Good evening, Netizens...

 

I have always had a somewhat unusual approach to racism perhaps because I may never truly know what racial mix makes up my background. Of all four sons my mother bore, I was the only one who had dark brown curly hair and hazel eyes, and the name of the man who fathered me with her went to the grave when she passed away several years ago. If one were to look at my son, who still lives in the Midwest, they would most certainly see the similarity between he and I, so much so that it startled my wife when she first met him. At least he knows the names of his father and mother, but not much of the genealogy.

 

Perhaps if the truth were known today, I am your basic Heinz 57 variety: a little of this, a little of that and after 65 years of living, who is stopping to check the racial makeup as it passes me by. Along the torrid pathway I've trod through life, mostly because of my lifestyle and wanderlust, I've become emotionally attached to a wide variety of peoples from all races, religions and cultural backgrounds. Ye Gods, everything from ethnic Chinese and Japanese in the Bay Area to Native Americans living in the deserts of the Southwest with even a Cajun down south to a Basque who worked in a second-hand store in Portland working each day restoring old tools and equipment to newness. I never considered their individual racial backgrounds; all I could do was marvel at how unique each of them were in their own ways.

 

After all, I didn't have much of a heritage, save that of my mother, to tell people about my racial background. I simply grew to accept myself for who I was, and moved on forward.

 

In this morning's David Horsey cartoon, Mr. Horsey suggests there is a future to racism that most people never have stopped to consider. Perhaps with the advent of a new generation of people crammed together like dominoes in a box perhaps those ugly racial lines that have separated us, each from the other, and eventually those hideous lines will disappear entirely someday. Each of us will have some traits from the various cultures that have touched our lives; perhaps the discord and strife of the past, both recent and far, far back in history, will simply fade away.

 

This has been one of the fondest hopes I have ever entertained for humanity, and perhaps just maybe in my lifetime I'll see it fulfilled. I believe that is called optimism, but I am holding out the hope that we someday will heal our rifts, unlike David Horsey's cartoon.

 

Of course, your thoughts and optimism may differ.

 

Dave

 

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