Hi Tracy,

>My daughter's bestfriend is black and so are many of her and my close friends. Two people I respect most in the business world are black as well. One is a black woman. My neighbors for 10 years are black and we are close and help each other out often. However, the difference is that I don't think anyone I know would ever say "I know a few very fine "white" or caucasion people, of which one is a very good colleage" as we just did.

I think it all has to do with history, Esspecially in the US were discrimination of blacks was servere, common and accepted in recent history, the racial thing echo's in time. Much of what we say about minorities (because we are not only talking about blacks here), has an historical and emotional context and background. This likely will disappear in the future, but for now, if we say "black rat" it recalls the recent history of suppression of blacks which gives it an emotional context.

My point on the issue is that we should not look at emotional arguments of suppression of certain groups (how worse it might have been) to call something discrimination or not. Equal rights means equal rules. IMO, it means that if 'white rat' is not discrimination, then 'black rat' should not be either, or else we are talking about discriminating rules.

Walter,