Let's talk about Racism!

As a parent, you tend to remember the day your child comes home from school and asks “what are the definitions of racist and bigot”?
I think all good parents will answer the same way, “grab the dictionary and we’ll look them up”.
The day my son and I started this dance, the definitions didn’t sooth his worried brow. When I pressed him as to what the core of the problem was, he confided to me that he thought he was becoming a racist.
HELLO!
It seems a group of Black students were making life difficult for him at school and he was harboring more and more resentment toward them. This was of particular concern to him because his fist love, step father, step siblings and several of our friends were black.
And, he loved them all!
If he was becoming a racist, would he grow to hate the people he loved too? Big problem for a 17 year old mind.
Oh, p.s. pasty white single parent guy here!
We talked about it through dinner and into the evening with two conclusions:
He was not, and probably never would be a racist.
We needed a way to make sense of how some people can be so good and others so bad within any particular group.
Over the next two weeks we would continue the conversation as new thoughts presented themselves. Finally we developed a rule that we both felt we could live by.

Note: in my house all rules must work equally for all people. No special interests, no preferential treatment. With rare exceptions to the parental caveat “not until your 21”, he and I lived by the same rules.

The sense we made of (frankly) BOTH our feelings became know as the 10% Sludge Rule.
I offer it to you here, free of charge.

The 10% Sludge Rule:
Given any slice of humanity:
10% will be extraordinary people! People that we would be better ourselves if we were more like them.
80% will be good solid citizens. Honest, reliable, kind.
10% will be sludge that the world would be better off without.

Divide humanity in any fashion you choose. Red, yellow, black, white, man, woman, orientation, affiliation, religion, occupation, young old, whatever. Within that divide you will find heroes, friends and sludge.

On the days when you feel like the bottom 10% has camped out on your doorstep; remember 90% of that slice are people you want to know better. If you reach out to some of the bottom 10%, you both might move up a notch!
Also remember:
The top 10% gets 5% of the press.
The middle 80% gets none of the press.
The bottom 10% gets 95% of the press.
Take heart, it’s not as bad as it seems!