It’s true- I am into vinyl. So now I also have a long beard and wear sunglasses indoors.

My wife and I talked for years about getting a record player and it always came down to the same thing: Where are we going to put it? We have a small house. No basement. And they cost like $200, and we don’t need it… so we never got one.

But then a friend of mine moved and she gave me some of her antiques to sell, including some records. One of those records was a 78, made of shellack that was more than a hundred years old. The rest were a collection of the best symphonies from the best composers, and I thought… well, someone needs to listen to these.

So I did a little research, and thanks to the inexplicable growth of the popularity of vinyl records, record players are being made again and I got one for $50. Christmas came a few months early this year! And of course, now that we have a record player, we need records to play.

Here’s my philosophy: Some music was recorded and mastered to be put on vinyl records. Other music was recorded to be put on CD. If I’m going to buy records, it should be the music that was MEANT to be on vinyl. Also, if you know where to look (Goodwill) you can get a record for $2. I now have too many records. And the urge to go to Goodwill. I went to a Michigan Goodwill while I was on vacation, and that was after we went to a record store near the lake. We’re not addicted, but we’re a little beyond reasonable. But I digress.

The music I am buying on vinyl record is the best of the past century, great musicians and vocalists. GOOD Music. GREAT music. Look, I love my mother, but I was raised on Barbara Streisand and Barry Manilow. I know ALL OF BARRY MAINLOW’S GREATEST HITS. I should not. But in the places in my brain where useful information SHOULD exist (like, where are my glasses? What day is it? How old am I?), are all of the lyrics to Copacabana. I am not doing that to my daughter. She will be raised on GREAT music. So I have stared a truly great collection.

Obviously I have Sinatra. And with the Italian crooners come Dean Martin and Tony Bennet, but also Sammy Davis Dr. I got a live double album of Sammy in Vegas. THAT man was an amazing live performer. Tipple threat: Singing, dancing, acting. He does a bit where he sings as other famous singers and actors and his impressions are really good.

We also wanted great music from different genres. We got jazz- Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong. I went back a little further and got Fats Waller (remember him from Stormy Weather?) and a little further back for more piano I got Scott Joplin. Joplin invented Ragtime! Fats made it funny.

Now you can’t have a great record collection without some blues, so I got BB KING! A friend recommended his live at Cook County Jail record, and it’s amazing.

Around this time I looked at my record collection and I noticed something. Maybe you noticed it too. Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Sammy Davis Jr, Fats Waller, Scott Joplin, BB King… what do they all have in common?

Obviously: They’re all men! We needed some FEMALE voices up in here, and so naturally we got some Ella Fitzgerald, because she is one of the greatest American singers of all time. And naturally, I got some Billy Holiday, and I rediscovered Sarah Vaughn, who is the voice you would get if you mixed Ella Fitzgerald with Casandra Wilson (I saw Casandra Wilson in Chicago with the CSO once, and it was amazing!). I also got a record of Lena Horne (Hey! Remember her from Stormy Weather?). We had also seen Coco Taylor at the House of Blues, and so I’m waiting for one of her more recent records to go on sale because it’s pretty good. Which reminds me, I also need some Buddy Guy, who I got to see perform at his restaurant in Chicago, but I still need to figure out where to start. Solo or with Jr Wells? Both are so good. So I have some more research to do.

Now, these are not the only records we have purchased, but they are the ones we researched and sought out because they are such amazing artists. I noticed another thing after the collection had started to grow. Did you notice something else about the names I’ve been listing? Something they all have in common?

Yes, they’re all Americans. But that’s not what I’m getting at. WHAT ELSE do they all have in common? Aside from being amazingly talented American musicians/performers. Think about it…

YES! They’re all black! Or African American! Or People of Color! Or whatever term isn’t considered offensive on Twitter this week! But the fact that a large percentage of my music collection is BLACK isn’t the point I am driving at. The actual point I am intending to make by telling you all of this is:
I DON’T CARE THAT THEY’RE BLACK.

And that’s why I’m not a racist.

Joe Biden just stuck someone on the supreme court BECAUSE she’s “black.” He also picked Kamala Harris because he thought she was black. Apparently she is not? Not his worst gaff. And he chose his press secretary because she was black. This is why Joe Biden is a racist. Well, this is among a LOT of reasons. Hey, remember when Kamala Harris said Joe Biden was a racist whose policies had hurt Black Americans? I wonder what she thinks now. But I digress.

Disney is remaking The Little Mermaid and is making Ariel- the fair skinned, red head/Irish mermaid- a black mermaid. Because, apparently they believe little black girls look at Disney princesses and say, “If she doesn’t look like ME, I don’t care how magical her story is.” They’ve been encouraging all non-white little girls to do this for years now.

Pixar freaked out over how BLACK the lead character of Soul was (for almost ten minutes of screen time, until that character fell into an open sewer and died), and Disney freaked out about how BLACK the lead villain in Obi Wan was (and yet failed to write her a good part or decent dialogue), and all of America freaked out about how BLACK Obama was (don’t get me started on his policies or his mother). “OH MY GAWRGSH!” they cried aloud on all forms of social media, “We’re NOT racist because we chose our lead actor/actress/president/vice president/etc. based exclusively on the dark skin tone they were born with!”

But the problem with all of this is- that MAKES them racist. Disney and the Democrats are looking at people and saying, “Black is sure DIFFERENT than WHITE folks, and it’s SUCH AN IMPORTANT DIFFERENCE that we are going to make decisions based on that difference alone!”

The Little Mermaid doesn’t need to be a wise, mature girl who obeys her father. She needs to be… darker.

Our Supreme Court doesn’t need to be educated and articulate, and with a proven track record of honoring law, justice and the constitution. It needs to be… darker.

Our Star Wars characters don’t need to be well written and captivating, with great acting and a compelling backstory. They need to be… darker.

Qualifications and ability doesn’t matter because IF IT DID… it wouldn’t be BLACK. Or at least that is the idea driving the woke Democrat left. Somehow it doesn’t occur to them that the best qualified person, or the best written character might actually BE a black person, anymore than it occurs to them that some people come from Mexico legally. But sometimes the best actor is black merely because he is the best actor. Sometimes the world’s greatest brain surgeon is a black man merely because he happens to be a brilliant brain surgeon. Sometimes black kids get accepted into good colleges merely because they are smart and hard working. And lots of people come from Mexico legally. I’ve met loads of them. My point, as politically incorrect as it is, is this: Forcing people into various positions because of the tone of their skin is based on the stupid notion that they could never earn their way into that position. And to understand why it’s racist, just replace the word “black” with “white.” If Biden announced that he was looking to hire a “white” press secretary, even CNN might be prompted to call it racist, though they would find some way to blame Trump for it.

Back to my apparently very “diverse” record collection. BB King is in my record collection because he is an amazing performer. If there was a white blues musician as good, I would buy that record too. Right now, I don’t know of one. BB is the best, and it’s not because he looks like me.

Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald are amazing performers. If there were white vocalists as good I would buy those records too, but right now I don’t know of any. I have found a handful of white female vocalists from the same era singing similar songs, jazz and blues, but I don’t like any of them as much. Their bands aren’t as good, and their style of jazz and blues isn’t what I like. If you like Doris Day or Rosemary Clooney, I’m with you- they were good, but not the kind of good that gets you into my record collection.

Sammy David Jr was an incredible performer. I know of three white performers as good- Frank, Dean and Tony, and they are all in my collection. But none of them are in my collection BECAUSE they are white, and Sammy’s not in my collection because he is not. I listen to the music I think is good BECAUSE IT IS GOOD. Not because the musicians “look like me.” That would be an insufferably stupid reason to buy a record, and I think it’s an insufferably stupid reason to choose a president, actress, supreme court justice or Disney Princess.

“Race” isn’t a real thing. Humans are all human no matter how dark or light they are. Talent, wisdom, skill and character have NOTHING to do with how quickly we get a sunburn, and so we should not be making decisions about other people based on that, or on any other irrelevant feature. The reason RACE is a topic of discussion is because evolutionism has replaced Biblical creation in our cultural consciousness.

Acts 17: 26 says

“From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.”

The Bible says we are all one race, one family, made in the image of God. Once you toss that out and replace creation with evolution, the idea that we are all one race becomes indefensible, and with that goes the equality of all people. Evolution does not allow for some equality between the races anymore than it allows for the equality of all mammals. If your worldview is one of race, based on Evolutionism, then you will view people who don’t look like you as a different animal. And I mean that literally- on evolution, black people and white people are different animals in the same way chimpanzees and gibbons are different animals. Darwin himself said that the evolutionary distance between white Europeans and Black Africans was the same evolutionary distance as that between the Africans and the Orangutans. Some of that evolutionary racism has never left the secular culture. It’s only changed it’s marketing. Now it’s “woke.”

With that worldview it makes sense that leftist Democrats would insist on choosing cast or candidates based on race, because from their view, it’s the only way those non-whites would ever be considered. Hollywood and the Democrats have tried for YEARS to make things DIVERSE, and they have made things really embarrassingly bad. But I want my record collection to be a shining example of what the world should be. My record collection is diverse, NOT because I tried to make it diverse, but merely because I tried to make it excellent. If we strove merely for excellence in government and Hollywood, we would find that diversity still results. If you really believe in diversity, if you are REALLY not a racist, then you should follow my example and never again TRY to make things diverse. Just work to make things excellent, and those people of all shades and size will step up to rock the blues.

And whatever your hue, Jesus Loves you!