Rising Above the Ashes: 50 years and a long way still

In honor of Martin Luther King Jr and the civil rights movement, I decided to break from my studies and write a little post.

" I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." "

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

I don't think I need to state where these words come from. Today, I have decided to reflect a little on this nation. It's been roughly 50 years (some places more, others less) since the civil rights movement and since integration was required. In many ways, we have come quite far in just 50 years time. In many other ways, we still have a long way to go. It's great we can elect a biracial president and it's great that people can marry outside their own race.

However, too many people still see a gain of biracial president or a black man or woman or any race or just a woman gaining a high position as an attribute of their race or their gender and not that a person was good enough for the job. Some people voted for Obama and Hilary Clinton just because they were biracial and a woman and not because they were thought to be great candidates with the ability to govern this country well. That says to me that we still have a ways to go. Yes, it's great we can elect them to office, but too often the criticism of the president has to involve his skin tone. It can't just be they don't like his policy or this new idea or this new law proposal. It seems to also have to mention that he's darker than former presidents. They just seem to hate every idea because it's his idea and there almost always seems to be the race factor in their disgust for him.

Sure, you can dislike someone's personality or ideas and it not be about their race, but most of the time, if the person is not white toned or lacks a penis, they're fair game to stereotyping and hatred still. It's been years almost a century since women gained voting rights and there's still lots of misogyny in our culture and it's been several decades since integration happened and there's still lots of racism towards anyone not 100% obviously white skin-toned.

We've come a long way, but we still have a long way to go.