Driving while (fill in the blank)


For all of the hard fought energy and lost lives our Country has endured in order to rid ourselves of the demons of racism and the ugly shame of our national history of slavery, we've still got a long way to go before we can claim to be a  truly color blind Nation. It matters not whether people of "color" occupy the office of the President, move into white neighborhoods, inter marry, or become leaders in all fields of endeavor. No matter how hard we try to claim that racism no longer exists in America we can't hide the ugly truth. It still lives in unspoken attitudes, it lives in pockets of unemployment, it lives in substandard schools, it lives in neighborhoods, it lives in our speech patterns, in the way we walk, in our music, in the way we talk and the way we don't talk. It lives in what we do not say. It lives in our every denial.

 The conversation is not over. It's barely begun. The conversation won't be over until we share our tables and hearts with everyone of color- not just athletes and entertainers. It won't be over until every Ghetto is rebuilt, and every school is color blind, and every goverment agency and every police department and every University, and every school teacher, and every political body, and every Army and Air Force, and every Native American is completely integrated into the fabric of our society. We've got some work to do people. The first step is to look in the mirror of our society and purge every racial thought and prejudice from our very souls. It's a person by person process. It's a process of  opening our hearts to the unique individual beauty of each our fellow human beings. A person's value is not determined by the color of their skin, or their language, or their accent, or their manner of speaking. It's determined by what is in their hearts.