Whether the discrimination is racist, ethnic, religious, economic, education, gender, age...it is a cancer in our society. Because it permeates boundaries and affects all manner of policies, priorities, politics, opportunity, and much else. People have become far more subtle in hiding their prejudices, unlike the 60s and 70s when one heard, "Some of my best friends are Colored" and immediately recognized the reaction formation.
Why have some of us moved on from early training that we were better than those who were not like us while others maintain their superiority? Is it as simple as that. Being hateful and critical makes you feel superior? A recent article: Why Conservatives Are Really Afraid of a Black President By Jonathan L. Walton, Religion Dispatches. Posted October 10, 2009. offers some guesses. Click here.
It is interesting that a Justice of the Peace in Louisiana refused to marry an interracial couple (not because the two races involved) because he was concerned about their possible issue of children! Gov Bobby Jindal wants the man removed from his office with much support from people around the state to do just that.
After all, we wouldn't want any more people around like Barack Obama or his wife who had ancestors from a union between a slave owner and one of his slaves ( a frequent combination, apparently, many of whom went on to have significant achievements in the 18th and 19th centuries). We would not have our golfing Tiger Woods, nor the 3 octave vocal range of a Cleo Laine. In politics we would have missed Adam Clayton Powell and his son, and Edward M. Brooke, writer Samuel Coleridge Taylor, John James Audubon, and so many others. Since mixing races is possible by the Law of Nature, one can only wonder on what grounds someone can justify not allowing it since it has been successful for generations.
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