Iowanna Do that...The Color Wheel Never Stops

Figured I'd take a different approach today and not just talk about how my day went. I'm sure that's exciting and such, but it doesn't hurt to hear some of my thoughts (well it probably would cause I have a crazy insane thing inside my skull).

So coming to Americorps has definately been a bit of a cultural mouth dropper. It's just amazing to see how different people are around the country. Just hearing the different words people use to describe the same thing is always fun (like subs in MD, Grinders in Conneticut, Hoagies in other places). The music choice of some of the people is a bit weird to me, but I'm sure thats more of an individual thing and not so much a geography thing...right?

Well today I was taken back to the awkward race differences. Don't worry, no one's called me the N word here, at least not to me face. Wait, yes they have, just not the white people. Which is funny because the black people that use it here don't seem to mind using it in front of white people, which I guess was the same back in MD, it's just that I hung with mainly blacks and so the whites present didn't seem to mind. Oddly enough, I didn't really feel bad or odd when confronted with the word (someone challenge that please!!) but I'm starting to think I should have been offended.

In the car, one of the white girls on my team said something that I also feel like I should have been offended by, even though I wasn't. Yesterday was my birthday, and one of the white girls took pictures of me while I was blowing out the candles. She was showing it to another white girl in the group and then said, "Yeah you can't really see Jeremie because it's dark and he's black." Not really an offensive sentence to me, but I feel like I should have been offended.

I'm not really sure when it comes to being offended because I never get offended unless you talk about my family. I know that neither case was meant to offend, but just becuase someone's intentions aren't meant to offend doesn't mean you shouldn't be offended. Or does it? Food for thought I suppose, because when I chew on it a bit more I realized that my prior sentence shouldn't really exist.

I guess the point of this blog is to tell the sensitive people out there to go to the moon because most things that are offensive aren't meant to be that way. If someone accidentally steps on your shoe do you punch them in the face? Probably not, and if you do than kudos to you for wanting to go to jail and make something of yourself. Normal people would only get offended if someone intentionally stomped on their shoes. Overly sensitive people throw a hissy fit and hope whoever is there to catch it isn't more aggressive than they are (because then they look dumb when they back down, but that's neither here nor there or anywhere except my head).

The hard-to-find-confusing-nonsensible moral of today's story? Don't take offense unless the offender is obviously attempting to offend and/or if you want to go to the moon. Of course exceptions apply, so challenge me.