Race Conversations and White People in America

White people in America need to learn to get over their discomfort with the topic of race when in the presence of people of other races or when it's a high profile conversation. I first thought of this topic when watching a hilarious video of President Obama showing his "birth video" and then showing the clip from Lion King where the baby is being anointed a prince and future king after he is born. It has all the animals of the area gathered watching the ceremony with the shaman baboon holding the little lion up towards the sky while standing on an overhanging rock that's high above the rest of the animals. There is really epic music playing and the video is making fun of the "birthers" by simultaneously making fun of people saying he was born in Africa and that he was being treated like, in an exaggerated view, the savior of America here to save us and bring a "change" to the very fundamentals of our system and to bring a new sense of "hope" and optimism for our future. Now, I'm not here, or mentioning this video, to discuss politics or to hear one's typical views based on assuming they know where my heart lies politically, rather I am mentioning this video due to the RESPONSE that I saw from the crowd of, of course, mostly entirely white people who were in attendance at this event hosted by the president. I am quite comfortable with people of other races as I have a wide array of friends from all, or many, walks of life and races so I've had experience with being around an eclectic variety of people which likely has helped me. But after I saw this video I, of course, was cracking up literally out loud because it was one of the funniest thing's I've ever seen, and I think that one from any political standing could appreciate the pure comical value of this video. What I noticed however was that the mostly white audience as a whole was not as comfortable with race related issues, especially from a person whom they view as being black, even in the context of humor. I thought that this was VERY reflective of where the average white american stands on issues of race when in the presence of, or when being heard from, a person of that race. The laughter and clapping from the audience was very delayed and gaurded almost as if they were seeking approval subconsciously from Obama that they could now, as a whole as white people, laugh about issues such as this one that are rooted in race, being because of the reference to being born in Africa. I think white people across America need to start up dialogues with people from other races. Make friends with new and different types of people and open up your minds to different views and ways of seeing the world. It doesn't mean that you have to change your views, but it does mean that you SHOULD learn to see from the points of view of other people so you can better understand where they are coming from and so that you can be comfortable to laugh and have conversations about race with people of another race. And this applies both ways of course, but my point is about white people in particular. We could start up the typical round and round conversation about who did what and bring up statistics and all that typical bullshit, OR... we could look within each of ourselves as individuals and see what WE can do, how we can grow and evolve and look out for our future generations in this world by working RIGHT NOW with our very selves and the relationships we have and could have. People who are different from you are not going anywhere so the ONLY CHOICE is to learn to better work with each other, communicate with each other, and with only a little bit of effort, understand each other. Open up your minds, open up a dialogue, and open up an opportunity to speak to a person of a different race and see where it goes. Let's evolve our collective consciousness here in America to being comfortable and therefore more easily able to work on issues regarding race. We are all just human beings, do we really need an alien invasion to see that? Peace!