Peter Griffin of Family Guy fame makes a true statement. "The deep south? Isn't that the place where the black guys are really lazy and all the white guys are just as lazy but they're mad at the black guys for being so lazy?" It's such a double standard. I'll tell you what, when I worked at Food Lion, I never saw a pregnant black person with two kids already try to buy cigarettes with food stamps. But that's okay, we can still whine about how the blacks demand special rights just because a few annoying figureheads like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright get a microphone on the news every once in a while. I wonder if June Griffin has ever had a real black friend in her life. In Tallahassee, most of the people I hung out with were intellectual, college-bound people with good morals and values. A lot of them were black.

People act as if the age of racism is over. Is that true? Craigslist proves otherwise. A journalist, a black man of considerable size, used to walk around New York City at night because he had insomnia. He would watch as women walked quickly away from him or even crossed the street to get away from him. One black doctor commented that he sometimes couldn't hail a cab to work and had to resort to walking, making him late to see his patients.

Tennis player Arthur Ashe (who was black) contracted HIV during a blood transfusion, which later turned into AIDS. A reporter asked him, "Mr. Ashe, I guess this must be the heaviest burden you have ever had to bear, isn't it?" He responded, "You're not going to believe this, but being black is the greatest burden I've had to bear." Oh yeah, and he was a fairly staunch conservative.

Anyone who says racism is dead is blind or ignorant. I will say that the Christian community in Cleveland has tried to reach out to blacks. But county and city members - those claiming to be so offended by Mrs. Griffin's article - have they hired any black teachers or black administrators? Has the city of Cleveland appointed any black politicians to office? There's a reason 90% Democratic Polk County didn't help Harold Ford Jr. get the senate nomination.

Open your minds, open your hearts. Those people claiming to be Christian should know that Jesus would have loved and aided those in need - from "white trash" to "negroes" and even illegal immigrants who "cain't speak English!!!" You can't just say you love your neighbor as yourself and write off anyone who isn't a white middle-class Christian conservative. So stop being a hypocrite.

Oh, and I have had a magnetic copy of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech attached to my refrigerator long before Mrs. Griffin wrote her article. So you don't have to turn away from The People News just because one person is a bit offended by love and equality.

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