11/30/07

Greg is an aspiring artist who possesses a talent for painting. He lives in the projects with his family. His single mother works minimum wage jobs and struggles to support her family.

He has been thrust into a father role for his younger siblings because their father left a long time ago and they need someone to look up to.

Greg cannot find work, due to his humble origins, so he decides to sell drugs on the streets to feed the family. It is not long before Greg makes a mistake and is caught possessing and selling illegal drugs and is sent to prison.

Larry is the son of a stock broker and a well-esteemed college professor. Larry, a great baseball player, lives with his married parents in a nice suburban neighborhood.

His parents have more than enough money to get him into college and through it easily, where he will go directly after graduating high school on some baseball scholarship.

Now, which one of these two people do you think is black? Which one do you think is white?

This issue is silently confronted by individuals of these two distinct races every day, although many try to sugarcoat it.

I’m not saying every person who is white or black is the same.

What I am trying to get across is that there are distinct differences between whites and blacks. That is the reality.

Not all whites have it better than other races, but a good amount of them do.

It is also perceived that they have a slightly easier opportunity to accomplish anything compared to a person of African American descent.

There is evidence whites are treated slightly better than any other race.

There are instances where many whites are in danger and the police and ambulance are right there, but the police rarely ever come to the ghetto, where crime and death is almost constant. That is a sad reality of racial differences.

In housing, 52.8 percent of blacks got a higher cost home loan when purchasing their home than whites did, and blacks are more likely to get subprime mortgages than whites, according to the New Zealand Herald.

There has also been some instances of “vote caging” that have been used to keep minorities out of the vote, sending mass mailing to certain white voters and then mailing the eligibility challenges to those black minorities.

When I think about it, common interests in entertainment differ between blacks and whites.

For example, most blacks generally are prone to listen to rap/hip-hop, R&B, soul, jazz and the gospel, because it represents the black culture, while white Americans are prone to rock/alternative, country and Christian contemporary because that music is a part of their upbringing.

The reason rappers rap about money so much is because they usually never had anything of such value before, let alone in an abundance.

For a white person, money is a normal occurrence, so they don’t get why these rappers talk about it so much. Frankly, they don’t care.

Also, blacks and whites differ in their taste of comedy. Blacks tend to like the more racial or ghetto satirizing TV shows such as the “Dave Chapelle Show,” “Kat Williams,” “Comic View” and “The Boondocks.” Whites on the other hand, prefer George Carlin, Dane Cook and other less racial comedians.

Again, this is just what is perceived.

Offended or not, I am writing this to tell you there is a difference between a black person and a white person other than skin tone.

I am writing this to tell you why the thugs of the ghetto do what they do and what low income and desperate poverty can do to impoverished men.

Alas, I am writing to tell you why Greg is just another statistic of black males who didn’t make it and why Larry is a cheat who hides in his lies.

It was because Gary, like many others, lacked the opportunity and Larry, had too much of it.