As you might remember from the film, Pretty Woman, stores can be quite biased against people simply based on how they look including white people.

I had a similar experience in the 80s when I went into a store catering to black clothing styles in Georgia. Having just moved to Georgia, I was exploring the downtown area. Wandering into the predominantly black section of the town, I saw an interesting clothing store with some pretty cool clothing. Upon entering, I was received very poorly as if I didn't belong there.

That was wrong, as was the treatment of the "hooker" in Pretty Woman, and Oprah. There are racist people in the world, they come in all colors, and I condemn that behavior. But it does not define people in general. You will never be able to fully prevent individual acts of racism, but you can't project such behaviors over everyone that fits the same demographic description.

If a black man robs a white man, it does not make all black men criminals and racists... so stop using that logic.

I ran a health care organization with 42,000 employees. Looking at our organization, the two most critical factors in determining who got hired was qualifications and first impressions.

Interestingly, there was little evidence at least in our company, that first impressions were driven by skin color. I do think companies these days do discriminate against people with excessive piercings and tattoos, so perhaps you should take up their cause. I also think companies discriminate against people who project a "what can you do for me" attitude in the interview (they need a champion like you to), and finally, people say a lot about themselves with way they dress, if they don't care about "impressing" the corporate recruiter when applying for a job, don't expect them to behave differently after you hire them.

Actually, I have always loved history and except for the fact that jobs are not plentiful in history I would have been a history professor. I took the equivalent of a minor in history and have read on average 30-50 books a year on history. Relatively equally divided between US and world history. I read a broad range of views and don't search for books that confirm what I want to believe.

Have you read any of the recent books that reject the whole European colonialism argument by comparing the countries impacted by European colonialism against those that were not? I found the conclusion that the primary difference was in countries not impacted by European colonialism, local oppression by the wealthy and powerful occurred to the same degree as in countries with white colonial regimes running the country. This undermines the theory that white colonial governments held down native populations, since the evidence suggests that native governments were equally bad or worse. In other words, what had been up to now attributed to racial oppression was more akin to class oppression.

Interesting study, the author is a British Oxford professor, but I don't have his name handy. You might enjoy the book for a different perspective. Its profound findings undermine the racial allegations that are popular among so many people today, that skin color was somehow a factor in how people were treated in countries with "white" vs native governments.

Another interesting perspective came from a friend of mine who recently passed. He was an internationally recognized historian and prolific book publisher. He used to say professional historians are the least "free" to expound on history because they develop a following and publish to that following. As he noted, such publishing is not unlike how MSNBC or Fox News report the news with their audience in mind.

You seem to follow historians that agree with you. Which ones do you read that disagree with you and why was their understanding of history different than yours? Was their understanding different because you were looking at different historical events or you interpreted them differently?

As I said, I have observed both presently and in history that people can be born into privilege. But for the most of history privilege is linked to income, wealth, or class, not race.

Interestingly, as a result of progressive liberal ideas toward social justice and crimes, there is a second "flight" from the cities. Several analysts have observed that this flight is not characterized by skin color as much as income status.

The middle class of all races and ethnicities are moving into "white suburbs". Let that sink in...

These people are saying they feel safer among the so called "oppressors" and privileged" people than with their fellow "oppressed" members of their identity group. A more honest observation is that they identify with fellow middle class Americans regardless of their skin color and not with people based on their skin color.

One interesting observation by modern day sociologists is that poor people tend to segregate by race, religion, and ethnicity. But wealthier people tend to segregate by income and wealth. Part of that is because poor people look more to their identity group for support, while wealthier people don't.

Since you brought up Oprah, she clearly chooses to live in a predominantly white community, not because it is "white", but because of the income and wealth of the community. Forest Whitaker likewise does not choose to live among blacks, but among fellow upper income Americans including in an expensive duplex in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

As you point out both individuals have experienced racism as have I. But they clearly don't associate racism with whites, nor do I believe all blacks are racists because I was attacked based on the color of my skin by a group of blacks. Interestingly, none of the blacks that attacked me were wealthy (I came to know them years later) and one of my best friends at that time was the black son of a local architect.

Don't you love the movie, Crazy Rich Asians, where the lower-level hotel staff are discriminating against the Chinese family only to find out that with one phone call, the wealthy white owner sells his hotels to them and greets them as friends, inviting them to his private suite for some tea. It captures in one scene, the difference between different economic classes of people relate to one another... at the lower level, race matters... at the higher level, money does.