16 black women just graduated from West Point and posed for a graduation picture in dress uniform, complete with swords, and with their fists raised in the air. They just didn't understand why the picture would be controversial.
During my high school days the band would play a certain song every time the football team scored a touchdown but after integration the song wasn't allowed to be played anymore. If your relatives fought in the War Between the States and you fly a flag or put up a statue, or belong to an organization that remembers the contributions of those brave soldiers that fought and died in the war, then you are labeled a racist. You can name any organization after the color of your skin except if you are white and not draw the ire of the community. One can tell blonde jokes all day long but for goodness sakes don't call anyone "nappy headed" or you will find yourself out of a job and in a lawsuit.
I don't know how many women graduated with these 16 in the photo but I am willing to bet there were more and probably some of them were not black women but they were excluded from the photo. maybe there is no cause to believe the picture was politically motivated but if all the non-black women had taken such a picture then I'm willing to bet it would have been labeled racist and heads would have rolled.
There once was a blog entitled "big pieces of chicken" and the writer of that blog complained
that at events at the Greensboro coliseum white did not come over and sit in the same sections black people were sitting in and said it was because white people were racists. I suggested he swallow his racist pride and go sit in the section s that white people were sitting in that way he could demonstrate his willingness to break the color barrier and show himself friendly. Racism works both ways and so does the solutions.
When I had a part-time job at a convenience store, sometimes customers started pumping their gas without using a credit card or pre-paying for the gas. When customers do that there is always the possibility of a drive-off. One evening after the sun had gone down, business was extremely slow and it had been a while since I had a customer but about the same time two people pulled up to the gas pump. One was pump 10 and started pumping gas without prepaying or using a credit card. Pump 10 is the pump most likely to have a drive-off as it is futherest from the store and harder to see a license tag. The driver was also young, the age group most likely to leave without paying. That particular customer was also female, pretty, and dressed in a bikini. The other driver was pumping gas on pump six and was a middle aged black male who had used a credit card at the pump. Pump 6 was in direct line of sight to pump 10.
I wasn't interested in him as he had pre-paid via credit card for his gas but the other driver was a different story. Besides being attractive she was a potential risk and for that reason I watched her to insure she didn't drive off. Of course, the man came into the store and started accusing me of being racist because I was watching him. I asked him to look at pump 10 and then decide who I was watching. He left but didn't apologize.
All I'm saying is that what one looks at as racist isn't always so but sometime what one doesn't see is.
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