Most of the people who post opinions contrary to mine on race play do not take the time to articulate much. As I mention, I take into account the opinions and feeling of dissenters whenever I speak or present on the topic.

I am posting here, unedited, and with the express written permission of the original author, LeatherTBird3, the following blog entry that he additionally cross-posted in response to the Race Play Interview conducted by Andrea Plaid.

I have great respect for ALT’s Senior Editor Mollena Williams in many aspects and on many levels. I can certainly acknowledge and admire the courage required to broach the sensitive subject of “race play” in her recent editorial INTERVIEW BDSM and playing with Race Sr Editor Mollena Williams interviewed by Andrea Plaid Parts 1 and 2. This is a hard subject for me. My own particular brand of “PC” dictates that someone’s kink is their kink and that is to be respected. We cannot control the way we are wired or what flips that switch in us. If I were to be pilloried for all the sick shit that goes through my “heads,” it would be a worse tribulation for me than have been the inequities I have endured due to my race.

That said, whatever turns someone on, that hurts no one else, is none of my business unless I am invited to join. However, I’m just not so sure that “race play” hurts no one else. Furthermore, I am not sure if “race play” alleviates the human need to be culturally and/or ethnically superior by working through it in the realm of fantasy, or simply perpetuates this flaw in the human design that has produced the ugliest of atrocities in our history.

In part 1 of the interview Mollena suggests that fear is what makes the practice of race “play” taboo. I beg to differ with she whom I hold in high esteem. I simply do not have the heart to “play” at that which is still so real in the human psyche and is still a real live affliction suffered by many. This to me is like picking at a wound that you know is infected. It is like giving children toy guns to pretend to shoot each other while bombarding them with images of feigned brutality and bloodshed and then wondering why we live in an increasingly violent society.

There is a paradoxical dichotomy within me that comes part and parcel with my African-American heritage. It is the need to learn the lessons, reap the benefits and garner the strength that seethes within my culture without dragging along the anger spawned of the pain, despair, degradation and indignities which are linked inexorably with being black in America for my generation and the generations before me. Starting with not knowing from which African nation and culture the African contingent of my family actually came from, to being the target of racial epithets right here on our beloved ALT and having the powers that be fail to enforce their own rules regarding racial attacks, my race, my family and I have fought to attain this small and tenuous measure of equality.

My job as a human is to distill the power and strength of character that can be derived from a culture achieving this new-found equality while casting aside the bitter dregs of anger which can only impede further progress despite its justification. The struggle is to identify with my African-American heritage without being defined by it. The struggle to be “just a man” while both holding on to and letting go of the experience upon which that man is built. Many have died and suffered to make this paradox possible. It took quite a bit of soul searching to come to these conclusions and I will not have that which we have struggled for generation to attain reduced to a sex toy.

Mo goes on to say that her pussy is not interested in uplifting the race. I am not trying to “hate” on Mo but admitting freely to thinking with her genitals on issues of such import supports racist stereotypes and smacks of the “I’m gonna get mine,” slave culture mentality that continues to plague our proud race. I know that Mo was trying to be humorous but this statement is akin to a patriot who is willing to sellout his country for a blow job.

Miss Williams further suggests that the subjugation of a race or culture is a part of human nature; an assertion with which I am prepared to agree. I would even go one step further as to say that Dominance and submission is a part of our animal nature; That part of us that so many wish to deny and yet never can quell. We as humans are the only creatures on this planet with the intellect to govern the instincts we have found to be ineffective, effectively bringing about and guiding our own intellectual evolution. It is this need to rule our own passions that has spawned the concepts of law and morality.

The overwhelming majority of the world’s governments have deemed racial discrimination to be unlawful and amoral and for good reason. To play with race in this fashion is to spit in the face of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the thousands of black soldiers who fought in American wars as men only to come “home” to be treated as they were less than other men who did not do as much for their country. Abolition of racial and cultural discrimination is the only way to purge it from society. To make a game out of our on going struggle for sexual satisfaction is to make a mockery of all efforts toward that end.

In Strength, Honor, and Humility,

LeatherTbird