mlk day

well, it's martin luther king day, and the unemployment agency is closed. i still have about 6 resumes to send in though. but in keeping with my procrastination tendencies, i'm gonna write stuff here, while watching highlander on tv, before i send them in.

so mlk day. i find it amazing that race relations are so slow to change. although race isn't solely an american problem(look at the middle east, or germany and greece when you talk about turks) it seems that we are especially bad at dealing with it. we have tried lots of things to combat it, but in my view they have mostly been failures. afirmative action: i'm not very fond of afirmative action as i don't know that it does much more than promote distrust and dislike between the races. i have heard many stories of whites being passed over in favor of minorities, and while many of them probably aren't true, or are sour grapes, the fact that these stories are so prevelant shows to me that the system isn't being beneficial. i personally would have no problem with it if there were an overhaul of the system that would truly remove quotas, and prevent it from being a reverse discrimination law, but right now, i think there is too much distrust on both side of the issue to allow it to function. while it is true that minorities have a harder time in life, i don't know that aa is removing the stumbling blocks for them. or more to the point, i think that aa while removing some of the stumbling blocks, it provides an excuse for some people to put additional ones in front of minorities. i'd like to say that we have come far enough that aa isn't needed anymore, but i don't think that is true, but i do feel that it needs a complete overhauling to allow it to achieve it's desired result.

black history month(and other minority history months): i am completely opposed to these, if we really want to make a change we should fix the history that is taught in schools to reflect true history, and give credit and blame where it is due. to me history months are like when i was in high school and i had 2 friends who were jewish, and one of their favorite pastimes was telling everyone which celebrities were jewish. it may have raised awareness, but it also raised resentment(not the right word, but i can't think of the right way to say it) towards them. basically nobody likes to get told that their race is not as good as someone elses, and by stating how great people of their race were, they were stating(perhaps unintendedly) that other races were worse. i don't think you can ever advance one race by putting another down, what you end up doing is driving a wedge between them, and enhance the perceived separation of them. what needs to happen is an honest representation of the achievements of all the races, and emphasize the similarities, and sameness of all people.

getting back to mlk day, i think that we have lost sight of the philosophy of mlk. he fought for equality, true equality, not special benefits, but equal benefits. that is what we should be celebrating, and remembering today. in conclusion, i think it is necessary to struggle for equality without implementing reverse discrimination, as discrimination is wrong no matter what the intention behind it. it comes back to the old saying, two wrongs don't make a right. cliche but true.

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