Thought Provoking

I have been surrounded by talks about race this week.  I attended a dramatic reading of the play "Bee-Luther-Hatchee" by Thomas Gibbons at Theater Horizon, a local theater in Norristown, on Monday which featured a talk about race relations afterwards.  I have seen many postings on Facebook about the "What Would You Do" episode about a black guy with a white girlfriend in a Harlem barbershop. Then today I saw an article about "microagressions". It is an interesting subject matter, and the last one really caught my eye, especially because sometimes I find myself saying things that I don't mean to be rude and would not have thought would be.

I have been through several diversity classes where I used to work and try to be sensitive about talking to people.  Maybe I am too sensitive because sometimes I worry that I have offended someone but don't want to bring it up because it seems like such an emotionally charged topic.  If I hear someone say something bad to me, I usually just brush it off figuring they don't know any better and I realize they really don't want to offend me, but they do.  If it is really blatant, I will speak out, but generally I don't.  Sometimes I think people just get offended too easily, and I don't want to fall into that trap.

But I wonder why things come up in batches like this.  Is this a subject I should be thinking of? Is this age of political correctness something that needs addressing? Should we even care? Should I be speaking out when I do hear things? Have race relations really changed in this country? I think the answer to that last one is no.  What about you?