I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality…. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Today is the observance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday in the US. Even though the name may vary, all 50 states observe this holiday and that is something of which I am very proud. I know that some argue that Dr. King was only one of many pioneers in the civil rights movement, for me this day mostly represents his ideas and those of the era: equality is possible.

Sometimes, talking about the racial inequalities that exist today make me feel like I’m in a bad nightmare. Polls have shown that Americans of Generation X and Y (Millenial) are much less concerned with racial differences than their parents. One of the main reasons is that they themselves are much more diverse. So I guess my upbringing has sheltered me from places where people aren’t consistently deprived of opportunities because of their race. Not to say that as a minority you don’t face prejudices, but I feel like I had the same chance of success growing up as my white peers – and if Affirmative Action policies helped me get into college because I’m a black woman, I’m all the more grateful.

Living outside of the US and meeting people from all over the world has been a real eye-opener in terms how far we still need to go. There are still “developed” countries out there enforcing unjust policies based on a minority group’s ethnicity. Is it me or is that absolutely crazy?! It’s an exercise in futility to try and “slow” down diversity or multiculturalism.

Of my 9 neighbors where we lived in Florida, 1 was African-American, 7 were from Latin America/Caribbean and 1 was white. This fact had no bearing on us moving there…we just wanted good neighbors who kept their surroundings clean. We found that and we also found there were people in major metropolitan areas who still had a sense of community.Yes, we were different, but that was okay. I think that neighborhoods like that should be the norm, not the exception.

So basically, people/governments who are still hanging on to the notion of homogeneous communities are fighting against the current. It would serve them better to help remove the barriers that have kept minority groups from obtaining the same level of success as the majority. In the words of Dr. King, the time is always right to do what is right.

I’ve been very sad to hear about the intolerance that’s been going on in the states lately. Last week, I wrote about how being black in Venezuela has worked to my advantage in terms of crime. While there was a bit of humor to the topic, I don’t think that anyone being mistreated because of their race or ethnicity is a laughing matter.

Many of the expats here in Caracas have been asking me what the he** is going on over in the US. Why are Americans all of a sudden becoming even more intolerant? I’m not going to pretend to know the exact reason the US is seeing a surge in people being a lot more vocal about their racism. What I do know is that they’ve been given a huge stage to put on a show. And who’s providing this stage…the American media.

My theory is that there were always racist and intolerant Americans. However, there was a time (post Civil Rights Movement) when it became taboo to openly express their views on people who are different, so you almost forgot they existed. The only places they ventured to spout racial epithets were their own homes or places where like-minded people congregated. On a national level, we tried to uplift our conversations and reverting to the use of racial slurs was considered politically incorrect.

Somehow, around the time we elected the first mixed-race president, the standards shifted. So now it’s common place for media outlets to give a lot of airtime to the minority of Americans harboring a lot of hate for immigrants, homosexuals, blacks, Muslims, etc. Unfortunately, some of us have become desensitized quickly to hearing such ignorance and anger in the mainstream media. Next thing you know, we’ll be seeing television series with similar themes disguised as comedy.

I hope that before we erode any more of the progress that has been made in the last 40+ years, we’ll start to self-police and expect more from each other, as well as journalists. In the interim, I will continue to teach my children that race is irrelevant and harboring hate will destroy their souls.

N.B. The title of this post is a quote from an unknown author.

I have always been fascinated with the way that cultures label things. For instance, when I was studying abroad in France, one of my professors was talking about bidonvilles, the equivalent of slums in English. I started talking to him about some bidonvilles that I knew of in the states and he quickly corrected me by saying that bidonville was only used for poor countries. In the U.S., these areas would be called ghettos (yes, it’s the same in French ?). I then asked him, “Either way, aren’t they places where low-income/poor people are concentrated?”

Same goes for the word immigrant. Anyone who comes to the U.S. from a different country is called an immigrant. However, when Americans emigrate to another country, they get labeled as expats. Good ol’ Webster defines an immigrant as “a person who comes to a country to take up permanent residence”. Now, I may be reading into this definition, but wouldn’t it apply in both instances?

See, what I find interesting in these examples is that it appears people create different words to describe the same thing out of discomfort and in most cases one sounds better than the other. So, while I’m living in Caracas I will be part of the “expat community”, even though my purpose there is no different than the Columbians or Bolivians that are automatically in the “immigrant community”.

By using these different labels, haven’t we just made one group of people feel better about itself by marginalizing another? What do you think about this practice? Are there any other examples of this that you’ve seen?

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