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Resistance to diversity should be on all airlines’ “no-fly” list. Warning signs should glare along every concourse of human interaction against building walls putting homeland security in peril instead of pathways to tolerance. Today’s instant media is quick to season our senses with salt and pepper images rather than positive medleys reflecting the spectrum of human potential. At some point this country will become fed up with tidbits and equivocated strands of pseudo-news—masquerading as fact—and grit its teeth to sit down as open-minded Americans to table hostility for fellowship.
It’s time to convene a summit on diversity in our United States. We can not afford to allow shadows of racial hatred from the bitter days of intolerance to blind us to what Dr. Martin Luther King called “… the content of character.” Physiognomic cues of modern day men and women are now little more than vestiges of fading clanship. What is of value lies beneath a mask that is more gossamer than opaque, when there is the will to look with more than ones eyes. Recent clamorous acrimonies surrounding “race-baiting,” dragging from society’s underbelly, should be a clarion call to every man and woman of conscience to question what they read, but more importantly, to listen to what sings from their heart. Too many of us wear the clothes of an egalitarian in plan sight, only to disrobe to temptations of intransigence in the privacy of our minds. This is a curious paradox in that color does not exist in darkness. Intolerance is just another shade on the palette of bigotry.
Incendiary epithets, on placards waving from fringes of the Tea Party movement and NAACP proclamations, are the death rattles of ethnic identity. These final discordant forays may be the swan song of race. Despite recent spates of intolerance being fodder for news, ethnicity is dying in this country. But, there are those unwilling to pull the plug, fearing they may be left with little more than their individual accomplishments and failures. To stand naked before the world is difficult, when identity is crafted from group persona.
Let the countdown begin to obliterate intolerance today. The clock to confrontation is running down. As midterm elections near, opposing sides bereft of issues may resort to guerrilla tactics by exploiting what some consider too delicate to discuss in public. Like religion, an often eschewed topic around polite dinner tables when guests are around, race is frequently the course left on the plate. Avoidance may be difficult to swallow when America is hungry for resolution.
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If you were asked to be on a panel to discuss diversity, what would be the topic at the head of your list? Please post your comments below:
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | bigottry, diversity, midterm elections, race
