The Skyliner

Issue date: 2/7/07 Section: Opinion

Cody Fields
Sports Editor


We all know that in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous speech in which he said, "I have a dream that all my little children will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," and "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" Sadly, this time that has become known as Black History Month is just another reminder that his dreams have still not been realized.

Black History Month started in 1900 by honoring Frederick Douglass on his Feb. 14th birthday, and has grown into a nationwide event. While we should honor great blacks in our history such as Douglass, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Jackie Robinson and W.E.B. Dubois, the question is whether this actually alleviates racial tension.

The answer is no, as long as humans identify themselves by their shade of melanin. According to Morgan Freeman on a 2005 episode of 60 Minutes "I don't want a black history month. Black history is American history." Freeman understands that the longer we segregate ourselves by honoring people based on skin tone, the longer bitterness and rivalries based on superficiality will accrue.

The same goes for putting people down because of their skin color. In the words of dc Talk, "I see the beauty in the tones of our skins. We've got to come together. Aren't we all human, after all?" Let's get past what ended 142 years ago with the 13th Amendment. We don't owe each other anything for something we had nothing to do with. So let's accept how we are and work together instead of childishly fighting like Montagues and Capulets.

While we should try to build each other up, we should also learn how to laugh at ourselves. Ralph Bristol recently said in his Daily Dispatch, "White Americans pay good money to go see Chris Rock make fun of them. We pay more to hear Jeff Foxworthy make fun of us, but we really don't care about the race of the person who's poking the fun, as long as it is done for humor and entertainment." Obviously, American black and white cultures are different, and they even both have their own subcultures. We have to realize that we all have goofy aspects in our own cultures that do deserve to be parodied and/or exaggerated.

The whole white debt/black martyr complex has also been fueled in the form of Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action has become a farce by forcing companies and schools to meet quotas of minorities, thus potentially costing some in the majority who may be equally qualified. Affirmative Action may be labeled as "positive discrimination," but it is still discrimination. There are plenty of economic and educational opportunities in this great country; let's level the playing field and earn it. That is true race-blindness and gender-blindness.

In order to achieve true diversity and equal opportunity, we have to look past visual differences. The labels of black, white, and other such terms deemed more vulgar must be shed. Instead we should label ourselves as Christians, Americans, or anything else that brings us together. Aren't we all human after all?

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools