Years ago -- the late '90s -- in Queens, three civil servants -- one police officer and two firefighters -- rode a parade float in black face. Michael Jackson walks around in white face -- surgically evolving since the 1980's -- on a regular basis. All four men show their contempt of Blacks.

The civil servants rode a float, throwing fried chicken and watermelon at a cheering crowd, and -- these employed protectors of civilians -- also dragged a blackened rag doll behind the float, like, an infamous -- criminal case -- in Texas.

The press got a hold of a video, and every TV news station in New York seemed to have lead with it. The public was outraged, the mayor -- seemed -- outraged, and the -- offensive -- civil servants were fired. Hurrah! you say? Not so fast, because these former civil servants sued to get their jobs back, and according to a judge their First Amendment rights were trampled on. In other words, they -- the one police officer and two firefighters -- have the right to express racist views when off duty and keep their job. Would anyone hire David Dukes as a New York firefighter or police officer? Should someone? Did the civil servants express their contempt for Blacks -- they would have to serve -- on their psychological exams, before getting hired -- as New York City Civil servants?

If the New York City police officer, who was convicted of sodomizing a black man, in a police precinct, had first pretended to sodomize a blackened rag doll, while off duty, and it got out to the media, would people consider that freedom of speech? Or be concerned about what that officer might do to a real person, in the future, while on duty? A civil servant who shows pure contempt for blacks -- who, along with other races, he has to serve and protect -- should not be a civil servant.

Now, Michael Jackson. Well, his face is white, he was born Black, he was born in America where some founding fathers and presidents had slaves, and so laws were against Blacks at the formation of this Republic. In America, where light complexioned slaves were -- thought -- better than the darker complexioned slaves. America, where in the early part of the twentieth-century, young Black children -- some as young as five -- were placed in prison work camps on trumped-up charges. America, where, Black-American soldiers fought for freedoms of others in World War Ii, while Blacks were being lynched back home. America, where a young boy is beaten to deformity for a supposed infraction against a white woman. America, where a woman, refusing to get out of her seat on a bus for a white man, gets arrested, which started the Civil Rights Movement.

These events were before, around, and after the birth of Michael Jackson, the white-faced -- shamed of himself -- Black-American, who lived in a country where some civil servants -- and he -- proudly show contempt -- in his own way -- for Blacks' existence.

I wrote this essay several years ago.  N.E. Wright