As far as I know, nooses haven't been found anywhere in Canada, although there was a recent cross burning in NS. Yet another has been found in the US, in a university library at UCSD.

I have a silly little confession from childhood. Sometimes we would travel to the Dairy Queen outside town as a family and have ice cream. It was always a good time. I enjoyed everything about it; the weather, the picnic tables, the location, the smells. I don't remember what anyone got other than me and my sister. She always ordered chocolate. I always ordered vanilla. ALWAYS.

Yesterday in the hospital, an elderly, crazy woman asked me if I were Michael Jackson. "No," I said. "Michael Jackson is DEAD."

Then she went on to deny it and started rambling on like a...crazy person. I had no patience for her, and kept walking.

I was talking about the word "nègre" with Julie last night. We looked it up in the dictionary and found some interesting usages. Beyond the most obvious ones were:

• Nègre en chemise, now just called "noir et blanc"
• Nègre, meaning "ghostwriter". (Think about that.) The OQLF changed it to "auteur fantôme".
  

And in Quebec:

• Plan de nègre: An especially ugly expression describing some kind of underhanded plot
• Juif: This means "Jew", but, as in English, the way it is used is actually quite offensive. For example, you say to your little girl, "Eille, ma juive!" when she is doing something sneaky. This is something that an older generation is far more likely to say, but then again, maybe not. I also really dislike the English usage (to be "jewed" = to be cheated out of something).
  

I'd like to know of more of these types of expressions in Quebec and elsewhere in the French-speaking world.

I think that I was just the target of a cowardly racial epithet.

I had just crossed the street after having left home to go to work. I had the light and right of way. There was a car that was waiting for me to get across so that it could turn, but he could not have been waiting for more than three seconds. When I got to the other side, the guy turned without incident, and the guy behind him blew straight through the intersection. Before doing so, he rolled down his window (I should remind you all that today was NOT a day to be riding around in your car with the windows down) and screamed, "FUCKING NIGGERRRR!" at me.

Let's see what the apologists and so on might have to say about this.

1) I had caused a three-second delay in his trip. It could have resulted in him having to wait on a red light, because I caused the guy in front of him to hold off on turning. I basically ruined his morning. It wasn't really racist, because he was just mad at having been delayed.

2) He wasn't really talking to me. He was talking to the driver in front of him that had turned right, but when I looked up, it only looked as though he were targeting me. I have no idea if the other driver were black, brown or purple. He just wanted in insult someone that had caused a delay. Not racist.

3) He didn't say, "Fucking nigger". He said, "Chrono Trigger", which is one of my favorite games on the SNES. Cool.

What the fuck was wrong with this guy? How can anyone justify this kind of behaviour? If he weren't hiding in his car, and I confronted him, what could he say? That if it weren't for people like me he would have his own country? (This actually happened two years ago downtown after he targeted me with a couple of "FUCK LES NÈGRES!") Did I do something wrong? I know that there are people, more than you would think, that believe in what this dickhole did. If anyone can come up with anything that makes even a bit of sense, I would like to hear it.

Much has been discussed about whether or not the Americans are post-racial or not. I think it should be pretty obvious that it isn't, but I won't cover that here. Despite the evidence that it's not the case, many seem to insist, for usually racist reasons, that the struggle is indeed over, and that blacks in particular should just shut up.

One thing that would help me believe that it's changing would be to actually drop the one-drop rule in North America and chiefly in the US. The one-drop rule was an idea created by white supremacists hundreds of years ago in order to solidify their position as being racially pure, and therefore superior, worthy of deference and subservience, and also to further marginalize black people. It also got poor whites on their side, defending their interests for while they might be dirt poor, at least they are still considered better than blacks. And we all know how well that lie was received. It's not the same in other parts of the world. For example, in North America, my nieces and nephews, all of whom have white parents are all considered black, even though some of them are phenotypically whiter than bleached cotton. But even if my parents and their parents, and some of their parents (my mother's grandmother was a FOB--fresh off the boat, that is, from England and white), ONE of those ancestors was black. So everyone after that is considered black. This was obviously a very bad thing to be hundreds of years ago, and today it's isn't exactly ideal.

Even if it isn't true, it certainly looks that way because of the actions of a stupid principal and vice-principal. If you haven't heard, a local Korean Boy is being suspended for punching a breaking the nose of a fellow white student. If that was all there was to know, it wouldn't be a story. But since context is king, here are some more details.

1. The white kid had been racially abusing him.
2. The Korean kid demanded an apology.
3. The white kid punched him in the mouth, splitting his lip.
4. The Korean kid, trained in martial arts, punched back, breaking the white kid's nose.
5. The white kid has so far gotten away with what he did, hate crime or no hate crime.
6. The Korean kid has received the maximum punishment.

But wait, there's more.