Robots? They’re preset, only speak when programmed

It is not possible to write about social issues and not get blowback from readers.

Sometimes, the words hurled at me are incendiary and downright ugly but I grew thick skin at a very young age and it takes a lot to hurt my feelings.

I have no problem with readers lighting me up when they disagree with what I have written — after all, this is a column of opinion — but I do have a problem when a reader is upset because he or she has misinterpreted what I wrote.

I had a reader react extremely negatively to my column last Sunday on marijuana when I called on black lawmakers to ensure the industry supplies jobs and ownership opportunities to black men who have been arrested again and again for selling it.

And I stand by what I wrote — and if I need to write another column about the many American families who are now held in high esteem but whose fortunes were built on illegal activities, I will.

The column made perfect sense to me. The state has many ex-offenders who are uneducated, unskilled and need to work so they can re-assimilate into mainstream society. One of the alleged purposes of closing prisons in the state was to shift funding away from punitive incarceration to rehabilitative services and re-entry into society. What easier or better way to get these ex-offenders employed but to put them in an industry they understand and are skilled in?

But in a highly charged email, a reader called me a racist because he thought the column called for the marijuana industry to be turned over to blacks as reparations for decades of arrests. He read it totally wrong — or so I thought — until a co-worker told me he also read the column that way.

Those were the only two comments I received that disagreed with my premise, but it tells me I need to clarify what I wrote because more readers may also have misinterpreted the meaning of the column.

What I am saying is that black men have spent decades in prisons and black neighborhoods have been decimated because of the illegal sale of marijuana. Now that it is becoming legal, the idea there will be just a string of whiteowned, marijuana-businesses in black neighborhoods is just inconceivable and unsettling.

I can’t imagine how anyone could feel differently.

Grants and other incentives must be made available to ensure black ownership happens. Indeed, a lot of my readers thought I didn’t take the column far enough, telling me I should have called for all non-violent marijuana dealers to be released from prison immediately.

I am not alone in this thinking that black men continue to pay a high price for a drug the country is rapidly moving to legalize .

U.S. Sens. Corey Booker, D-N.J., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. ., are among the senators who agree.

Booker introduced The Marijuana Justice Act in 2017, which calls in part for the bill to withhold federal funding from states that

continue to criminalize marijuana and inordinately prosecute minorities — as well as create a federal fund that could be used for projects to reinvest and rebuild low-income communities through the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

But as a columnist who grabs an oar and wades into uncharted waters, I expect people to be charged up after reading it.

I have been told by readers — and friends for that matter — that I have conflicting views on social issues.

And that is true.

On some issues, I am rock solid conservative.

But on others, I am as liberal as they come.

And I am OK with the two sides of James.

To me, I could not be a good columnist writing about social issues if I didn’t

see both sides — and if I hadn’t lived and continue to live both sides.

I am as comfortable ranting about the black community, single-baby mommas and their useless baby-daddies who are costing taxpayers a fortune as I am raging about the duplicity of a government that keeps them down by providing handouts and not opportunity.

I am at ease railing against Republicans for what I consider are policies that harm the poor at every turn but also don’t back away from the Democrats who I believe have been sucker-punching the black community for decades.

I have no problem saying some undocumented immigrants drop anchor babies on us and use our Constitution as a protective cloak, but I also sympathize with immigrants such as Nury Chavarria, who sought sanctuary in a church to keep from being deported.

I have written before how James Baldwin inspired me at a young age to write but it was songwriter Paul Anka who wrote the following words that captured the essence of how I would live my life — good or bad — and I have never veered from:

“For what is a man, what has he got, if not himself, then he has naught

To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels

The record shows I took the blows and did it my way.”

So no, I don’t follow the leader and the Pied Piper plays no tune that would make my feet follow. I am willing to take the blows for what I write and believe.

And when people question me about my sometimes controversial stand on issues, I tell them it’s because I am a human being with emotions, a free-thinking brain and as a veteran of the U.S. armed forces, I exercise the First Amendment proudly.

It is robots that have preset parameters and conditions and only speak when programmed.