I Need to Explain Something

A couple of days ago I posted a joke and, immediately, someone said that racism is still alive and well, and I interepreted that as a slam against me. The joke was deleted and I don't have the slightest problem with that; if it insulted any person, of any race, I'm sincerely sorry. IMO racism is more of a redneck attitude than it is about skin color. Let my life be the book by which you judge me, not by a silly joke.

I am a white English-Welsh female. My best friend is Maryanna; she and her husband Ken are currently pastors of a church in Birmingham, AL. My close friends, Olu, his wife and daughter, Zumei and Grace; he's a former bank president from Africa and, for 25 years, have been missionaries TO the United States and is associate pastor of my church; Khumbai whose wife is dead and he's raising his son alone, from Belize, and also attends my church. I donated my time and money through our church to help relocate and support 8 families from New Orleans who were victims of hurricane Katrina. ALL the people I've listed above ARE 100% BLACK! One of the above families fell on hard times and I prepared food and carried to them, bought clothes, and paid the power and water bill for them until the man found work. If helping others is being a racist, let me be a racist for the rest of my life.

To the person from KY who accused me of being racist let me ask you, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HELP TRULY NEEDY BLACK PEOPLE or people NOT of your race? Do you even know any? Would you sit in a church where black people attend along with whites? The same goes for other people of color. For you to be able to identify blacks from whites or pronounce the word "racist" is not sufficient. What color are YOUR friends......are all of YOUR race?

When my brothers on this board post a prayer request, it is sent to the friends I have listed above. They are prayer warriors and don't just "think" a prayer, they pray in earnest until God answers. I am proud to call them my friends along with people of other color.

I've tried to explain my position on this sensitive issue as best I could and hope it is taken in the spirit in which it is written.

By the way, the joke I posted was emailed to me from Khumbai; he didn't think it was racist.

I felt the joke was fairly racist but I did not directly call you a racist. I also did not report the post so the decision to delete was made by someone else.

I'm sure you are a wonderful person and your religious activities and friends are truly admirable.

I don't really feel the need to justify myself by listing my friends or church and charitable activities. As you said, if people want to judge me they can do it based upon my actions but I'm not going to call attention to them.

In addition, I really make it a point to not identify anyone by race (in a positive light or negative one) and one of the reasons why is I don't think anyone is purely one race or another these days. Everyone is mixed so why use labels? It's just silly to do that. To illustrate: if you lined up 100 people from palest to darkest skin, where would you put the dividing line between black and white?

Anyway, I'm getting off on a tangent here. This is a very family oriented site and I'm not sure if any of us would feel real comfortable with a child reading that joke and then going to school and telling it to everyone there. That is why I thought it was in poor taste as much as anything.

Michael

I deleted the joke. I received a number of complaints about the "joke" which brought it to my attention. I read it and agreed with the complainers that it had no place in this forum or any other public forum.

Here is my acid test for that kind of "joke":

Would you stand up in front of an audience of folks made up of folks of different ethnic groups and age groups and tell a "joke" like that? That is exactly what you are doing when you post a "joke" like that on this site.

Ethnic slamming, racism or what ever label you want to put on it, will not be tolerated on this site...period.

I am locking this thread...there is no more reason for further discussion of this "joke".