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 see the reverend Jesse Jackson not supporting Senator Obama, instead saying he would like to cut his balls off. This is a time in the African American culture that people should be pulling together, happy for the advancement of a race. Instead this man is so eaten alive by jealousy that he cannot stand to see that we are seeing something happen that lives have been lost to allow to happen.
My news is currently full of the whole "The View " controversy. I lost my mind when I heard it said that it was OK for for black people to use the n-word but not white people. Yeah, this seems to be creating an equal playing field to me, how about anybody else? I have long said that if the power is taken from the word and if everybody uses it that it will not be quite as unheard of to hear people use it. This is not the solution. The solution is to take the word from the English language all together. It's foul, It's distasteful and much like a toy that kids cannot agree to take turns with. If it is not for everybody, then it should be taken out of the toy chest, never to be played with again. Thrown out with yesterdays garbage. While living in the city of Savannah I was frequently referred to as The Cracker, if I said anything however, I was told not to be a racist. Have you ever noticed that somehow the words reverse and discrimination were just kind of put together all willy nilly in English? Why is it reversed? Isn't a racist a racist a racist? Of course, the answer is yes, and they come in all colors and cultures.
If you look at the Christian point of view, in the bible, the very first lines in the book that all Christians place their faith in. It begins "In the beginning all was dark and then God said let there be light and then it was good." Doesn't the very first lines in the very book of creation distinguish a difference in the two? Then as you go a little further into the book, the angel Lucifer was cast down to the depths of the underworld where he would rein over darkness. Isn't this the very beginning of the difference of light and dark? Children from the beginning of time were always taught that the good cowboy wore the white hat and the bad cowboy wore the dark hat. Good, white, evil, dark.
This being said, look at white people and black people next time you go out in public. Not many white people are actually white and not many black people are actually black. Our skin tones vary depending on the amount of time we spend in the sun. I watch as white women spend so much time in tanning beds and in the sun trying to get a nice mocha color and in the meantime I watch black women trying to avoid the sun as not to get any darker. It occurs to me that race is what we make it, and we are not making the best of it at the moment.
Throughout our history there has been much blood spilled in the efforts of equality. Am I to believe that all of this was for nothing? Honest Abe, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, all cut down in the prime of their lives, lost to a fight that has gone to a very ugly place. Being a child that is a product of parents from the civil rights era, I can tell you the story of Hurricane. This is part of our heritage, not just the black heritage but American heritage. We are not separate, we are the same. The sooner we live the words that we have been taught, the sooner we find an end to this nonsense that is racism.
I have a friend who is a 21 year old black male, living in New Orleans. He can tell me all about the watts riots, he can tell me about the return of the Rodney King verdict and he can tell me about being searched by ruthless white cops that were out to hold him down. He can't, however, tell me what exactly Dr. King's dream was. Is this what the intentions of the people that gave their blood in the 60's were for?
I will tell you today that I have a dream. My dream is that we will take responsibility for our actions today and not hold the people in the present accountable for the actions of the people in the past. I too dream of a nation that judges people based on the content of their character and not on the color of their skin. I dream that the Native American people can finally start to see benefits of treaties so hard fought for. I dream that my white daughter can go out in public with a young man, or woman, for that matter, regardless of color or race and not have to fear that she will never come home. That she will not come home asking me questions about why she was looked at funny for being out in public with people that were not like her.
I have a dream that we will someday live in a society that the memories of the white drinking fountain and the colored fountain are just things of history books. I have a dream that we can all fix the mess that we have made out of this nation not as white, black and other, but as Americans. This is the dream that I have today. I will constantly fight to see my dream realized. If we don't start now, if we don't fight to make a change, then all of the blood lost in the cause, all of the time spent, and all of the lives ruined in the name of equality will be a waste. Seriously, we have enemies that are molesting our children, and that are murdering innocent people. We have to worry about our children playing in the very streets that they live on. Do we have time for something as old and as petty as race relations? We are living in 2008, isn't it time for this nonsense to end?