Thinking about race...

I have to admit that I usually give very little thought to matters of race. I'm not sure I'm giving it a lot of thought now, but two things have made me pause today.

The first was a phone call I answered at work this afternoon.

I gave the client the name of the agent he was trying to locate, and, upon hearing the obviously east indian name, the client inquired "is he a white fella?" when I answered in the negative, the client went on to reply, "oh dear. Does he know anything?" I'll be the first to admit that the particular colleague in question is not one of my favorite people, and is rather unbearable when it comes to inter-office communication, however, he always handles his clients quite professionally, and I quickly assured the client that this was the case, before putting him through.

I've worked in various service industries for a lot of years, and I can definitely say that I've never had a phone call quite like that before.

The second is this article on the God's Politics blog. It would seem that Barack Obama was hung in effigy on a university campus this week. A rather disturbing thought as well.