You guys remember Thor Heyerdahl?  The Scandinavian dude who believed that the Egyptians came to the new world early on and taught the Inca/Mayan/Aztec folks how to stack one stone upon another?  He built his versions of period sea craft and risked his life to show how it was done.  
 As a kid, oh about middle school age, I was much taken with this and Kon Tiki and all that thinking it was so cool until it finally occurred to me that this whole concept was racist born in the belief that those scruffy, stupid Americans would have never been able to figure this out themselves.  And I’m certain that there were those who disagreed and insisted that some Welsh monk in his buckskin canoe came before those heathen folk and enlightened the hapless savages.
  Racism, prejudice  are myriad headed monsters riddled with as much silliness as evil and much more pervasive than most imagine.  We need, for example, to remember that our society, culture and institutions from legal system to government to academia were established and the rules set by white supremacists, the given belief at the time of our founding fathers.  I think that racism is so deeply ingrained in America that it is impossible to escape its stupidity.  We are all tarred.
 Has anyone else noticed on contemporary women’s programing the popularity of the large, loud black women down at the end of the table?  On the View and Talk and the others they have to have this presence doing their out of order African America woman act who comes in loud and strong and dominates the subject at hand?  These folks are always over weight, brassy and rude, one more stereotype trotted out for our entertainment.  They remind me of the old minstrel shows and is one more example of how we never learn.