This is a pivotal time in America. Presidental candidates are defending thier faith, which seems like an oxymoron (separation of church and state). Race is one of the hottest topics in politics. Don Imus, still is not forgotten. Why?
Why is race such a big issue in AMERICA? Some would say that its because of America's dirty little secret, of 300+ years of slavery, but I dont think so. The International slave trade spanned Central and South America, people of African origins live all around the world. What is so different about how "black" people are viewed in North America.
Well, to answer my own question, I feel that first we need to address our name. A name means alot in a spoken word society. The name I am alluding to is the term "African American". Why, might you ask.
When I send in applications for jobs, scholarships, etc, I tend to notice that the box labeled "race" is pretty out of date. First because there are seemingly dozens of racial make-ups, or backgrounds. In America, you have Spanish, Turkish, Asian, Greek, Italian, English, etc. None of these .....-American "labels" are mentioned in the race box. It is simply:
White/Caucasian
Hispanic/non-white
Afrcan American/black
Native American/American Indian/Alaskan Eskimo
Why? I am not from Africa, nor is anyone I know of. Why cant black people in America be Americans? I am asking this because I was having a conversation with a British Guy named Russel. Russel works on Capitol Hill with my girlfriend. I asked him, "What do you call "black" people in England?". He laughed, then said,"English". I asked him again, "So, they arent called African English, or African Britians?". He again said,"No, we call them what we would call anyone else from England, English, or British."
I feel that this is a major difference between America and its European cousins, when talking of race relations. ONLY in America are "black" people singled out as different. This causes young children and those who have not yet developed a view of race to see US differently. When a child goes to pre-school, he/she plays with who ever will play with him/her. He does not pick and choose who he plays with based on skin, especially because of tanned skin.
This is what we need to do for our future generations. We must no longer label groups of people. Even if they choose to label themselves. Labeling, or stereotyping, people leads to other problems in our society. How could the government outlaw marriage for a "labeled" group that never existed. For those who are also anti-Affirmative action, this will remedy the situation. There can be no preferential treatment for numbers. Either you are qualified based on your application/resume, or you arent.
We need to take a chapter out of the Central American book. Central America was the first place traders brought slaves hundreds of years ago. For a slave to go to America meant that he was fully "broken in". To explain further, it meant that the slave had lost his fight for freedom, and thus was less of an insurance risk, since back then we were property.
Having said this, once slavery ended in Central America, freedom was slowly given back to the "African" people. With freedom came their name. It had nothing to do with Africa. If you were in Panama, you were Panamanian, If you were in Mexico, then you were Mexican, and so on and so forth. After hundreds of years of this "unity" in name, there are no longer any percieved difference in the people. Their previously polar distinctions, of Spainish(mainland Spain) origins, or French, or African origins are now melded into one unified people. We need to do the same.
America must tear down its walls against inter-racial community living, as well as inter-racial relationships. We must focus on what is important. Our families, jobs, and security. These are the unifying American principles that we must stand on.
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I am half Cuban and my mother was born in Cuba. Both of us would be insulted if somebody tried to hang the Cuban-American label on us. Some Cubans in America may want that label but it is emphatically not us. We are simply Americans.
It seems to me that to a very large extent it has been African Americans who labeled themselves. When I was a kid in the 60's they were frequently called negros or colored people or worse. I certainly think White people can take responsibility for those labels.
But during the civil rights movement they picked out the word "black" for themselves. We heard "black is beautiful", "black power" and "black people: and just plain "black" repeated over and over. In very short order almost all of America completely revised its vocabulary. I remember my 80 year old grandmother griping about having to change a word she had been using all her life. She was not a hater though and she changed because it was not in her heart to insult people.
And then all of sudden "black" became something of an insult. Suddenly we were being lectured that we were not supposed to use that word and instead we were supposed to say "people of color". That seemed to be in vogue for a few years but it really never took hold like "black" did.
Somewhere along the way "people of color" just kind of went by the wayside and people started getting lectured about referring to Americans of African descent as "African-Americans". I read a blog here on ProgU a couple of weeks ago where a person of African descent was emphatically complaining that she was not a color. It seems to me that it was black people who started the entire trend of hyphenated Americans and next thing we knew the entire country was divided up along racial and ethnic boundaries and everybody had a hyphen in front of the word American.
I would be damned pleased if blacks rejected all of the labels and demanded that all of the racial check boxes be removed from all government forms. Why should the governement be tracking things by race anyway? That seems like there is a whole lot of racism built in to the whole presumption that such a thing is necessary.
I'd be damned pleased if I could just start calling black people "Americans". I think that is what Martin Luther King had in mind. As long as we use the labels then we are recognizing that some people are different and as long as somebody is different then somebody is going to start making sterotypes that define the difference.
You are an American just as everyone else is! Keep up th phenomonal writing!
Jackbenimble your right........Americans of African decent, in order to have some sort of control bagan to label themselves in the late 60's. I think if your an American citizen and want to be here, then you are an American.
"my first name must be, "He aint sh@t", cause everytime I come through, yall be like "He aint sh@t"!....I'll be dat" --Redman
"Anything that can go wrong, Will go wrong"----Murphy's Law
Do you think it's merely human nature to separate in order to analyze?
I'd argue that it's immoral to separate; each of us are representatives of the same species, but I thought I'd pose the question, because I liked the answers you presented in the post..
Every organism's heartbeat holds a universe of beauty at http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/green-underbelly
I do think that it is human nature to label, but just as envy is human nature it is also morally wrong.
"my first name must be, "He aint sh@t", cause everytime I come through, yall be like "He aint sh@t"!....I'll be dat" --Redman
"Anything that can go wrong, Will go wrong"----Murphy's Law