I had what they liked to call "good" hair, so they called me white girl instead. But it was not too many years ago that a white woman in an elevator was so offended by my blackness, she didn't see a white girl at all. So she skipped right past calling me nappy-headed and called me a nigger instead.

And I read the blog of an Arab woman who was hoping it wasn't an Arab and was comforted that the media couldn't put a terrorist spin on the shootings in Blacksburg.

What people don't realize is that people in other countries don't see our races when they watch the news about America. They see some more Americans — just Americans — indulging themselves in a culture drowning in sex, money and violence.

Some say hip-hop is the culprit. Others want to blame George Bush. And then there are the truly hateful who blame homosexuality for all the world's ills.

I get a handful of sexist and racist e-mails and phone calls every month. Men who hate my column don't want to just tell me they don't like the way I write. They want to attack my skin color and sexually debase me.

Because I just let it happen, I feel I am saying to these hateful people: You have the green light to attack me. You can go ahead and attack every woman and every person of color just because you don't like the way they do something.

But every time we turn a blind eye to someone's racist remark, every time we see a man disrespect a woman and don't speak up, every time we move too slowly to push for positive change, every time we turn the radio up when we hear that degrading song, we are tolerating sexism and racism. And violence.

When things hit the fan in this country, people act traumatized. They make a little noise and go through all the motions of an uprising. But it's always short-lived. Soon they move on to tomorrow's news.

Thanks to our obsession with race and sex and violence, thanks to our lackluster reaction to hate in America, we've all taken turns changing the clip in the semiautomatic.

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