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By Calvin Martin
The United States of America, the land of
the free and the home of the brave. I pledge allegiance to the flag
of the United States of America and to the republic for which it
stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice
for all. Are we, the people of the United States hypocrites?
Three decades have passed since the civil
rights and voting rights acts were established and throughout the
courts, since that time, we have been confronted with different
shades of racism. Libraries of books have been sold, read and put
on the shelf and we are still faced with the same issue, trying
to recover from racism.
Webster defines diversity as a point of
respect in which things differ, the fact or quality of being different.
Living and knowing that these facts are srill at issue puts one
on constant alert of his or her surroundings. Although we would
like to believe that our society is color blind and that a black
man with a white woman is not offensive, or a child born to a mixed
or interracial couple is all right, today in 1997, 30 years after
Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke to the nation of his dream, we are
still living in a society that is filled with prejudice and hatred.
Just a few weeks ago, the scene is a quiet suburban neighborhood
in Illinois, a black boy rides a bike going to his home and is met
by three white kids of the same age. The child is beaten half to
death. The legal term for the crime is "attempted murder" (a racially
motivated hate crime). One of the comments from the neighborhood
was "racism is not as bad as it once was in this community".
Diversity has divided this nation to a
point of hatred. How is it living in our society with the knowledge
that you are not welcome as a couple when walking into a place that
is frequented by the public? Well, an uneducated person will have
a hard time pulling together without showing an abrasive characteristic
toward those who show the least bit of reaction. Since my union
with my wife, who is German and white, I only frequent places that
I presume are too expensive to be prejudicial toward an interracial
couple. In other words, I associate only in areas where it is not
expected because of classes of society.
As you can see, diversity has affected
this nation of liberty and justice for all. I recently read in the
Washington Post how societal norms require that African Americans
conform to white corporate America, in that your presence can not
identify with heritage, and if it does, the doors of corporate America
will more likely close in your face denying access. "Living with
the question of diversity", means in my opinion, understanding and
respecting the sensitivity of each ethnicity and organizing our
environment to completely adapt to that understanding of diversity
and living with the results. Experiences in other countries with
the question of diversity are not comparable to that of the United
States because of the different circumstances in the political and
economical structures.
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