Thanks Joe Rogan, for the Black Guy and the White Guy

While watching the UFC 87 prelims for the first time, Joe Rogan said something I have always thought myself. The other announcer had identified Jones as being the fighter in black trunks, and Gusman in the white trunks, when Rogan retorts with:

"Or, black guy, Jones, white guy, Gusman. I'll never understand why people just don't say that."

I've wondered about this ever since I saw a boxing match where the announcers had an extremely difficult time identifying the fighters, because both were wearing white trunks with red stripes. The idiotic thing about it was that one guy was black and one was white, but the announcers refused to say anything about that. So we got "Jones has the thicker red stripe than Smith".

I'll tell you why Joe: because people have gotten so hypersensitive about race and the perceived damage of acknowledging that (gasp) we aren't all the same, that they deny reality, potentially as far as claiming race doesn't exist at all. It's good solid social change run amok. And in the long run it is potentially very damaging, because we still have work to do with race relations in this country, and we can hardly have the serious discussions we need to have if we start pretending our differences don't exist out of fear of the political consequences. That's just the "Darwin is wrong because it leads to Social Darwinism" canard in a different suit. Reality is what it is, and the sooner we accept it, the sooner we can make our future reality better.