I am having a very good time reading your article, Monica. Somehow, white folks can never get it right, and that is quite the racist thing to say.

I know you better, and your article is actually very well written. But what I see you do is discriminate still with your word use. I have learned that discrimination is the same as generalization. Had there been just one white person that did not fit your labeling, then you cannot lay all white person out in one and the same direction. Then discrimination it is.

We all do it all the time. Nobody wants to generalize and before we know it something generalized bleeps out of our mouths and minds. It is so human.

Inserting the political perspective here: While people can or may discriminate, our voting system discriminates while it shouldn’t.

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I am completely with you that race isn't something all that important, while this superficial thing we are seems to have an effect on other people nevertheless.

I have to tell you the following story because it showed me how guilty I am, unable to control my own assumptions. I was working at a hotel that was close to a famous doctor, specializing in facial reassignment. Former guys came to see that doctor to look more like women. Some would come back more than once (it is expensive and it can take time to gather all the money for all procedures).

So, I got to see one person twice. The first time my reaction was something like "Yes, I can see the woman in you," understanding why this person had his sex change going on. The shocker was the second time around when I couldn't see the man in her anymore, while he was staring at me quite clearly the first time around.

I really hated myself for my assumptions and my inability to remove myself away from these assumptions that clearly pointed out I had discriminating feelings toward each gender group. Here I was seeing the same person but in two distinct personas and while I knew the same person was inside, I reacted differently to both versions. The old assumptions were therefore just as tainted as the new assumptions. It was something inside of me, almost larger than what I call ‘me’ — all very direct. A humbling experience because I placed myself above just seeing the outside of a person and always valuing the person inside — clearly that was not true.

In the end, it is the happiness of the other person that far outshines my assumptions. My assumptions are completely unimportant, as long as it does not make the other person (too) unhappy. I actively have to reign myself in expressing my assumptions, and then we all be fine.

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A good article therefore, yet again, and I am looking forward that after we paid all needed attention to racism (the discussion is good by itself) that we can then end up in a place where we don't have to pay too much attention to it anymore. I hope even the smartest among us (and I count you as one of them) will stop declaring discriminating things, even unintentionally.

I learned to take people not at face value and to never look at people as part of a group, though I sometimes use labels (for myself), such as bikers are loud (not all are, but too many are). We are all individuals, and when white people may have strong reactions toward black people, not all white people have strong reactions toward all black people, so we can’t say white people etcetera. By understanding this and ensuring the subtleties of language are addressed, then we can say the things correctly. Racism needs to be discussed, but let’s remove the us-vs-them words that generalize half-truths, because they are an essential part of racism.

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You know me, I am a writer about political structure, and I have to end my reply indicating that our voting system inherently discriminates and therefore that it doesn’t lead to all being able to pursuit our own happiness. It doesn't discriminate against blacks or people of color in particular; it discriminates against anything and anyone not part of the majority who gets the seat.

While people can end up discriminating people, our voting should never discriminate. And yet it does so big time.

My favorite minority to mention is poor whites; totally ignored, hardly ever mentioned. As a group I believe they are larger than the group of people from African descent. The system simply tramples them just like it does any other minority. And just like any good divide-and-conquer system should behave, there is no problem if poor whites and most blacks end up being sheltered underneath a different political umbrella, slicing and dicing each other to get some of the political crumbs, while the elite (black or white) has a great time, because they are always winning no matter which one of the two parties wins.

Here is one of my articles: The Minds They Are a Changing. I think we can make many more people happy when we get a better voting system in place that does not support discrimination.

https://medium.com/the-national-discussion/the-minds-they-are-a-changing-939a329063a4