“Give back the little black boy while you have a chance.”

A friend of mine sent me a link to this post yesterday, on KPLC anchor Britney Glaser's personal blog, Britney Off Script. Being new to Lake Charles, I hadn't seen her site before, and since I don't watch broadcast or cable TV (I cut the cord years ago and went internet-only), I didn't even know who she was.

But I didn't need to know anything about her or her career for her post to kick me right in my feelings. Hard.

Glaser recently adopted a baby to join her existing family, which should be - and is - a happy time for everyone involved. As a stepparent who loves my stepson with every ounce of my being, I have a special place in my heart for people who adopt. My wife and I decided long ago that, if we were to add another child to our family, we would adopt. Why bring a new child into the world when there are so many already here that need someone?

So good on you, Mrs. Glaser. You have my respect.

She should have everyone's respect. But she doesn't.

During a recent newscast, Glaser received a letter in the mail that began:

Brittany,
Give back the little black boy while you have a chance.

Yes, Glaser is a white woman. She adopted a black child. It happens all the time, with good people of all skin tones opening their lives and homes to give a child in need a future filled with love and acceptance and opportunity. Because people are basically decent.

Unless they're racists.

The letter continues:

They grow up to be out of control and rapists. It's a breed you cannot deny.

"They" grow up to be out of control.
"They" grow up to be rapists.
"They" are a "breed" you cannot deny.

First up, there's only one breed of humanity roaming the fertile plains of this good Earth right now, and it's called Homo Sapiens. I'm Homo Sapiens. You're Homo Sapiens. Mrs. Glaser, her husband and entire family - including "the little black boy" - are Homo Sapiens. The person who wrote this awful letter is Homo Sapiens. We are all Homo Sapiens.

Race is a social construct. There is no biological reality to any of it. Humans have been migrating all over the globe for hundreds of thousands of years. We're all connected and related to each other; there are no 'pure' races in the world today. Our genes have been mixing together since the dawn of time, because that's how biology works.

But wait! There's more:

I work with black teens 2-3 times a week. They talk about having sex.

Oh no! Black teenagers talk about having sex?! What a rare and extremely unusual topic of conversation for teenagers! What's wrong with black teens that they would allow their natural hormones to run rampant during their teen years to such an extent that the subject of sex would ever be on their sick little minds?

Oh, wait. That's right. Because they're teenagers. If you don't think white teens think and talk about sex every bit as much as black teens do, then you've never been to high school.

Back to the letter:

Don't let your daughter get raped when he is a teenager. I'm older, but have seen what happens when blacks get to be of age.

What? What happens when "blacks get to be of age", do you think? Because the last time I checked, there wasn't a rash of crazed black teenagers running around raping every white girl in sight. In fact, what happens when "blacks get to be of age" is pretty much the same thing that happens when any teenager comes of age. They get older. And that's pretty much it.

Unless you count people like Andrea Pugh, who had a planet named after her by the time she was 16. Or Diamond Shakoor, who was one of the top chess players in the country at 12 years old. Or Stephen R. Stafford, who started earning pre-med, computer science, and mathematics degrees at 13. Or Jaylen Bledsoe, who launched a global web design and IT company worth over $3 million dollars by the time he was 15.

All of those kids are black, by the way. Every. Single. One.

The letter goes on:

Maybe you are trying to make a point with adoption. You don't need to do that. You are already well liked.

No one "makes a point" with adoption, because adopting a child is not easy. It's expensive, stressful, and time-consuming to adopt a child of any age, but going through the arduous process of adopting a baby cranks everything up to eleven. It isn't something anyone would do to "make a point" about...something. People adopt because they're good people, who want to do something positive for someone else. People adopt because they want to leave the world a better place than they found it. People don't adopt to make a statement about anything.

The best part of the letter is the end, though. It is signed, "A Concerned Citizen" - and then, as a postscript, are the words:

I'm not racist.

Yes, the person who wrote this racist letter about how awful the African American "breed" is claims to not be racist. Because of course they do. Nobody likes to think of themselves as racist. No one wants to believe they're the bad guy in any scenario, or that they're on the wrong side of history.

"I'm not racist, but..." is an all too familiar conversation opener before someone says something horribly racist, and it's one of the many things white people tend to say to or about black people that they shouldn't. (More on that here.)

Of course, the whole racist screed was written into a patriotic card with an American flag and bald eagle on the front, because nothing says you love America more than writing all about how awful some of its citizens are.

On that note, let me just simple things up for you, right quick. If you "respect" this country but not all of its people, then you don't know what patriotism means. If you believe in the founding principles of America that were written right into the Declaration of Independence - that all men are created equal - but you believe that black people are a separate "breed" of humanity, then you're not a Patriot. You're not a Christian. You're not even a good person.

You're a racist.

I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but the political climate of the day seems to have emboldened some people to let their inner racist out into the open. Things they might have kept quiet about in the past and limited to hushed whispers in the confines of their own homes are now being shouted on the streets, all while claiming to not be the exact thing that they are.

You can call it not being "politically correct" all you want. You can couch it in various codewords and phrases. You can try to mask it with a disclaimer that some of your best friends are black, or hispanic, or asian, or whatever - but it doesn't change the fact that, if you think any group of people is somehow naturally and intrinsically better or worse than any other, then You. Are. A. Racist.

I could have kept quiet about this and things like it, like a lot of people are. But if the worst of humanity is going to keep shouting their hatred into a megaphone, I think it's the responsibility of everyone who doesn't think like they do to start shouting back.

And so I shout.

via Britney Off Script