(What are you doing Gil? A blog about Gay Marriage followed up by a blog about Racism? Don’t you know you are not supposed to talk about those things?)

It was the Spring of 1993. I was on the Florida State University football team. For some unknown reason I looked at William Floyd’s left arm. He was cut. By cut I mean he was gashed. Will got caught by a rough facemask in practice that ripped his left bicep open. I actually could see into his arm. I saw his flesh. I saw his blood. I saw Will hurt.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that is when God reached down and ripped racism out of my heart. I saw my friend, who is black, bleeding just like I do.

I was never a member of the Ku Klux Klan or anything, but before this afternoon I definitely walked around with a superior attititude about myself just because I was white. I told the occasional off color joke and just lived my “white” life. I did have “black friends” but I never really became very close to any of them.

That hot spring day back in 1993 my world changed. My preconceived notions about race changed. My thoughts about myself and how I lived my life changed.

Now I can’t say that I have lived a perfectly non racist life since that day. I have used the word since that day. Am I proud oif it. Absolutely not.

Recently racism has become an issue in my life. I really hate it. I believe we all need to be so far past race that it isn’t even a thought. Unfortunately that is not the world, country, region, state or city I live in. Racism is an issue.

So I am asking a question: How do you prove that you are not a racist?

It doesn’t matter if you are black, hispanic, white, or any other ethnicity. Every race and ethnicity has dealt with racism in one form or another.

Maybe the question I should be asking is: How can you prove that you are not a racist?