mmoa_writes

While there are plenty of genuine cases of racism, I have, unfortunately, seen far too many attempts by people who have committed a wrong to hide their actions behind cries of "racism" to accept all claims at face value.

For example-at the bookstore where I worked at, we had a rather disturbed woman who would come in and use our company phones to dial 900 dial-porn calls on the company's dime. She was caught, and told that the phones were not for public use (and certainly not to be used to call porn lines), and immediately started screaming about racism.

In another instance, we had a man who came in and made blatantly sexually inappropriate comments towards employees and customers. The man was told to leave, and started complaining about racism, making threats against the management, etc.

In another instance, the school board of a local school district engaged in blatant corruption, stealing public funds and equipment, illegally selling parts of schools to private developers, etc., and successfully avoided removal by the voters by claiming that investigations into their crimes were an act of racism. The school district was finally dissolved by the state. On the final day, black employees were filmed by local news crews stealing tvs, computers, and other equipment from the closed schools. When they were confronted in the act of stealing from the schools, their defense was that the investigators and news crews were "racists".

In all cases, the people involved tried to use their race as a way to shift guilt away from their inappropriate actions and towards the people who caught them.

For me, treating someone poorly because of their race is inexcusable. We are all human beings and should be judged on our merits, not on arbitrary groupings like race. That said, when someone is accused of a crime, and cries racism, I take their claim with a grain of salt.

Just my take.
-Hrafnskald