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Tuesday, July 16, 2013

I HAD a dream...

A plea to my fellow black Americans: (I've been a black man since I've been a man and I am perfectly comfortable with the term. It's just much shorter to say.)

Please I beg you. Take these words to heart. Let's please make race the non issue it should be. Terrible things happen to everybody and good things happen to everybody. And not everything is because of race. Yes, some things are this is absolutely true! And EVERYBODY KNOWS IT! But this country has come a LONG, LONG WAY! It is up to every individual to not be part of the problem. Take responsibility for yourself and be the black man or black woman that anyone of any race can say "He or she is a good man or woman". Get an education, hold a job, be respectful of people so that you will deserve respect. Respect has to be earned personally. Race can eventually be taken out of the equation...

Here is a very important quote:

Race is unimportant. The color of people's skin is as trivial as the color of their hair. Be guided by the idea of Viktor Frankl, the Jewish psychiatrist who suffered the horrors of a Nazi death camp and whose family was gassed. After the Holocaust, he was asked, "Do you hate the Germans?" "No, I don't," he replied, "because there are only two races, the decent and the indecent." Remember that truism, and you can never be racist.
Dennis Prager

I am black. My wife is white. We have never had any open issue with being mistreated by white people. Including in the South and Idaho. (The dirty looks I got in Idaho ceased as soon as I took of my LA Lakers can and that is the absolute truth). We honeymooned at Walt Disney World and no one looked at us cross-eyed. We come back to San Diego and go to breakfast 3 miles from home and the black waitress will not acknowledge my wife and the black female patrons sitting behind me are talking about us with the waitress at every opportunity. I am not saying there are no white racists. That would be stupid in the extreme to say. And I KNOW that it is not true. But this has been my personal experience. Most of the racism I have personally observed has been blacks being racist towards whites (or bi-racial couples). RACISM BY BLACKS HAS TO STOP! I know there is a long way to go in race relations but this is not the way to go about it. Reverend King would be absolutely disgusted and disheartened by where we are today. Because his people, my people, will often not only deny the progress that has been made, be we DESIRE segregation. We want to be isolated because of our color. We want to be seen as black first. THAT WAS NEVER THE DREAM. This WAS.

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Can that become the dream again? Please can it? And MAYBE, if we can actually discuss these issues assuming the best about the other individual rather than the worst we can get the rest of the way there...