of menalin in their skin. I wasn't born this way, but picked up all the subtle and not-so-subtle cues from parents, grandparents, teachers and TV.

I know what racism would look like, if I let it out, if I let it become my personality. It would look like a teabagger, the paranoid doofus with the sign wanting his country back, it would look like Glen Fucking Beck. Never fool yourself into thinking these people can be reformed. I know better, I believe in *science*, and still my little simian brain flashes messages that I choose to ignore.

The Others, the 'baggers and their ilk, are lazy.

Here's the thing. I work at killing it. I push it down. I tell myself that it is dumb, that it is evil, that the asshole in line ahead of me is an asshole because he's, well, an asshole, and would be no matter what. I make the effort. If I have children, they will be better persons than I, I will make sure of it.

Going to go have dinner and unwind, bash me senseless at your own leisure.