Jon Stewart has been on vacation throughout this whole Ferguson, Missouri, mess. So I've been waiting to see what he had to say about it.
I wasn't disappointed. This is great, isn't it?
Those guys on Fox 'News' - who frequently remind me of the Pillsbury Doughboy - pontificating on race and the African American experience,... doesn't that just seem bizarre to everyone? (Apparently not, huh?)
We've come a long, long way in America, but your race still matters. As a white man in Nebraska, I rarely even think about race. Certainly, I've never even imagined that my race would have anything to do with how people treated me. That just never been an issue.
Of course, it's had a great deal to do with how people treated me, and if I weren't white, that would quickly become obvious. But being white in Nebraska is the default. (My gender mattered, too. But as a man, that's not always evident, either.)
Still, I can use my brain. I can listen to the experiences of other people. I can empathize, and I can understand how their experiences might be very different - infuriatingly different, sometimes - from mine.
As Jon Stewart says, "Race is there, and it is a constant. You're tired of hearing about it? Imagine how fucking exhausting it is living it."
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