RACE TO THE FINISH

My grits are really fried (an old southern expression meaning dismayed or angry) over what's happening in "race relations" these days.

The only argument my mother and I ever got in concerned what we then called, "colored people."

She was from Georgia, and to her, "colored people" were fine to speak with, but they were not to be socialized with. They were, in her words, "different."

I (a teen-aged high-schooler) argued that they were people just like us, bled when stabbed, had human feelings and emotions and deserved our respect and their dignity. They also deserved equality of opportunity to do what they wanted to do and to become what they wanted to become.

It appalled me that there were such things as separate drinking fountains, separate restrooms and separate dining areas for "colored people." It was even more appalling to me that they could not come to school with me. I had made friends with "some of them," and was sad that we could not be friends in school.

The cry, "separate but equal" just did not compute in my feeble brain.

As I grew older and was off to college, I participated enthusiastically in the race relations movements of the 60s and 70s.

Today, I am the choir director of a church whose congregation is made up of 17 different nationality groups. My choir is half black. Such a thing would not have happened in the 50s, 60s and 70s, not in a Southern Baptist Church, anyway. I would not belong to a church that would not let that be the case.

I am, however, disheartened that so many African-Americans (Blacks) are ignoring the gains afforded them by the likes of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his followers.

What has evolved today, at the leadership level, is a group of haters and race baiters whose hatred of "whitey" far out does the so-called "hate" of the 40s and 50s and after.

People like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Rev. Wright and, yes, even President Barack Obama continually spew the same kind of hatred toward whites as used to be spewed toward them.

I guess getting even makes everything alright.

Actually, it doesn't.

Apparently, blacks today tend to agree. In a recent Your Black World/Kulture Kritic survey, 85% of blacks said they were either unhappy or extremely unhappy with the state of Black leadership in America.

The Declaration of Independence recognizes that "all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

To be sure, when those words were penned, there were still slaves in the new country. Some have postulated that therefore blacks had been deliberately excluded from the sentence (as were women).

Of course, anyone who has read the writings of the framers knows that what was really being set there was the framework for centuries to come...centuries in which all men and women would be "...judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." (Dr. MLK)

Some today claim that the Declaration of Independence is being "misused" to interpret that "all men created equal" jazz applies to rich white men only. They claim that "life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is for those same rich white men, and them only, and could only have been realized after a civil war, marches in Selma and the like. They think those rights could only have been made real by  our government.

The Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision (upholding slavery) and the two fugitive slave acts (which compelled northern states to return escaped slaves from the south) were examples of how the government tried to afford blacks with the same "rights" as whites.

Oh! That's not what the government did? Well, Ahh Swan!

See, government does whatever government can get away with. That's why we, the people, were given the awesome responsibility to oversee the government (not for the government to oversee us).

Abraham Lincoln (remember the Emancipation Proclamation) sited the Declaration of Independence over and over again in his quest to free slaves. He understood what it was about.

Once the Declaration of Independence was adopted, slavery was doomed. It would take time, but its doom was sure.

Although many attempts to resolve the slave issue took place at the Constitutional Convention, it would not actually be resolved for years to come.

But the Declaration of Independence became the moral basis for individual liberty for all men and women, regardless of race, color or creed. That is what makes it one of the most compelling documents ever written by men.

In its writing, the Declaration of Independence set a course for future generations that could only improve things in America. That course was called "liberty," and it would apply to all people.

The sad thing is, too many people, and far too many black leaders today, don't know what the Declaration of Independence represents. They don't know what took place in order for it to be adopted. They don't appreciate the principles laid down in it.

As one liberal media outlet show host, Melissa Harris Perry said,  “I’m deeply irritated by their notion that the ‘pursuit of happiness’ means money for the richest and that we extricate the capacity of ordinary people to pursue happiness."

That is so perverted! What nation on the face of this planet has documented in its founding papers the liberty that is afforded in the U.S.? France? Afghanistan? Kenya? Egypt? Sudan?

Go ahead...pick one.

In many nations, people of different colors, religious beliefs, backgrounds, etc. are at war with one another with rifles, grenades, bombs, and the like.

There is a tolerance in this nation today that would have seemed a long ways away to our founders, not more than a glimmer of hope in their eyes. Sixty years ago few would have imagined it.

Go to a restaurant, a movie theater, a church, a mall, a sporting event today and look around. What an astonishing thing!

Black leadership today gives the impression that they want to re-live the days of the Civil War, segregation, civil rights struggles and the rest of it.

(Are you aware of the massive welfare state that is destroying this country with an entitlement mentality that believes that if you earn something, I should be entitled to part of it, just for being alive!)

As Mark Levin says, "The day we stop siting the Declaration of Independence is the day we're gone."

It is the greatest statement of enlightenment and compassion ever written by man.

Pass it on to your children and grandchildren.

And do your part to make its dream come true, not through government hand-outs, but by people of good will toward one another, wishing for all the opportunity to reach their dreams, whatever those dreams might be.

It can happen, if you make it happen.