And The Carousel Goes Round and Round

I remember when my daughters were young. They loved to sing the kiddie song, "and the wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round..." That is now how I refer to our progress in this country on "race," which as you know from this blog, doesn't even exist.

Many people will tell you that we have come a long way on "race" relations and I disagree vehemently with them. We are clearly not making progress on this thing called "race." The fact that we still use the term "race" in and of itself says that we are not making progress at least not the kind that MLK was talking about. Do we really think progress on "race" can be summed up in the skin color of our president.

So here is my point. Michelle Obama, the FLOTUS, gave a dazzling speech the other night. It was dazzling by anyone's measure except for the point that I will make here. She began early in the speech to talk about how we do not have a "black" America or a "white" America...and I was "so" feeling her and appreciated the comments. However, about 7 or 8 minutes later, she talked about her "black" daughters playing on the lawn of the White House. But I thought we didn't have a "black" or "white" America? See my point.

"Race" is designed to trip us up like this if we use it. Honest Americans, like Michelle really do want to live in MLK's world, but our culture doesn't allow for that. In fact, I'm not sure she would be the First Lady if Barack had ignored his skin color and said, "if you're voting for me just because I am black, don't do it." That would have been courageous and would have taken us further down the road of Dr King's dream, but it didn't happen and so the wheel or as I describe it, the carousel continues to go round and round.

In each decade since the passage of the '64 Civil Rights Act, we've seen "racial" strife and no one can really explain why it continues to happen, outside of the obvious answer of, "those people." That is the answer from both sides in the debate and so the carousel continues round and round.

Today, lets get off of the carousel and make real progress. Join the ERASE Race movement because I SEE PEOPLE!!!