How to rid America of racism
I watched part of 60 Minutes this evening, and they had a piece on Morgan Freeman. Among the issues he talked about, race and racism was discussed. In my opinion, Mr. Freeman has a GREAT perspective on race. You can check out the whole story here. Mr. Freeman recognizes that the way to get rid of racism is to ignore race.
I was perusing a local college class schedule, thinking about going back for some continuing education. I found a class labeled "African-American Literature". Why the hell do we have a class about African-American literature? I know, the argument is that great works of literature by African-American authors are not presented in traditional American Literature courses. Okay, fine. Then push to add the curriculum into the course. The answer isn't to create a new course that addresses only African-American Literature. I strongly think that this trend of "honoring" and "recognizing" minority achievements by separating them only increases the racial divide in this country. Why do I have to take a separate class on African American Lit? Make the curriculum include great and influential works by a number of Americans, and you have a great class. Include African Americans, Asian Americans, Purple Americans - I don't give a crap, but make it AMERICAN LITERATURE. It should be color/race/ethnic-blind.
This country needs to move away from classifying things based on race, and we will start to eradicate racism.