*The views expressed in Truesday are those of the author and do not represent Austinist as a whole. Thank heavens.* -The Editors

I’m a big fan of unfiltered communication. Not because I believe confusion is funny, or that we all need bullhorns attached to our brains, but it is highly refreshing to hear what people are really thinking before they have an opportunity to bust out the smoke-n-mirrors or put on a shitty puppet show.

I likes it raw, kid.

Which brings me to my recent point of focus: Dallas County.

Wow.

There’s so much going on there. To begin, what’s up with those Commissioner meetings? Is this really how they go down? I always assumed there was some decorum involved. Pomp and circumstance. Perhaps some podiums, almost legislative (because in many ways, Commissions ARE legislative). But no. It’s more like a horrible poker game on some distant ESPN spinoff. There’s several dudes all gathered around a big table with multiple cameras pointing at them, as they bicker about yawn, no one gives a shit.

But then there’s the gem.

The BLACK HOLE.

For those unwilling to click through things or watch closed-caption video, what went down at a recent Dallas County Commissioner’s meeting is essentially this:

Pinkish-Caucasian Commish yammering on about a bureaucratic office which he believes is inefficient, and describes it as being a “black hole” for paperwork. African American Commish interrupts with a quip that’s something along the lines of “or a white hole”. Touché! Brief laughter happens until everyone realizes there was no joke there, which then stirs a quick but fruitless discussion on whether the word ‘black’, in the context of ‘black hole’, is a reference to science or something more racially motivated. Then another African American Commish asks that the Pinkish-Caucasian Commish apologize for being racially insensitive. No apology is levied. Later on there are some really awesome jokes about Devil’s Food Cake vs. Angel Food Cake in terms of batter color and social justice. But again, they aren’t really jokes.

Well I for one prefer Devil’s Food Cake to the Angel variety, and I’m not sure I would agree that any baked goods would ever be labeled in a truly negative fashion. However, my take aside, I can see where he was going with that.

I think it would be highly naïve to assume that racism has somehow been eradicated here in America, as there’s simply too much proof to the contrary. In fact, I would wager that if you believe that no one you know is a racist, then you’re probably the racist of your crew. I think it also naïve to assume every time someone uses the term ‘black’, that they are attempting a wholesale besmirching of an entire race. It’s an obnoxiously racist assumption in itself.

But that’s not even my point, which is far more illuminated by the comments on the meeting’s commentary. Dear lord, the internet is fun!

That Dallas County Commissioner group is free to debate the never-ending semantics of racial insensitivity in whatever forum they see fit, and continue to video tape it for the rest of us to cry over.

Because that’s where the fun begins.

In the quantum physics of our brains.

I personally believe that racism is little more than lazy analysis, for which every human who has ever existed is guilty. Generalizations of any kind, whether drawn along lines of race, gender, sexual preference, eye color, juggling ability, or gastrointestinal fortitude, are simply the product of a lazy, bullshit short-cut.

The pinch is that there’s some tragic logic to that.

Since meeting every other human on a real, person-to-person level isn’t a reasonable request, most of us tend to take brief ‘samples’ of the whole population and then build our preferred relationships based on the outcome of consideration of those limited ‘samples’. Often times, those ‘samples’ are little more than what we are presented through the media (movies, news, sit-coms, OK magazine), which are two-dimensional at best, but even then we find a way to warp and misinterpret that simplistic representation due to our inability to properly process allegory, metaphor, irony, sarcasm, or hyperbole. But again, it’s not stupidity that’s the problem, and it’s not a desire to be racist per se. It’s laziness. Generalizations are simply easier and quicker for the lazy person to hold on to.

So they do.

And when a whole group of people gets collectively lazy over a long enough timeline, this laziness can become codified and culturally ingrained. So much so that the perpetrators don’t even realize how lazy they’ve become. Which, irony abound, is the point that the African American Commish was complaining about when he took umbrage with the phrase “black hole”, even though he did it in such a way as to completely shit all over the notion that it’s a subconscious bend rather than an conscious desire, thus committing the exact same lazy analysis in the process of complaining about it.

It’s so cyclical. So deep. Like some sort of cosmic singularity that sucks in all matter of fact or enlightenment to its core and blankets it in utterly unimaginable darkness. Like a DARK hole. Like a Dallas County hole.