Andrew Manis - When Are We Going to Get Over It?

[Catherine Vincent]

Andrew M. Manis: When are we going to get over it?
Shreveporttimes.com

For much of the last 40 years, ever since America "fixed" its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African-Americans who continued to blame race for their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African-Americans finally going to get over it?" Now I want to ask "When are we white Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?"

Recent reports that "Election Spurs 'Hundreds' of Race Threats, Crimes" should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in "Bombingham," Ala., in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the talk." Since our recent presidential election, to our eternal shame, we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.

We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and pulled him to the right.

Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was a nonpolitical mental case who wanted merely to impress Jodie Foster.

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http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081212/OPINION/81212007

[Raster]

1. A fine opinion piece from Mr. Manis. It is high-time to end racial prejudice in this country.

I am a white, gay man and DAMNED proud that this country had the good common sense to do the right thing and elect the BEST candidate irregardless of his skin color.

We Can Do Better!:kick:STOP the H8!