This weekend, my 9-year old son stated in a matter-of-fact honesty that only comes out of the mouths of babes, that he was the only brown kid on his soccer team. While he wasn’t sad, his tone was somber and very cerebral in nature. He and my daughter attend a Montessori School and my guess is this definition for African-Americans as being brownis their way of teaching the students political correcteness and racial tolerance.
My daughter was the first person that I heard use this term to whom I quickly replied, you are black. African-American is also acceptable, but I stressed to her that she was indeed black. In a nice way she all but called me color-blind. She actually has a complexion of Halle Berry and my son has the complexion of Denzel Washington. From these children’s eyes I am either color-blind or stupid because both of them are indeed beautiful shades of brown. My son is legally colorblind and even he knows that black and brown are different as far as his box of Crayolas is concerned.
Black people; excuse me, out of respect to my children’s genius, brown people, are involuntarily entered into a game of cards from a deck that is issued at birth. Maybe symbolically every person of African descent born in the United States should be given a deck of cards with their birth certificates prior to leaving the hospital.
When the newborn is old enough to ask what the deck of cards is all about, it can be explained that the deck of cards is symbolic of the future accusations they will receive whenever they point out uncomfortable facts and not-so-friendly reminders at how a firmly entrenched system of supremacy and oppression has created an extremely uneven playing field .
From this deck, they will play their Race Card.
The 1st African-American Attorney General, Eric Holder is the most recent brown person to to be accused of not playing fair and using numerous Race Cards. As usual, he did not utter a single untruth, but if you listen to conservative talk radio, watch Fox News, or read any publications of similar ilk you would think he said every white person secretly wants to be in the Ku Klux Klan and they should just come clean and admit it.
To the contrary, Holder simply stated that the United States was a “nation of cowards” on matters of race. He wnet on to promote that Americans have an honest dialogue together about race between all races.
If you are white and reading this I would like for you to discuss this post with one of your black friends. I know you all have at leaset one because you are quick to reference them when your racial tolerance is questioned. If you are black and reading this please discuss it with a white friend. Talk about what playing the race card really means.
When you go to your place of worship this week, examine the diversity of the congregation. When you eat your lunch in the work cafeteria notice who sits with whom. When you have a meeting about diversity at work, look at how people arrange themselves in a room if there is no assigned seating by the moderator. Count the number of CEOs of African decent that there have been over the last 50 years of every company that has been included in the Fortune 1000 list of business and let’s have a frank discussion about how unfair Affirmative Action has been when you have trouble coming up with such an embarrisingly low number.
This could go on forever. My point is ultimately a simple one. America has too many examples of playing the race card and the trumped loser was the individual with the most melanin.
Eric Holder was addressing his staff and pointing out that he often continues to see things that continue to be more devisive than inclusive, that America must rewrite the curriculum of the schools to include the contributions of all people to this great country and that all Americans must be able to have open dialouge about every aspect of race in America.
Yes we have come a very long way. Don’t think for a minute that we don’t have a heck of a long way to go.
Forward…
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