From outside the box

Is it OK to call yourself a liberal and be against affirmative action? Maybe I'm not a true liberal. I always liked the term "progressive" better anyway. I think that when it comes to affirmative action, it is high time we "progressed" beyond it. Yes, there was a time we needed affirmative action to level the playing field and I'm not sure the playing field is leveled now. However, affirmative action is not the way to continue. I believe it is high time that as a society, we start listening to minority groups and treat them how they are asking to be treated....like everybody else!

African Americans (or whatever the politically correct term is this year), Latino's, Asians, Native Americans, as well as women in general, gays folks, and physically handicapped people, have always sought to fit into the mainstream, to not be singled out or recognized as being of a minority status, or to even make recognition of their/our differences. However, many well meaning folks within these same groups have worked very hard for their cause by singling themselves out and making sure that we are all very aware of our differences. You can have it both ways, but only for so long.

I grew up on the west side of San Bernardino, the poor side of town. The west end was divided into three main cultural zones. The south end of the west side was the black neighborhoods, the east side of the west end was Mexican dominated, and the north side of the west end was the whites along with a smidgeon of everybody else. The elementary school I went to was 2/3 black (it bordered the black neighborhoods), the other third being a mixture of whites and Mexicans. Being that this was in the fifties, I was very aware of what the word "prejudice" meant. What I did not understand, was why did everybody say the whites were prejudice against the blacks? My childhood experience was the opposite.

It was always understood that if you were white, you stayed out of the black neighborhoods. You didn't ride your bike there, and your parents never drove there. Why? Because you could get killed! And yet, blacks were pretty much free to go anyplace in town they wanted. This was always confusing to my simple childlike way of looking at the world. Even at school, it was the blacks or the Mexicans that were always beating me up, never the white boys. It would be years later before I came to understand their anger which was tied to their history as well as their poverty. But mostly it just boiled down to the fact that bully's were boys who got abused at home and carried that anger with them to school. Still....nobody was talking about what it was like to be a tall skinny red headed freckle faced kid who was forced into a world of darker skinned kids and bare the brunt of their personal issues. As an adult, I learned to emphasize with the anger of minorities by understanding the source of my own anger.

The "average white male", whoever that is, has experienced his own share of prejudice. In the entertainment field, we have always been portrayed as the idiot who just doesn't get it. Ed Norton, Woody the bartender, Barney Fife, and in just about every TV show or movie ever made the "white male" is either the idiot, the hit man, the wife beater, or the southern white trash. Maybe we deserve that, but at least we can laugh about it. My point is, sooner or later in life we all need to get over our anger, work thru our issues of being "different", and get on with the business of accepting each other for who we all are....people trying to survive and find a little happiness along the way. Everybody is different. Everybody is unique. Everybody deserves equal opportunity.

I believe we are at a point in our societal evolution, that the next step to achieving equality of the masses is to just start being who we are, understand our differences and then let it go, start judging on merit (and not sexual orientation or appearances), and everybody give everybody else a chance....whatever that chance may be that is needed at the time. I'm talking about white girls dating black boys, white boys dating black girls, "exclusive clubs" become "inclusive", other races can be the idiot on sitcoms too, white folks can drive or walk thru black neighborhoods, all races are considered equally for any job opening, women can be president, Native Americans do not have exclusive rights to own casinos, no more gay pride parades, and get rid of the NAACP as well as the KKK or any other organization that seeks to separate their members from the norm of society. Are we ready to take such an enormous leap in our societal evolution? HELL NO! But we are ready to begin and a good way to start the journey is to abolish affirmative action. Hopefully someday, in the not too distant future, the term "minority race" (minority people) will become an oxymoron. Hopefully someday, in the not too distant future, we will all acquire the ability see the devine in each other, to know that we are all lit up by the same light. This is where true equality begins.