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Monday, June 04, 2001

Look, I know what you want me to say: The white race, my race, killed the Jews

"The man went on: 'I've been trying to find an answer to a question, and I haven't found it in any books. In World War II, when Hitler killed the Americans and the British and the French and the Jews, what race killed them?' It took me a half-second to untangle the question, but even before I did I got that jolt of neck-sweat that signals dangerous territory ahead. In America, when a person of one race says the word 'race' to a person of another race, you start phrasing your sentences very carefully."

Washington Post. White man John F. Kelly recounts a bizarre encounter with a young black man on the DC metro who seemed hellbent on pinpointing the fact that it was whites who did all the killing on behalf of the Nazis during World War II, not blacks.'

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This is the personal weblog of Grant Barrett, editor of the Double-Tongued Dictionary, a collection of words from the fringes of English. More about this site...

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