Julia M. OBrien

Was Joe Wilson racist when he shouted “you lie!” to President Obama?  Are supporters of Obama too quick to dismiss honest criticism of the President’s policies as knee-jerk racism?

In the American conversation about race, it’s easy to focus on the big public arguments, the stuff that makes it into the few remaining newspapers and gets pinged across the globe on the internet.  It’s too easy to forget the daily indignities that people face because of perceptions that they are different from the (assumed) norm.

Here are links to two sites that testify to the painfulness of being different.

• One is the Faith and Water blog of Rachel Hackenberg, a mother raising bi-racial kids in a predominately white suburb.

• The other is the blog "stuff white people do," written by mason d who self-describes as a “I'm a white guy, trying to find out what that means. Especially the ‘white’ part.”  I found mason d’s blog through the facebook linkings of Prof. Wil Galney.  Thanks for the postings, Wil.