I really have to say that I:
- agree with
- applaud
- am heartened by
...every word that I have read, that you have posted thus far in this thread.

I am a brown-skinned Caribbean man of predominantly African (but significantly 'blended') extraction, who does not identify in the slightest with the perspectives often expressed by African-Americans on the issue of race.

Racism has been primarily an intellectual exercise for me. I've observed it, but have never really cared; I've always felt secure in my own familial/cultural/economic roots to feel primarily amused by the few instances.

I do find myself outraged more and more, however, by the blindness and hypocrisy that seems more and more to be spouted by others like me- others who have not personally been touched.

I have not been hurt by racism, but I have read and studied and looked, and its ongoing effects are clear. To deny American racism is an injustice on the order of denial of the Jewish Holocaust or of the near-extermination of Native American cultures.

Justice starts with remembrance.