My response to "On Being White"

Recently my mother-in-law forwarded an email to me and asked what I thought of it. Before I get to my reply, here are few snippets.

This is attributed to Michael Richards, who played Kramer on the TV show "Seinfeld". You might remember that he made some allegedly racial comments and experienced a great deal of criticism for it. I have no idea what really happened or if the criticism is just or not. However, the following statements excerpted from the email I received. (note that I bulleted them, they were not so in the original)

• If we had a White Pride Day, you would  call us racists. If we had White History Month, we'd be racists. 
• If we had any organization for only whites to 'advance' OUR, lives we'd be racists. 
  
• If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships, you know we'd be racists. 
• There are over 60 openly proclaimed Black Colleges in the US . Yet if there were 'White colleges' that would be a racist college
  

and so it went. The email concluded with the comment that he was proud to be white, which may be a crime soon.

Here is my response:

Hi Pat,

Since you asked, this is my viewpoint.

On the surface, I see it as an issue of being the majority vs. not. Those in the majority, or really those with the power, always have to pay attention to the way they exercise that power, to do their best to make sure they are just.

Needless to say, it rarely works out that way. In actual practice people focus on their "rights" to the point of self indulgence, and not on what is just or reasonable; only what they can afford or not. That is not limited to the financial sphere but many other areas as well.

Consequently, those not in power, usually the minority, typically don't work well with those in power. At a minimum the typical climate is friction if not outright protest, rebellion, etc. All par for the course.

The deeper issue I think is people trying to get justice for themselves. Justice is a great thing; really, it is a thing of tremendous value. But according to the Word, it is an obligation to those with an opportunity to do so to try their best to get justice for those who are innocent, who can't help themselves, and who are needing it. There are tons of examples of that. Even mentioning that should bring it to mind.

Getting justice for yourself individually, or for your own people group, is a much more complicated endeavor. I would offer these two points:

1. To expect justice is to live in futility

2. To actually get justice is a long term project, and will probably require divine intervention and significantly rearranging your life style

Think of Gideon as an example of that. When you read the story of Gideon, you see the fleece, the Midianites, the shrinking army, etc. People generally don't read to the end of the story. When Gideon finally caught up with the kings of Midian, just before he killed them, he said, the guys you killed earlier, do they remind you of anyone? Their answer: they looked a whole lot like you.

Gideon's brothers had gone up against the Midianites. Something wasn't right in the way they carried it out; we don't know what. But, God was NOT with them, and they all died. And THAT explains why Gideon was hiding in the wine press, why he was terribly unimpressed by the angel who said he was a mighty man of valor, etc. That's why God was willing to put up with a lot from him to prove that indeed he was supposed to go up against Midian, and God would really be with him. It was extraordinary the lengths the Lord was willing to go, to have Gideon carry out this job at all, and do it in the way God wanted.

I think a modern example of this is Martin Luther King. I'm not into all the hysterics that surround him but I do think his method of nonviolent confrontation was a key to making racial progress. As long as the people of his day were willing to engage in violent confrontation with the whites, God was not interested in furthering their cause. Or so it seems, looking back. It's interesting that violence was effectively countered by non-violence, but I think it was the spirit in which it was done, and not the act itself.

Anyway ... thanks for bringing it up! 

Love you, 

Dave

PS: you're a really good mother-in-law!

Candy sneak attack

This is a true story. As Susan and I were leaving for work this morning, we drove by a house that had a row of candy canes stuck in the ground, about two feet high, parallel to the sidewalk.

Sue pointed them out to me; I had to catch the view in the rear view mirror, but sure enough, they were cute and Christmas-y.

She said, and I quote, "That's a 'lick it' fence instead of a picket fence".

I enjoy my wife's humor, and she has a great sense of timing (which didn't come through in this post). I gave her a road worthy high five, and she continued ...

"It would be a picket fence if they had really short picketers".

It went just a little bit down hill after that, so I'll you spare the details.

In the phish-tank

What happens when you fall for a phishing scam?

If you use a great browser like Firefox then you'll see something like this graphic.

I hope you can imagine the sense of surprise and relief, seeing that screen. I had just been rescued from who knows what malicious software.

I don't know who to thank, but whoever does the research and puts together these lists of phishing scam sites, thank you!

After the initial surprise I felt a need to do something constructive about this. I Google'd for this text:

phishing report

That quickly took me to the US CERT web site: http://www.us-cert.gov/nav/report_phishing.html

Here's the short version for those in a hurry:

Forward the email to this address phishing-report@us-cert.gov

For those with a little more time on their hands, you can be thorough and send the mail headers as well. This could help the researchers track down where the spam is really coming from. The web site lists instructions for getting this information from Outlook Express, which many people have installed on their Windows system.

I have the regular Outlook used in many business settings. For those of us using Outlook:

1. Open a message window for this email
2. Go to the View menu, then select Options
3. At the bottom of the "Message Options" window you'll see 'Internet headers:'. The text box to the right of that contains the headers you want to send. Just park your cursor in that box, press Ctrl+A on your keyboard to select all the text, Ctrl+C to copy it, then send an email to the phishing report address I mentioned above.

Here's what I did on the next several messages (yes, you have a chance to practice). I forwarded the phishing message to phishing-report@us-cert.gov. At the top of the message window I put:

Message headers (message body follows): 

then pasted the message headers on the following line.

I don't know how much this will help but it's more constructive than simply being insulted.

Remember to check those seat belts and use a browser that protects you against phishing scams!

The Dell / Paypal phishing scam

This week I came into work and found an email from "PayPal Inc. Security Center" . This email informed me that I had purchased a Dell computer for $699.99.

Normally I would not fall for this, but I had indeed purchased a Dell at Best Buy just a few days prior, on my American Express card. So instead of an involuntary eye roll, I scanned quickly through the message, and clicked on a link for sbcglobal.net (note that sbc is the phone company for the midwest, where my in-laws live).

Here is where we come to lesson #1: don't click on anything.

It's crazy, but I tell my kids, relatives, people I know, my kids friends they drag over to the house, random people at the coffee shop--"don't click on anything you don't trust!" That includes not opening attachments. It's not like we were born yesterday.

However, I know you, Wise One reading this, will have already put together that little bit of trivia. Part of the reason I'm writing this is because someone actually came up with a scam that caught me. Dell is a popular brand and I'd imagine that on any given Monday there would be thousands of people who would have recently purchased a Dell computer. That part made me wonder who at Best Buy ... but we're talking sheer speculation.

So, on to lesson #2: use a browser that protects against phishing scams.  Please!!!

Firefox 3.0 is a pretty wonderful browser. I am a BIG fan of Firefox. It saved me (this time) from my stupidity! For free software, that's a pretty good deal.

The default installation for Firefox 3.0 asks if you want to turn on the phishing feature. Of course, I highly recommend it, and now even more that it's saved my skin (so to speak).

More in Part 2.

Where is a shark when you really need one?

A famous treasure hunter went out one day with all of his diving gear to search for a treasure box that was supposed to be on a sunken ship. He swam around for a while and looked where it was supposed to be, but didn't find anything.

When he was walking out of the water, really close to the shore, he tripped on something. He started to dig around it and it was the treasure chest he was looking for.

All this goes to prove that booty is only shin deep!