I'm just a man of African descent trying to get by in the Bush Administration

A few years ago, I worked as a sales guy for CompUSA. The host of one of the local right wing talk shows came in to the store and was unable to get his questions answered. Coincidentally, another customer who knew that I had been a radio program director, was somewhat knowledgeable, and was a liberal thought it would be amusing to steer the voice of reason (this is what he calls himself) in my direction.

I answered all of the voice of reason's questions, much to his amazement.

"Wow, you know a lot about this stuff."
"Yeah, I guess", I modestly replied.
"But you're black" came out of his mouth next.

A little more recently I visited the legislative office of Representative "Dutch" Ruppersburger. I was there for a MoveOn action. There were about twenty people in the office to make our feelings known about the next phases in the Iraq War. My brother and I were the only two non-melanin challenged people in the room. My brother and I both took time to prepare our statements and we both gave copies of our statements to the legislative aid that was present and when we were called upon to give our statements we each read what we had written. The others stumbled and mumbled through the presentations that they winged. Remember, this is a group that gathered under the auspices of MoveOn. Once the meeting was over, my brother and I were told how articulate we were, but it was the familiar sense of amazement that caused the moment to stay with me.

Which brings us to present day...

I am about to play William Russell, the Adlai Stevenson character in Gore Vidal's The Best Man.
The director told me that he wanted to eliminate mentions of civil rights in the play. I asked why and he said that it is "different" now. I explained that I have been stopped for Driving While Black and Walking While Black. I explained that Barak Obama's pigmentation is not really the huge advatage Geraldine Ferraro makes it out to be.

The media still paints people of African descent as animalistic thugs. Not long ago Bill Bennett suggested that the way to lower the crime rate was to abort black babies. Yep the right to lifers floated that eugenics balloon to see if they could get away with it.

They want this to be a culture war, but guess what...you are more like me than you are like them.

I refuse to let someone's preconceived notions keep me down so don't think that I am whining about my plight. I also refuse to let low information voters drag this country down. If you know someone that needs to have their eyes opened please make them aware of as much truth as they can handle, rinse and repeat.