The other day I was spammed with a few of these by a friend of ours. Without even opening them, I marked them all for deletion. It wasn't until I got to the last one that the subject line caught my eye. "Proud to be White". WTF? I wondered what this email could possibly have to say, so I opened it.
As it turns out the email was worse than I thought. It was a long rendetion about how if you drive through any well known violent neighborhoods, they are only populated with blacks. About how Mexicans are the reason for every problem in this country. About how whites can't use derogatory racial adjectives, yet its perfectly acceptable to use that language toward white. About how they have black colleges, yet you cannot have an all white college. How gang members are all black and the second a white police officer shoots a gang member he is labeled a racist. You get the point. The end of the email states that most people will not have the cojones to pass it, but the author states he is passes on "proudly".
Maybe it was because I have been unexplicably overly emotional lately, but I was completely offended. I did not forward it on - instead I replied with this:
Hmm... not something I'm down with. Too many people are racist - white and
black alike - and too many people feel the need to identify with a race,
religion etc. in order to make the other group feel inferior. This is what
leads to the violence in the world. Emails like this are a prime example
of spreading hate. Sorry if this offends you, but I had to say it because this email offends me.
It felt awkward sending such a response to a friend, but I felt that it I needed to make a point. Ironically, unbeknownst to me, a coworker of mine received the same email and responded to her friend in a similar manner. Neither one of these proud white senders were proud enough to reply, but both of us are fairly certain that we have put a stop to any future spam emails they may have been inclined to send our way.
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