The need for discussion has built up ever since January 2009. The avoidance of the discussion has caused heated personal attacks, rushes to judgment, and misinformation flinging about recklessly and without regard. The issue of Race in America is a hot button that has been rediscovered or maybe more accurately the scab has been pulled off. Not since the Civil Rights movement has  the issue and problem of race either overtly or covertly  been plastered on the airwaves, print and a medium that didn’t exist 40 years ago-the internet.

The election of the first non-White President in the United States had various pundits declaring we are in a “post-racial” society. Eighteen months after the election and the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, comments by Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck, twitters made by persons threatening assassination of the President over health care reform, shouting slurs and spitting on members of Congress, and the most recent events of “Sherrodgate” I realize in many respects, we are in the midst of a sudden mutation of the civil rights movement.  This mutation due to instant news, C-Span, and the internet has caused rational thought and discussion to be thrown to the wind in many respects. This is mutation is destructive to the fabric of America.

In the forty years since the March on Washington, Bloody Sunday on Pettus Bridge, and the various dog attacks, water cannons, and baton beatings we have in some respects forgotten what the movement was about, what it stood for, and what it accomplished.

We, and I just don’t mean African-Americans, I mean anyone with any melanin in their skin are direct beneficiaries of the sacrifices and scars of those who marched, fought, and died for the gains we enjoy today.  Those of my generation and younger were very little kids or not even born when the March and the other historic events of the Movement happened, we have been told either by our parents, grandparents, great grandparents or read a diluted version in history books.  Revisionists would like for us to forget and end or selectively scale back programs that benefit their selves as well as us, like affirmative action.

I have received comments and have been told by members of the younger generation that race is not important.  In the CNN commissioned study that duplicated the 1947 study where black and white children were asked to choose white or black dolls as their preference while playing, 63 years later the results were almost the same. Black children prefer to play with the white dolls: blond, blue-eyed and straight hair. In 2003 Penn State University performed a study between crime and the perception of who would more likely commit the crime. Black was the prevalent choice of whites.  In 2008 a study determined that the perception of a person who would commit crime is poor, black, and unemployed.

In the past 18 months racist and discriminatory declarations has only increased with more ferocity and venom. Instead of being unbiased and objective for the public good many journalists and news outlets espouse biased and unobjective views and report that as news. This bias about race has in many respects paralyzed our government and polarized us; the citizenry of the United States. We are nowhere near living in a post racial society.

How can we heal this division? We cannot run away from it. We cannot window dress it as something else. We cannot pretend it does not exist. We as the body of America need to face the fact and reality that discrimination exists in our country. Racism exists in our country.  Let’s just look in our collective mirror and admit it. That is the first step and the most important. The second is to open a dialogue. We all must begin to engage ourselves and our leaders in this honest discussion. We all must be held accountable, right is right, fair is fair and when someone makes a discriminatory action or statement it must be called out, identified and the person admonished and if it warranted the legal system engaged. No one should be exempt.

America sadly does not have the will or the maturity to face this issue, yet. As long as this situation exists we will never be able to live up to the high ideals of the Declaration of Independence much less to the higher order we pray to. Our society, the American Empire will slowly erode into dust like the Egyptian and Roman Empires.