A recent thread made me think about something that might be of interest to many of you. The thread was about a story written about a stolen bike and it assumed things that seemed to upset some people. That got me to thinking about something I might say to someone else that might upset quite a few people here.

I lived in the DC area for some time and I worked in downtown DC for awhile. If something was stolen outside of the building I worked in it was likely stolen by an African-American. Why would I assume that you ask? At the time DC was between 65 and 70 percent African-American and the building I worked in, as well as the surrounding buildings contained about 60 percent African-American employees. The people who walked by the building were probably more than 60 percent likely to be African-American. The police who patrolled our area were more than 70 percent African-American primarily due to the majority African-American population in that area.

That was many years ago and I recently read the following article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/black-dc-residents-plumm...

Interestingly, times have changed and even though I may still make the same assumptions, they are based on out of date information. I spoke with a friend who still works in DC although not in that same building. He said that area (the building we both worked in) is now primarly Asian-American. It was near Chinatown anyway and I would guess that Chinatown has simply expanded. That would mean that if something was stolen near that building NOW it's likely that the culprit would be an Asian-American.

Assumptions can lead to questionable statements but I'm not sure you can claim they're all racist simply because of the assumption made. Am I racist for having those assumptions?

Calabogie (reflective today)