Originally posted by: zinfamous
No, they shouldn't dwell on it. But you can't simple "let go." Especially when you have incidents like this that act as stark reminders of this past, and that there is a concentrated group of people that hate you simply because of you skin color, and will stop at nothing to kill you.
The difference is that I've learned to accept that I just can't understand that pain, or the subtle differences in daily life that a lot of black people have come to accept--whether or not they were raised to "see it." I will never know what it's like to be raised as a black person, in a black family in this country. A lot of people in this thread are unwilling to accept that as well, and think that a magic wand will just clear racism from the land, so long as they simply ignore these "harmless little pranks" that keep popping up.
There are plenty of black people that don't live their lives thinking about this stuff. They aren't paranoid about "whitey," and just move on. I have a few friends with PhDs that worked their asses off, some of mixed-race families that grew up dealing with shit I never had to face. They shrug a lot of it off, but there are still the little moments in life they mention, where people do look at them differently, as if they are being classified as something else.
These are some of the smartest, most successful people I know, living outside of the South, still dealing with this. They aren't on the front lines of any "race war," and are far more interested in moving on with their lives, but this stuff still lingers around them.
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