I am a racist.

I was born white, in a white family, in a white neighborhood, enjoying the privileges that whites have in the good old U.S. of A.

My schools taught me that white people did everything worth mentioning in the world. My schools taught me that all Africans were primitive, tribal groups that fought each other consistently.

My televisions depicted whites in positions of power and leadership, while blacks could only make it by as prostitutes and drug-pushers.

When I went to my institute of higher learning I got more of the same: white writers, white history, white achievement, and white politics.

I am now 22, and as hard as I may try to fight my racist socialization, I still am more likely to get nervous walking down a Philadelphia street if an African-American approaches me than a white.

I can claim to have been in the trenches trying to fight racism, but it is still within me, within you, within every one of you who has the privilege of being white in America.

Further, Americans live in a racist society. It is structural and endemic. African-American wages are lower than whites, African-American unemployment is much higher than whites (25 percent among African-American teenagers), and the chance of an African-American surviving to his or her 30th birthday is factors of magnitude lower than a white's.

Here at the University, 1.6 percent of the faculty are African-American, 2 of 32 senior administrators are African-American and less than 4 percent of the students are African-American.

With the odds stacked against them like this, it is nothing but racist to ask that community not to take direct, disruptive and even separate action against their oppression.

In 1963, hundreds of thousands of people marched on Washington for peace, jobs and justice for African-Americans and others. Those protestors blocked a lot more traffic than the demonstrators on Feb. 15th did, and they were heard.

In the next several years after the historic 1963 march, a white nation -- gripped in the fear that blacks weren't going to take it all in quiet resignation any more -- passed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts to meet some of the demands of the protestors.

An important historical lesson was strengthened by that day in April in 1963. No movement for justice has ever won without struggle, sometimes militant, sometimes more restrained, but struggle nonetheless.

Those who complain that the (recent) demonstrations were disruptive and only served to block traffic, disrupt studies, etc . . . have totally missed what little truth they have read in their history books.

Human history is a history of struggle between peoples in power and those who would demand their fair share. At Penn State we are at a tense moment when that fact is being laid bare. It makes we whites who enjoy that privilege a little uncomfortable, no?

Demonstrations by any group of underrepresented people have always been to draw attention to the problem in a way that cannot be ignored.

To interfere in the everyday happenings of the world is to send out a strong message, "We will be heard. Injustice exists and we will be heard!"

In a white nation that all too quickly discounts African-American problems as secondary or petty, that message must be thrust in front of people so that they cannot ignore it. For to ignore it is to condone a nation that is becoming more polarized by the white power structure every single day.

Something needs to be done before tensions move beyond posters and slogans and reach murder and violence. The United States is in a crisis and to ignore that is to invite your own destruction.

It isn't a "peace and love for everybody" message that is being sent here. It is a "we will have justice by one method or another" that is being screamed at the callous white power structure.

Finally, since whites control almost every important lever of political, economic, educational, and social control in our society it is ludicrous to point out "Black Pride" groups as bastions of "reverse racism" whatever that is.

If a group wishes to survive until tomorrow in a hostile society, it must develop its own unified and separate agenda. While it would be nice if "everyone could work together for peace, harmony, and utopia," the real world doesn't work that way.

At the same time, whites who truly desire to fight racism (not just say they aren't racist) need to stop throwing recriminations at African-Americans and instead organize amongst themselves to stop the growing tide of racism in the white community.

If a person who enjoys the privilege of being white in this country does nothing to confront racism, then their silence affirms the injustice that already exists. It is time for whites like me and you to join together to fight racism.

Perhaps one day, when we have proved we are truly organized and committed to fighting racism, then the African-American community will stand with open arms and work with us to end injustice.

Until that day, any effort by African-Americans to struggle free from their bonds in this society should be encouraged by whites who are committed to justice. To call for them to use regular channels in the white-run machinery is racist in and of itself.

In the words of Frederick Douglas: "If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who confess to favor freedom and yet renounce controversy are people who want crops without planting the ground."

Let's plant the ground. It is our future.