Sorry to get up on my soapbox, but why does anyone care what race one is? Sure, some white people stand around and say "Look at this dumb nigger dance!", but do not black people turn around and say "look at this dumb ass cracker!" I speak freely because A) I don't believe in censoring myself and B) a word only has as much power as you allow it to have, and I don't allow nigger, cracker, etc, etc, etc, to have any power whatsoever, and neither should anyone it is being used against. My skin is white, but I have mexican ancestry on my mother's side, so I've dealt not only with Mexican slurs but even worse, mixed race slurs and though words may be hurtful, they're just fucking words. They have no power unless you allow them to do so.

Getting back on my point, sorry if this pertains to you but this is how I see it: Using race as a descriptor of anyone (allowing only, say, general descriptors, as every little bit helps if you're, say, a policeman chasing down a fugitive) is in and of itself racist unless you're doing it to yourself as an identifier. Turn the situation around, if a group of black guys said "Yeah, I have a white friend named Undeath", I'd find it slightly racist because, no matter anything else they can associate me with, they pick skin color, and a society will never truly acheive a racism free society when we identify/respond to skin color so easily.

Or, it's never, "Hey, that funny guy," it's always "that black guy."

Eh, sorry. [shut up]

The way I see it, racism is absolutely one of the stupidest reasons to hate anybody in the history of anything. Skin color, other than maybe being a cultural identifier (because, sorry to play Devil's Advocate, but black culture is sometimes markedly different from white culture, and that's OK, but let it be a cultural celebration, not a racial one) has absolutely no bearing on who you are unless you choose to make it who you are. When I introduce myself, I don't say "I'm the white guy".

Likewise, I don't get uncomfortable when I'm the only white guy around a group of black guys, nor do I look at them as a different group of people, JUST people, like you, like I, like anyone.

This ties into Blackout's story. People are uncomfortable with the unfamiliar. The guy in his story probably has no idea what black people are like individually, mistakingly using so-called black culture to perpetuate his stereotype. Sure there's lazy black people. There's lazy white people, too.

I'm sorry for going on about this, I really am, but again, even though I have white skin, I've seen everything from hurtful words to violent action taken against myself and members of my family simply because there's mixed heritage there. My father is full, 100% Irish, my mother was full, 100% mexican, and sad to say, even as recently as the early 80s, mixed race couples suffered a LOT of backlash and I was unfortunately part of the group that received the backlash.