Disclaimer* For the duration of this post I am going to use the word Nigger. It's a word and I'm not afraid of it. I'm speaking to it as an idea and it is not my intent to alienate anyone or hurt feelings. This is an engaging and intellectual website and to refer to the word from my keyboard as the "n-word" is only mindlessly politically correct.

Among able-minded and socially-adept adults in the community I grew up in there was closet racism. This racism existed mostly inside the privacy of homes but it would extend to my area of existence by way of their children. It is not just an assumption that it is the parents who instilled the racism into their kids. After being familiar with the parents for a certain amount of time I could hear the evidence of their racism on their lips. Neither the parent nor the child would consider themselves racist or recognize their prejudices. To all extents they most likely considered themselves socially and morally forward peoples.

Basically their theory is this: There are two types of black people, there are black people and there are niggers.

I've heard this argument my entire life. It makes me want to vomit on many people's faces. It is used as justification against racism. "Oh, I'm not racist towards the good black people, only the rotten ones." And it's a justification that is a lot more prevalent than you'd imagine. Even left-minded progressive people who are nice as a sunny day just unabashedly distinguish their hate. "If you're like me that's cool, if you resemble anything of which I cannot immediately relate I'd prefer it if you did not look at my child."

Where does this racism breed? Is it just left-over from a different time when it was considered the norm to be openly racist? Does racism die hard? Will it still infect the suburban houses as long as there are closed doors? What accounts for it? I think it must origin from fear. Fear of low-income black neighborhoods that have been vilified by the media and portrayed very specifically by the entertainment industry. The racism I speak of infects the prominently white and well-off neighborhoods surrounding these poor ones. It's a racism born from borders. It's the white people afraid of the crime from down the street. The mistake is that the crimes come with the "niggers" rather than the poverty. In differentiating types of black people the more affluent whites are vindicating their moral superiority. As if they, living in similar poverty, would still shine so brightly.

Neighborhoods breed classes. There is no community outreach to break down these borders of communities which exist only blocks apart. We've built these lines into our cities that we are now afraid to cross as if we think they really exist. They've grown into chasms so wide that we look to the other side and can only generalize. From so far away can we help that all we see is race? Yes, we should be able to help that and go further even, every community has something to offer its neighboring ones. We strive for a national coherence inside America when we can't even create local ones.