I'm listening to Depeche Mode right now. Why? Because I'm copying my old CDs into my iTunes library. Things change. I remember when cassette tapes were the newest thing, and then we got CDs.

I also remember growing up in the 70s and 80s, and what the atmosphere was like, racially. I remember being white and being automatically despised for it by strangers of other ethnicities, because it was assumed that I was privileged; that I thought I was better than them. Well, I was privileged because of my ethnicity...I just didn't know it at the time. I didn't have a concept of it. I didn't understand why they thought they were getting the short end of the stick. Didn't they have all the same rights as I did? Well, they did by that time...technically.

Reality was another story, though. I remember coming to the realization of how unfair it all was. I remember when I was old enough to be horrified by the "N word." I remember hearing my grandparents use it, and they meant it too. I remember teachers treating people differently because of their race. As children, we always knew which teachers hated Asians, which ones hated black people, which ones hates Hispanics ("Mexicans"), and which ones hated white people. I had a black teacher when I was in the fourth grade who actually kept a phony grade book to prove that all the white boys were failing and not doing their homework. Any time we turned in well-written papers, she would give us zeroes, with a note in red ink on the top of the paper: "Who wrote this?" Most of the other white boys in her class had to go through the humiliation of standing in front of the class in tears, after telling their parents what was really going on, and telling the class "I'm sorry for lying about Miss Conway." I remember watching one sobbing boy in particular, when I was going through the same issue myself, and seeing my own none-too-distant fate with dread. Fortunately, my parents believed me. They pulled me out of that school early, when my father got transferred, and I moved back to Dallas with him before the rest of my family joined us.

It was a very strange thing for me, realizing what racism was, and that usually the situation was reversed. Usually, it was hateful white people who went out of their way to hurt races they felt negatively about. I remember feeling angry about it, even as a child. I remember teachers and other adults in my world getting frustrated with me, disgusted with me, because I wouldn't cooperate when they asked me to treat someone badly because they were different. I remember the realization that it was all true; that white people really did think they were better than everyone else, and I remember hating myself for being one of them.

I had friends of all races growing up in public schools in the '70s and '80s. It wasn't my grandparents' world anymore. It wasn't even my parents' world, which saw the first days of Integration. For my generation, Integration was a thing of the past. We couldn't imagine "separate but equal" facilities. It seemed insane to us. By the '90s, when I was in high school, for us racism really seemed to have vanished. It was an issue our parents and grandparents struggled with, but we didn't really grasp. There were isolated incidents, but for the most part, the teenagers I knew in the '90s didn't see people "in color." We just saw people; friends and adversaries not because of what they were, but who they were.

Today, however, it seems all of the racism I may have naively thought was gone in the '90s, has returned in full force--ugly, and nastier than anything I've seen since my bad experience in the fourth grade. Racism is louder around me at this point in my life than it ever was in the '70s, when true equality was still a fairly new concept.

I keep this in mind in my writing. My writing is, after all, most concerned with equality and the power of diversity. That's why, sometimes, I have a very hard time writing certain characters, certain attitudes.

My serial novel, The Chronicles of Nightfire, Texas, has just begun a re-release in various e-book formats. When I was reading over the text of the previous release, making some polishes, I was very tempted to remove the "N word," because it makes me cringe. It made me cringe when I wrote it into the dialogue for the original publication. It made me cringe all the more, because the characters used the word so casually. But that was my experience in the '70s. It was all around me. Casual racism. Casual hatred. Most people didn't even realize that they were being hateful; that they were, despite any protestations they may have to the label, being racist.

The casual racism I witnessed in the 1970s has become a central theme in The Chronicles of Nightfire, Texas. As I've continued writing the series over the years, the theme has escalated. I've had Sam struggle with being labeled an "Uncle Tom" by his family and his girlfriend; I've put him in situations that have shown him that not all white people are as accepting as his friends. He's been refused by white cashiers, he's come face to face with the fact that one of his white friends' family used to own his family. He's experienced both sides of the issue. I've done my best in the series to show what I saw happening, from a white perspective, and I used to think I was writing about irrelevant issues. I was heartbroken to realize, as I made the decision to leave the "N word" grotesquely present for the re-release, that this particular issue had become profoundly relevant once again.

It's hard for me to write a lot of what is said in the series, because I am so against it, but I feel I must show my readers what casual racism looks like to me, and what I see as the consequences. The third story arch in The Chronicles of Nightfire, Texas that I'm preparing to write is set to be titled "White Devils." I'm bringing the issue to a head.

Now don't hear me saying that there's anything wrong with being white. There isn't. While I went through a period of hating my own race as a child, I was eventually able to separate race from attitude. Stereotypes are just as hateful as slurs, and Caucasians are no strangers to being victimized by stereotypes. White privilege, however, is very real; it's the way the United States of America is set up, it's the filter through which everything seems to pass, and it is wrong. It is something our society needs to correct, and no amount of hatred on either side of the issue is ever going to solve the problem. Somehow, someday, "equal" needs to really mean equal.

But as I said, there is nothing wrong with being Caucasian. It's okay to be proud of your heritage. It's right to love one's self. We can't truly love others if we don't. The danger comes when anyone loves themselves and their own heritage so much that they begin to believe it superior to the heritage of others. It is wrong to ignore this problem in one's own race. We can't ignore all the people who see "white privilege" as a good thing, as a birth right, and neither can we ignore Miss Conway. The hatred has to stop on all sides. If it is allowed to survive anywhere at all, it will grow back, like a cancer; like it has in recent years.

I honestly see racism at the root of our nation's political leaders' refusal to resolve any pressing issues in recent years. The economy is in chaos, jobs are scarce, and all that so many politicians seem to cry out against are non-issues, like the race of the president who presents a workable solution. No no, we can't let him take any credit for fixing any of the problems. Better to let them escalate until one of us is in office. It goes far beyond the age old Republicans vs. Democrats sort of gridlock we've faced in Congress before. Like all blind hatred, it is insidious. It threatens to destroy us all.

It sickens me.