Health Care Workers
I promise I actually saw this happen today around 9:45 a.m. I was standing outside the front door of my company's office building, talking to Ashley on the cell phone when I noticed some activity in the parking lot.

First, a mother exited our building along with two small children and headed for their vehicle, which was parked in the very first parking space against the sidewalk. Around the same time, a white Toyota 4-Runner entered the parking lot searching for a parking space. I must inform you that our office building, like the parking lot, is not very large; it accommodates three separate businesses--my company (JBHM), a dentist office (of which these people were clients), and a company called Du Puy. (None of us in the office can figure out what Du Puy's business is, but I think they have artificial hips in there someplace.) The parking lot is rarely full, and even the farthest space from the building would only require about a 200-ft. stroll to the front door.

Because all of the sidewalk parking spaces were occupied at this point, the 4-Runner was forced to park across the parking lot against the trees, about two spaces down from where I park every day. As the passenger, a woman in her mid thirties, stepped out of the parked vehicle and began walking across the parking lot, I saw her spy the mother loading her kids into the car at the sidewalk. She exchanged some words with the driver of the 4-Runner and continued across the parking lot as the mother began backing out of her parking space. No sooner had the mother cleared the turn of her back-out, the 4-Runner quickly backed out of its own space and made an awkward, swiveling circle to capture the prime sidewalk parking space. (Of course, this whole ordeal took place in less than two minute's time.) The driver of the 4-Runner then turned off the engine and stepped up on the sidewalk to join her passenger, who had been waiting for a little while for her friend to finish parking after crossing the 12-ft. parking lot. According to a license plate tag on the 4-Runner, one or both of these women were health care professionals of the nursing persuasion.

Draw your own conclusions.

Playin' the Race Card
I spend more time than you would think pondering race relations in this country. Racial prejudice and bigotry is something that's odd for me because it infuriates me on the inside, but on the outside, I have yet to figure out what my appropriate response should be. As an American white male in his mid twenties, I fit the bill for pretty much any "domineering, majority group" that comes to mind. At first, this sounds pretty cool...except that, as I've read recently, I am the most likely of any demographic group to be the victim of a random violent crime...not so cool. Of course, none of us can take credit for simply existing within our own demographic group. It wasn't our decision, so the best thing we can do is strive for equal opportunity and mutual respect across demographic boundaries.

Today, I read the report on the broadcasting faux-pas of Don Imus, the latest white man to cross the line of racial decency. By referring jokingly to the Rutgers women's basketball team as a group of "nappy-headed ho's" or something of the sort, Imus has come under the scornful glance of Rev. Al Sharpton and even sacrificed his dignity further by appearing on Sharpton's radio show. Of course, I cannot condone Imus's comments; from the looks of it, they were inappropriate, unecessary, and ignorant. However, we've seen in the past that visits to Sharpton's media Mecca do not lead to racial reconciliation even though it has ironically become the proverbial principal's office of high-profile African-American slanderers.

I wonder who I should complain to when I feel that I am the object of racial bigotry. It's happened to me at least twice in the last three weeks. That's right...even American white males in their mid twenties endure those strange encounters in our own neighborhoods. I hate that it pans out so frequently in Mississippi that the tension is a black/white tension. But, you know, when I was living in France, the tension was there between the traditional "Christians" and the minority "Muslims." And if you look in the history books (or in today's headlines) the same tensions exist everywhere in the world between different groups. Again, I guess the only thing to do is to play out respect and equality across these gulfs...man-woman, rich-poor, etc. (See! Even now, I'm privileging man over woman by placing it first in the dichotomy! It's inextricable. Dang that logocentrism.)

Perhaps I've said too much. I probably have. That's the main pratical problem for me, you know? Maybe I know how to act after all; I can build relationships with people no matter how different they are from me. I just don't know how to express my opinion on these things. I know that I can get fired up on these issues, but I don't know what's safe to say. I think that's because I'm an American white male in his mid twenties. It's assumed (is it?...I don't know) that I have the majority power, so I have to be careful about stepping on others' toes. I can't appear to have any shade of male chauvinism, any racial prejudice, any homophobia, etc. Maybe I can handle that. After all, the appearance is all that really matters.