First Off. Today is the anniversary of the most important human male I'll ever know in my life. My father. 01/21 - Happy Birthday Dad.

January 15^th, 1929.

The birth of a man who would become much more than a legend.

The dawn of an era that would change the world and write history, as we know it.

Martin Luther King Jr. as we all know him was the great civil-rights leader, activist, and hero of the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s until he was assassinated on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel, now the site of the Civil-Rights Museum.

It seemed that after that day, things began to change more so than ever while King was alive. And that is a sad fact, that his dream could not be realized during his lifespan, which was too abruptly ended.

However, things did get better. The nation did become desegregated… right?
We moved on after mourning. We moved forward and the dream was finally realized.
And for a time, things, life and race relations in this country were better, they were good.

Recently, to my dismay… I've noticed that things are not as they should be. Many things are not as Dr. King would have wanted them to be. They have gone back to being ugly, and ever segregated.

Whenever a crime is committed of any variety, of any class, of any magnitude, why is it always made a point to identify the color of the suspect or criminal. Why is it that back in 2001 there were race riots in the heart of Cincinnati during the time of the "Black Family Reunion" and "Ujima", over race crimes and murder between police and civilians? Moreover, why are such functions even necessary?

How come there is a Black Entertainment Television? As if people of a certain color need their own personal TV station for some valid reason. I bet if there were a White Entertainment Television channel, there would be lots of pissed off people, most of them black, but they can still have their own channel and it is "morally" ok.

Hey, how come we still have yahoos driving around with Confederate flags on their cars and trucks? They aren't the Dukes of Hazard, and they sure as hell aren't driving an orange Dodge Charger. The Confederacy died out about 142 years ago, let it go. Most people don't even know what that flag really stood for, or just what a confederacy is.

The term is defined as this.

Confederacy is the state of confederation, which refers to an association of sovereign states and/or communities.

However, as with most things that get mixed up with the bad influence of people and with the aid of time, the confederacy lost it's real meaning, and it and it's flag came to stand for hatred, racism, intolerance and ignorance. Some people claim that is stands for being a "rebel" these days. But come on. What the hell are they rebelling against?

It's the country bumpkin equivalent of being a goth, punk, or emo kid, to me.

So here we are in the year 2008, Martin Luther King Jr. Day will be celebrated on the 21^st of January. The day was originally established to celebrate the life of and to remember the legacy of Dr. King, but has since just become a day off school and or work. Another sad but true fact.

Why do we have a Black History Month? Is it necessary to separate and segregate history like that? To set aside a whole month to point out what black people have done throughout the years? Why not just integrate it with normal history on a daily basis? It's world history and US history all the same. So there is no reason that they should be separate, just like there shouldn't be a named Black (or White) Entertainment Television.

Here's the thing people, this is what I'm getting at… racism is starting to rear it's ugly head, and become prevalent once more. And the fault of it lies on both sides of the fence--or I should say on all sides because there are more than two players at fault--but a fence can only have two sides, so let's go with I said before.

I can't believe things have come to the point where they have gotten so ugly and temperamental in this country after all the fighting that people of all races did to gain civility and equality. We push ourselves away from each other every day and we don't even realize it.  If we are ever to hope to eliminate this issue and this unconscious re-segregation of America and possibly the world even, we need to move beyond the past and destroy what sets us noticeably apart for no good reason.

Yeah that's right. BET, Black History Month, the Confederate Flag, The KKK, The NAACP, Affirmative Action and Financial Aid with "color specific" requirements, are just some things at the top of my list to be thrown in the garbage or to be re-worked.

Why? Because when you have to bring up and think about all those things, it just reminds you that there are certain things for one color, and certain for another, without any good reason for them existing. Integration was a key part of the Civil-Rights movement, so why do we try so hard to keep all these segregated things and things that promote separation alive and in place? I don't know personally, I just wish people would take it seriously when I say they all need to be eradicated.

I don't know if I have the faith in our race to ever be that big though. To be that smart, to be that secure with themselves to be able to merge and get over their petty differences and arrogance.

That's my dream. To see his truly fulfilled.

But for right now, I don't think anyone else in the world wants or has even thought about that. But after this… will you?

Hanover Forecast podcast blog.

words about things

Brad and Wess talk for twenty minutes about the problems with the Reds, and how to fix them