That’s what I get for being so nosy

Last Friday evening, I was at the main branch of the East Baton Rouge Parish Library on Goodwood Blvd., using the computer to get some information on the Internet for an essay assignment (and play on Facebook, of course). The computer I was using was extremely slow and it took a while for the site I was trying to get to load. As I stood waiting for the Web page to appear, my eyes wandered around the room observing the other people in the computer area.
There was a white guy on the computer next to mine checking out what looked like some family pictures that somebody had e-mailed him. On one of the shots, there was a picture of a lady smiling and playing with a little white puppy. Another one of the pictures showed a little boy wearing a white mask cuddling with the pup. ‘Cute,’ I thought to myself, ‘That must be his Halloween costume.’
The next picture that popped on the screen was one of the most gruesome images I’ve ever seen and it has haunted me since.
On the snapshot was a naked black man lying on his side with whip marks covering his entire back and the backside of his legs. Underneath the picture in bold, capital letters was the message, “NOW THAT’S JUST WRONG!” My stomach turned.
The most disturbing thing about that situation wasn’t even the horrific image on the picture, nightmarish as it was. The thing that struck me the most at that moment was how the white guy stood there chuckling to himself as he stared at the picture on the screen.
I would like to believe racism is a thing of the past, we are all trying to get along with each other and for the most part, things are better now in race relations than they were in the 1950s and 60s, but I don’t have the luxury of being that naïve. I realized last Friday I’ve been a fool for believing we’re any closer to peace and racial harmony today than we were yesterday. Now I know better.