Ken, your book, "What White People Are Allowed to Say" will only be about 1 paragraph long and consist of phrases such as, "I'm sorry" "Whitey is evil" etc. Those phrases (and their variants) are the only discourse on race allowed to white people.

Putz I won't quote you extensively since Lerxcat just did above, but after saying basically that we wouldn't have white/black race problems were it not for the slave trade 150 years ago you say,

"I wasn't saying that we owe anyone anything nor should we have guilt, I'm just stating that because shit has gone down the way it has, that's the way the state of affairs is."

You then say that we should realize that of course black people can say all kinds of things that would be racist if a white person were to say them.

I'm not trying to nitpick but you DO realize that the statement that "something is racist SOLELY due to the color of the speaker" is ITSELF a racist statement!!!

THIS is indicative of the problem. Now, if I'm around my friends we will say things to each other that would offend strangers. "What's up beotch" or something to that effect. Pretty much everyone I know is like this. Around friends we say things we wouldn't to strangers. So, if some black guys says it doesn't offend him when his friends call him the n'word, I can UNDERSTAND that. I have a problem when someone says, "It is ok for a perfect stranger to call me the n'word as long as he is the proper skin color". THAT is BY DEFINITION racist.

Racism - to judge others based on their race

So, if I were a woman's basketball player at Rutger's I would be just as offended if Don Imus or Fifty Cent (I don't KNOW either of them. They aren't my friends) called me a "knappy-headed ho".

This "let's keep a scorecard for the wrongs of fifty plus years ago and some people can say anything if they are "black" enough" standard is UNWORKABLE.
Who can say what? Did you have to come from slaves to have been "historically oppressed" enough to say anything with impunity? What about recent (last fifty years) immigrants from Africa? What if you are black but your ancestors owned slaves? Where does it stop?

Call me crazy but it seems a lot more rational, workable and in the spirit of the civil rights movement to treat ALL people the same and a statement's "racism" has nothing to do with the color of the speaker!!!