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Race

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If America was founded on anything it was the idea that each person was created by God and is held as equally valuable in His sight. And thus, should be held as equally valuable in our sights as well. This is the first line of our first founding document, and above all other closely held principles of our great nation is the one on which all the others must rest.

With this principle to guide us therefore it is logical that no physical characteristic should be allowed to violate a person’s equal standing and treatment. The equality of a person is not based on any attribute the individual brings to the table. It is not enhanced by anything the person is physically or mentally. And it is detracted from by anything the person is not. A person’s standing in society is based on what they do. Not who they inherently are, or for that matter who they are friends with or related to. Thus any physical attribute like height, or attractiveness, hair color, finger length, eye color, shoe size, or skin color is utterly irrelevant in our evaluation of a person. Unfortunately a person’s skin color has not been treated as irrelevant. Even by the very men who wrote our beautiful Declaration of Independence. Yet the society we must continually strive to achieve is one where this principle is upheld in purity. I strongly subscribe to the challenge of Dr. Martin Luther King who asked us to judge each other by the content of our character, and not by the color of our skin. My favorite analogy for illustrating how I wish society functions with relation to skin color is to compare it to shoe size. We are all in some way aware that other people don’t have the same size foot as we do. But we don’t care. We don’t ask about it. We don’t look at it. We don’t reference it in any way during normal daily activity. Except on very rare occasions. When we’re buying shoes it is important. Similarly I am willing to pay attention to a person’s skin color when we are lighting a photograph, or applying sunscreen. When we live in a society where skin color is as meaningless as shoe size is today we will know we have fulfilled the ideal upon which we began or glorious experiment.

We must recognize that our nation has a bleak history on this subject. While we are proud of who we are, and what we’ve done, we cannot sweep under the rug the dark, embarrassing, and disgraceful history we inherit in relation to race. Human history is replete with examples of how people do not treat well other people who are different than themselves. People have throughout history used, abused, and mistreated other people whom they could. And often the decisions on who to mistreat have been based on race as that is a very easily identifiable differentiation. Sadly, America was no different in its beginnings. Interactions with the people already living on the land where our ancestors landed were often negative and unfriendly. And of course slavery that burdened people with lifelong servitude, which was inherited from parents, and based upon race took its evil hold on our nation for about 200 years. Our beloved Constitution in its original form contains the horrible three-fifths compromise. Even after legally ending slavery and thankfully correcting our original Constitutional mistake by ratifying the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, in practice much of our nation didn’t change at all. For 100 years after killing nearly 2% of each other fighting over whether or not we were going to fulfill the promise in our Declaration half of the country continued to act like they hadn’t lost the war and even though they didn’t practice actual slavery, there certainly wasn’t anything resembling equality in those areas. The Civil Rights Movement of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations challenged us to once and for all actually live up to the words we wrote down on paper back in 1776. To put into official practice the ideals that at the founding were only theory. Thank God that we finally put the last nails into the coffin of legalized and official inequality.

While inequalities certainly still exist they are at least in no way legal and so can be dealt with by governmental action to bring justice. Inequalities from times past have been reduced so dramatically as to be in line with other types of problems and crime that unfortunately will always exist. Our recognition that evil will always exist in no way lessens our determination and exuberance for stamping it out. But we must put in context the level of the problem that is a remnant of the past that we have correctly put away. Today the best measures to eliminate racism are to handle it on a case-by-case and individual basis. Where it is determined to still exist, it must be ruthlessly and mercilessly eliminated. Where any level of government is found to be infested with the hideous disease of racism, a higher level of government must quickly fix that and bring about the realization of equality upon which we are founded. Racism is disgusting. It is perhaps the most intellectually vapid and idiotic point of view I can think of. I will be in the front of any line crying for justice where racism is found. I will hang myself those government and law enforcement officials guilty of racist actions. And will demand swift and punishing sentencing for any citizens guilty of the same.

But we must be vigilant to lookout for those that would use the issue of racism to further their own careers and gain political power for themselves. We cannot be blind to the fact that race hustlers and pimps look for actions and words that they can twist into being racist so that the problem we currently face looks larger than it truly is. These people are extraordinarily dangerous! By continuing to act like America is in the same place she was 50 years ago, they will not let the wound properly heal. They are continually fomenting discord and strife. Dividing us along racial lines and hurting our ability to make skin color like shoe size and live up to what our Founders gave us challenge to accomplish. By pretending racism is in places where it is not, they make it harder to identify the places that it truly is. And thus facilitate its continuance.

America has been correctly called “The Great Melting Pot”. This has been true throughout our history, and continues to be today. In 1956 we officially codified this idea by adopting the national motto of “E Pluribus Unum”. We want to continue to bring one out of many. One national mind. One national heart. Oneness in our unity as humans given by our Creator rights to pursue our happiness in liberty. Oneness in our treatment of each other with respect and equality. Oneness in purpose to bring the maximum amount of freedom to the maximum amount of our citizens.

I look forward to the day when I can stop having “race” and “ethnicity” identification on forms. I look forward to the day when we stop hearing news stories celebrating the first person of a particular skin color to achieve something, or hold a particular job. I look forward to the day when we don’t admit people into school because it will fulfill some quota imposed upon that institution. I look forward to the day when we won’t know what percentage of the population is “Caucasian” or “Hispanic”. I look forward to when we truly judge each other by the content of our characters and not the color of our skin. I challenge us all to live up to the divinely inspired ideal that in fact ALL people are indeed created equal and endowed by their Creator as such.

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