I consider myself and educated person.  I have read extensively and my liberal arts education exposed me to many things that I certainly didn’t learn in high school.  Sadly, there is so much more that I didn’t know.  I am taking the first class toward my doctorate this semester and it is a really great educational foundations course.  The course examines society and social justice not only in education, but throughout history.  I am currently reading and amazing book about our countries deeply rooted racist history–Deculturalization and the Struggle For Equality.  The book begins with an overview of the atrocities that our forefathers founded this country on.  We are all taught that Columbus discovered America–sadly we are not commonly taught that he discovered America only to find out that there were already people living here who had lived here successfully for thousands of years.  These “savages” were seen as less than human as they had not accepted Jesus and Christianity into their lives.  Our heavily religious Puritan founders believed that they were better than the Native Americans and set forth to convert them to Christianity and to their own protestant beliefs in hard work (i.e. constant work) and the accumulation of wealth–personal wealth certainly not wealth of the community/tribe.  These values were in direct opposition with that of the native Americans who believed in sharing everything with each other and with working when they needed to but relaxing when they could.  

Fast forward to the writing of the constitution, after which we successfully rid “our” land of these “savages” who were less than human.  Our founding fathers–these gentlemen we revere as “GREAT” men believed “that citizenship should be limited to free whites.  This agreement was based on the opinion that a republican form of government could only survive with a homogeneous white population.”  Native Americans were not granted American citizenship until 1924–yes the recent 1924–and even then there were second class citizens.  They are still treated that way. 

I could go on and on about the repression of the non-whites who helped build this country but we know much of that.  We took the land from the native americans under the belief that if they weren’t using it or making improvements to the land then the white man had every right to take it for their own use. 

All of this racism happened sadly in the name of God and Jesus.  The native american had a different believe system than our Anglo founders.  Because of that they were wrong and we had every right to take what they had and to control and convert them.  The same thing then happened with Africans, Chinese and Central Americans.  What happened to the Native americans was a genocide perpetrated under the name of Jesus.  How are our founders different than those who wage war now in the name of God?  We are civilized.  We are white. 

I often wonder why we cannot learn to tolerate and accept each other differences and all?  Well the history is there and it goes beyond the racism in America but speaks more to the racism around the world–both ethnic and religious.  As long as one group feels that they are superior to another group we will not know harmony.  As long as we try to assimilate people into the world we accept–not just expecting these groups to learn our language–but expecting them to take our values as their own we will continue to struggle with racism. 

This is what makes Obama a man for change.  I see the importance of his campaign and his success now.  I could keep writing on this topic but I will hold off for now as I can’t imagine anyone is still reading at this point.  If you are, still reading that is, how do we combat hundreds of years of racism?