by Sherry Bentley-Short

Created on: July 30, 2008

The lives lost in the civil rights movement are coming very close to being in vein.

I watch the news and the world around me and it sickens me at what race relations in our nation have become. I was raised to believe that if you fought hard enough, and screamed loud enough, a change would happen. This same generation of people who told me scream when I see an injustice are the same group of people who are now telling me that nothing can be done.

I remember being a very small child and running up to a fountain in a courthouse and twisting the fountains handle that had a gold plaque above it and crying because I just got plain old clear water out of it. The sign over the fountain clearly and plainly stated colored and I wanted my fair share of colored water. It was so ridiculous that my father took me home, and poured two glasses of water. In one he put two drops of food coloring, and then left the other one clear. He told me to drink both glasses of water. He then asked me if the one was any different from the other. I told him no. It was then that he told me the story of the two different water fountains. I was a mere child, but the impact of that conversation hit me so hard that I was careful to always be aware of the significance of the things that have gold plaques above them from then on.

Is it too late? As a Native American, I have always sat on the outside of this issue. Sitting on the high horse of a people also neglected by the white man. At what point though, are a people responsible for the undoing of their race?

I live in a world where I turn on the television and I see stories all over the place about race. One of the biggest concerns to me is that it doesn't seem to be the white race that is bringing it up. I came home late one night after having a particularly bad night, as these nights happen in the industry that I work in. I turned on my television and there is preacher from some unknown place with some unknown congregation screaming about why is angel's food cake always white and why is devils food cake always black? Well, this unnerved me to the point that I got down right irritable. Was he claiming that Betty Crocker was a racist? Not to mention somebody actually gave this raving idiot a sound bite. The reason this idiot was given the time on the news was because if he had been edited there would have been a fight with the television station about being censored because he was black, when in reality, he should have been censored for being a lunatic.

We

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