Racism is dead!
Proven morally and intellectually defunct. Good riddance, goodbye, time to put all that energy into something else. Almost anything else. Hopefully something positive.
Okay, I admit that I can not single-handedly kill racism. I am thinking that it needs to be declared dead so we Earthlings can start to move forward. I know one can still see signs of racism. Much like one can still see Lenin, pickled and entombed under glass in Russia. He is long dead but still viewable. Many things are long gone that linger on. Remember that Spanish American War Tax that was buried into our telecommunication taxes for over 100 years before it was officially removed? Anyway, I have researched the issue.
THE SCIENCE: Skin color is simply a pigment evolved at different rates depending on the weather. We all are related. Humans most likely ALL came from Africa. Ever see a picture of Earth from outer space? Well... that is our hometown, we all come from and live there, very much connected and related.
THE HISTORY: Slavery is a big part of history. Slavery in America was helped by Africans selling Africans to Europeans. Some tribes look down on those that are darker, some tribes are the opposite. Of course it makes no sense. Can’t we all just get along?
CURRENT EVENTS: There is still slavery today. Child Labor, Sex Slaves, villagers forced to fight guerilla wars and people are still bought and sold in many ways in more than a few countries. As I am writing this, Barack Obama is leading in the polls to become the first Black President. Actually he is of mixed race (aren’t we all really?). Sadly society is still a bit hung up so he is rarely referred to as anything other than African American, even though the truth is more inclusive and well... honest. Still, very cool to have someone different so close to being president. If I had an ounce of “White Guilt” (or lived in a "swing" state) I would vote for him. But since I had nothing to do with slavery, my family fought for the North (and don’t get me started on my Cherokee relatives, the Trail of Tears and that traitor Andrew Jackson). I once again will be voting for a Third Party candidate. Yes I actually vote by the issues. My “Litmus Test” is The United States Constitution and Quality of Life. When I hear people say that they vote for “The lesser of two evils” I just want to smack them upside the head with a crucifix!
PERSONAL: I have been “Girl Crazy” since the third grade. My school mates said “girls have cooties” but I was drawn to them. I always thought that a pretty girl was a pretty girl and variety of skin, eyes, hair, accents and shapes only made them more attractive to me. Conversely, I found little in life as ugly as a racist. And not just the toothless rednecks with poor grammar but all the hateful people of all colors and shades. I ran into a couple of Black Americans in Africa (actually they were more of a Mocha color) and we had lunch, drinks and a lot of laughs about our experiences in Africa. I had much more in common with them than I did with my White safari guide and they had more in common with me than with all of the Black Africans. Simply because our differences, and similarities, are cultural and not racial. Something that the race baiters who are on the wrong side of the Illegal Immigration debate never seem to realize. Another plus is that we can all have fun joking on each others culture without being accused of being racist (sorry my black brothers but you are third behind the French and Armenians in my yet to be written stand-up comedian routine but I do thank you for boinking all the chubby strawberry-blondes. They need lovin’ too and I just can’t go there).
Years ago, I started taping interviews of my family members. I asked my Father, who was a child of the 50’s “Space Age”, if this is what he thought the future would be like when he was a kid. He replied that he thought the world would be very different. Flying cars, Food Tablets and he thought that we would be Well Past Racism. Interestingly my dad is far from a Liberal Ideologue and even as a child he knew that seeing past race was a “no brainer”.
When I was three years old my Great Grandmother told us that a “Colored Man” had broken into her home. I sat quietly and confused. On the drive home I asked my dad “Why the Colored Man broke into Grandmas house?” “Was he not making enough money at the carnival?” After a while my dad realized that I thought a colored man was a tattooed carnival performer. She said “colored”. I did not know that meant only one color at a time. My imagination was much more vivid than that! You see I was old enough, at age three, to understand the principals of commerce but if society had not made a big deal out of skin tone I would not have thought that much about it.
So... can we just declare it dead already? We can come up with an official date at a later time. Maybe the 5th of July or on Bob Marley or MLK Jr.’s birthday or today, right now, yesterday, whatever. I will organize the funeral. We can have a symbolic coffin made out of something like pressed seaweed. We can march down Venice Beach with a New Orleans style Jazz Band playing taps. We will put the coffin out to sea, all ablaze Viking style. We can all sing and party till dawn. The next day we can work on things like Peace, Shelter, Food, Clean Air and Water, Removing Toxins from well... everything, Space Exploration, Corruption, Clean Energy, Health, Meteor Defense, Prison Reform, Education, Building a better Hammock, anything, everything!
All that Wasted Time and Energy. All that Hate and Ignorance. The only single thing worse than all that stuff in our Past is letting it into our Future. Racism is Dead! It belongs in the scrap pile of history. Our grandchildren will have to shake their heads in amazement to learn that we once thought the Earth was Flat and we judged a person by the Color of their Skin and not by the Content of their Character.
