Some Thoughts on "Racism"

What follows is an Op-Ed piece I wrote for the Orlando Sentinel 12 years ago..  My daughter is now 18.  I am not sure things have changed much in the last 12 years.

I took my 6-year old daughter to the Islands of Adventure theme park for a recent day of relaxation and entertainment. As it turns out, I also had the opportunity to teach her a little bit about life.

Toward the end of the day, we found ourselves on top of a boat that overlooked a ride based on the popular cartoon "Popeye.'' On the top level of this boat are several water guns that park patrons can use to shoot water at people riding on boats below.

At one point, a boat filled with exclusively with African-American youngsters came floating by. The people around us sprayed water all over these kids -- just like they had for every boat before and after -- but with different results. Most of the kids on this boat began screaming angrily that we were racists. This unfortunate outburst not only put a damper on the fun that people were having on this attraction, but it made my daughter ask, for the first time, what "racist'' means.

For the next half-hour, I explained to her what the term meant and why it is such a terrible thing when one group of people single out others with racial bias or hatred. She listened very intently, nodding when she understood and asking questions when she did not.

During the rest of our stay, I noticed that she kept a puzzled look on her face. When I asked her if something was wrong, she looked up at me with all of the innocence that a child her age should possess and asked, "Daddy, if we were spraying white people, too, why did they call us racist?''

I was taken aback by her very astute and obviously well-placed question. The real struggle was whether I should tell her the truth. You see, if I had decided to tell her the truth, I would feel compelled to tell her that some people in our country (Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton come to mind) have decided that everything negative that happens to a member of the African-American race is based on racism. Crime, homelessness, low incomes, teenage pregnancy and so forth are problems that have plagued the African-American community for years.

Unfortunately, rather than acknowledging some measure of personal responsibility for some of the problems that are pervasive among black Americans, some leaders of the African-American community choose sanctimoniously to play the race card and blame others for all problems that befall their followers.

Jesse Jackson and others have made a great deal of money convincing black people that they are and forever will be oppressed -- all the while black Americans who do not buy in to the race-baiting have continued to become more educated and more financially mobile in our free-market economy. As it turns out, we have learned that all races can contribute and that discrimination is an economically costly policy to follow.

Of course all of this would be over the head of a 6-year-old. So I did the best I could to tell her that maybe these kids had some bad experiences in their lives that make them think that innocent fun between blacks and whites is racist. Her response?

"Does this mean I can't have fun with children who are not white?''