Racism

This issue has become more prevelant to me in the past few months. With the possible election of an african american president, a fervor has spawned involving the issue of race. "Is America ready for a black president?" is a central question that can be seen in almost all the media campaigns. When this question is asked, no "racism" is intended by the common definition in today's society. But, very subtly, it is still racist. If we truely want to see racism go away, we must forget the racial separations.

This brings up another topic that many civil rights people and anti-racism movements have fought for, integration. This was a good start, but is also, inherently racist. The fundamentals of integration cause us to think that a certain race has to be integrated into society. The fact of the matter is, to truly get rid of a racism, the fact race exists must be forgotten. This is a far fetched and maybe impossible goal for us as a human race to reach, because it may just be in human nature to judge people for who they are by their appearance.

My generation was raised in methods strewn with sayings like don't judge a book by its cover. It's things like these we must learn to embrace. It may be in the human nature to judge people, but it doesn't mean, like all bad habits, that it can be changed. I believe this is the first step to erasing racism and all the other -isms. It is too late to educate the already educated. Their views and beliefs have been set in stone, usually things they grew up saying or believing. It is too hard to change their views. My ethics teacher at Eaglebrook said, he liked teaching 9th grade ethics, because he believed that this was the point in life when a person starts to form his opinions and views. He said the flaw in college ethics classes is, by then, the student has already chosen his position, and it will be much harder to let them see the light.

What has happened, has happened, and we must move on. Racism has been a dark time in our history, but now we must work to change it. Too quote The Dark Night, the night is always darkest before the dawn. Hopefully we can make this the darkest point. We can educated our children. They will be the sun rising. They will bring light to the next chapted in history. We may take our inherent, unintentionally racist feelings to the grave with us, but we can work hard to engrain the opposite into our children. And, with luck, they will do the same to our children. I believe the only step in fixing this issue is with education. No more protesting for equal rights, no more fighting for new laws. Those issues have been worked the best they can. The only thing we can do now, is educate the next generation, so they will not have to deal with the problem at all.

~Leonard