It's time now, and this can be a very good thing to undertake!

In today's (Monday) thread entitled "BPA refuses to pay for Indian rain dance ceremony", both racially insensative comments were made and the 'race card' was pulled. Before reading on here, please read thru that thread and learn where things turned bad, where comments should have been worded differently (including mine) despite anger over an issue, and where things were mistakenly assumed that were not really there. Many of the foibles of human communication were clearly on display; as in many past threads here. Anger, insensativeity, misunderstanding, escalating argumentative anger, further misunderstanding, unfortunate but understandable thoughts of turning away instead of working this out, and onward to namecalling. And that was just what was in Hey_Yall's post. You should have read the rest of it! OK, obviously kidding, and in a thread that is not funny at all - but I just want to loosen this up right from the start so we can have a more productive discussion with minimal anger present. Let's learn some things together and hopefully have a healing post that we could all use! Not just about racism, but angry miscommunication in general with all people. ...

Since this is mostly about racism between some people with Native American ancestory and some people with Euro ancestory, I have e-mail invited respected Native American BB member Letty Potter to join in a peaceful disussion in search of understanding what is true racism to people (from both side's perspective), what is only insensativity, and what we can all do to improve relations herein. These principles likely will apply to all races of people. ...

These are some subjects to help us get underway; add any you feel will be helpful. ...

- What is the difference between benign racial insensativity and true racism? (There are going to be a lot of difference of opinions here - so explaining why you take a position about the above important question will help understanding).

- What sterotypical, or specific, communication manner bothers you as a Euro or Indian, from the other race of people?

- What do you suggest for an alternative way to address people of a different race?

Let's make some progress on these questions before we get into more deep seated specifics about such as our ancestor's wrongs and current Treaty rights and wrongs, and general rights and wrongs. Please alert some more Native Americans to join in on this thread to help us all to at least come to a better understanding of each other - and strive and hope for more than that. We are all fishers here, and we can help the fish along the way in later disussions after we address the above basics first. Thanks - Steve (RT)