Growing up when and where I did, I’m familiar with racism. I never experienced it or witnessed anyone cause harm to another because of their race, but I grew up hearing stories about it, mostly in school. In my home, my parents took the view that treating people of different races poorly was rude. In public, you never aired your opinions about race or other races. It was just rude and we were instructed to never do it.

My first real exposure to a real honest to goodness racist was through a black schoolmate. His father or uncle, I no longer remember, refused to speak with or do business with white people. This was most likely just a boast, as I don’t think it would be possible, even today. My friend told it to me because he thought it was funny and assumed I would think it was funny, which I did. At that age, it was ridiculous.

But, in adulthood I learned like everyone else that race is a thorny subject. All the school lectures remained mythical for someone my age or younger. Only old people now recall when discrimination was permitted. Anyone under the age of fifty grew up watching integrated sports and entertainment, went to integrated schools and worked in jobs with people of other races. Still, race hovers over everything. Jim Crow has been talked to death, but other race issues have been forbidden for so long people no longer know how to discuss them.

One such example is black racism. In America it is OK for a black person to be a public bigot. Al Sharpton has made a career out of being a public bigot. Blacks gladly embrace their racism and think nothing of it. In fact, the people in charge encourage blacks and now the other non-whites groups, to root for their own team and root against whites.  This story buried in the news is a perfect example. Black voters elected a white guy because they thought he was black.

What’s left unsaid, but everyone knows, is he would have had no shot running as a white guy. Despite the fact the voters agreed with him, they would never have voted for him over a black guy. The old white guy obviously knew this and acted accordingly. There’s some attempt to say other factors decided the election, but the fact that the winner actively concealed the fact he is white says he knew what he was doing. He rightly figured out that the incumbent was unpopular, but blacks would never vote against one of their own.

My own view is we would be wise to decouple official racism from personal opinion. Times change and opinions change. Young people today don’t think the word “nigger” has any more emotional value than any other word. I hear young people, white and black, use it amongst themselves. In my day that was a sign of poor upbringing. Whites and black avoided the term out of self-respect. Young people are probably right to devalue it. Some things should be left in the past and archaic racial terms are a good candidate for the memory hole.

At the same time, rooting for your own side or wanting to be around your own kind is perfectly normal. Private discrimination is just a fact of life. Lecturing people about just creates this weird sense of terror. If your private words or private actions are revealed, your life can be destroyed, because you will be condemned as a racist. Unless you’re black or Hispanic or whatever else is washing up in American. Peaceful separation should be the norm and not condemned.

Official racism, however, is not something we should tolerate because it is incompatible with a free society. Even if you think the free society stuff is just nonsense, official racism is unworkable and always fails. As a white guy, I don’t want my government discriminating on racial lines, because it makes my government unnecessarily expensive. That and it gives them an excuse to play favorites within my tribe, not just for my tribe.

That said, I know this will never happen.