Randall G. Shelden's blog

Taboo subjects in the primaries

We still have a long way to go before deciding who the next president will be, so perhaps what I am about to claim will be disproved before that time comes. But if history is any judge I doubt it.

You see, there are certain topics that are simply not discussed in any complete manner during an election season – or any season for that matter. And if they are discussed at all, it is at a very superficial manner.

These three topics are racism, sexism and social inequality.

Denying that Racism Exists

Denying that Racism Exists

To hear white American (and conservative blacks) talk racism is a thing of the distant past (and to some never really existed at all) and that blacks who complain of unfair treatment are either “playing the race card” or suffering from a newly discovered malady called the “victim syndrome.”

Peeing For Profit

Who would ever think that pissing in a bottle would become such a huge enterprise, with several corporations getting in on the action? But that’s what has happened. And we have the “war on drugs” to thank for this.
Consistent with what seems to be a national obsession over drugs, a report called “Drug Monitoring and Abuse Testing Business” noted that revenues for drug testing businesses grew as much as 15 percent annually during the first half of the 1990s. In 1996, the drug testing market took in around $628 million in revenues, increasing to about $737 million in 2001.