Late Night Reflections

I've had two things strike me as odd lately. Allow me to expand on them, for your reading pleasure.

First, as I was laying in bed last night, I had a thought. You know how the French have a reputation for being... Well, a bunch of filthy savages? Well, I was thinking about cheese, and thinking about how it's basically milk mold or something. Yeah, so I don't know that much about cheese, but stick with me for a minute. Anyway, I was thinking: the French are famous for their cheese, right? And cheese is milk mold, right? That means that, for all of the famous varieties of French cheese, some Frenchman had to have actually eaten mold in order to discover it.

Now, we can say the same things about fermented honey in the case of the Egyptians (who, for all the hype, weren't really such an advanced civilization as everyone likes to claim), or about fermented grain water in the case of the Germans, but mold is mold. Some Frenchman ate mold and discovered that it tasted good. Is it just me, or is that not nasty!?

Second, I've been thinking about this new show on FX, Black.White. For those of you who haven't seen the adverts for it, it's about two families, a black family and a white family, who "trade races": using cosmetics and hair pieces, a white family becomes "black", and a black family becomes "white". It's being co-produced by Ice Cube, and during some of the promos they've had snippets of him talking. One of the things that he said was that part of the purpose of doing the show is to make race a conversation piece, so that you could be standing around the water cooler at work talking about it.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the exact opposite of what we're supposed to do? I've been taught my whole life that race isn't supposed to matter. I've been under the impression since I was a small child that I'm supposed to make a point of not noticing race. It's not supposed to be an issue, it's not supposed to be some topic around the water cooler. Now, I should mention that I tend to respect Ice Cube more than the rest of the rap community; he's actually pretty respectable, unlike Snoop Diddy, or Master Puffy, or whoever else they're throwing at us these days. However, this show just reiterates to me that white people are not solely responsible for perpetuating a racial divide in American society.

I'm sure I'll come up with something more profound than this crap. But seriously! A Frenchman ate mold and discovered cheese! That's not Thomas Edison and the light bulb, or Alexander Graham Bell and the telephone. That's just disgusting.

UPDATE: Law School Goddess brought to my attention that the previous post suggested that I don't feel that race should be discussed, at all. I can understand how this could be the way my statements were interpreted, since that's pretty much what I said. So, here's a clarification:

[It would] be helpful to clarify by saying that I don't want to necessarily eliminate it as a topic altogether, but that I think that excessive discussion of the issue is counter-productive since it's unlikely to produce appreciable action to counter the problem[.]

Thank you for your consideration and patience in this matter. Also, thanks to LSG for keeping me honest and diplomatic.