Race Relations

Race Relations

A constant problem in the developed world has been the relation of races with each other. People are destined to judge each other for one reason or another, and the laziest/easiest way to do so has always been to judge based on how others look. Judging based on color allows for prejudices that are often unfounded and unintelligent, and which just perpetuate a cycle of ignorance and regression. Prejudice is not a quality that is a positive in any human being, much less when it does not allow for common sense or relevance.

America is a country that was founded with race relations on the back burners, and is a country which had much to overcome in that department. Many claim that America still has many strides to make to conquer the problem, but not all citizens of a country can be forced to think a certain way. The greatest thing about our country is that individuals are allowed to think whatever they want. This being the greatest thing, it has also been one of the most divisive. No issue has ever sparked as much debate, hatred and suffering as race. Were it not for race differences between slaves and masters, the states rights issues of the South would not have been as heated as they were, and certainly would not have sparked a national war. This is not to say that the South would not have had a complaint for states rights, it is to say that it would not have come about the same way as it did.

Many a problem has plagued the USA since the time of the Civil War, and many obstacles have been overcome in pursuit of a better country. When our founding fathers created the perfect country, they gave us the foundation for a great country, and I will vote that we have created that great country where people can be themselves. A problem that consistently arises in my own mind continues to be race relations. The races were supposedly integrated in the middle 20^th Century, yet I can not find that to be true. There is a presidential candidate running for the Democrat Party is not a phrase I have heard very much this past year. Barack Obama is not a presidential candidate running for office with the ideas he has to make out country better. Obama is the first black candidate. Barack Obama is a black man, and all that seems to matter to many is that fact. African American. Native American. Irish American. Indian American. None of these should be an identification with which we use to distinguish ourselves from our neighbors.

When our country was founded it was compared to a melting pot, in which individual ingredients only give a hint of their real flavor. Allowing people to be separated based on their differences allows for the very segregation that we have fought to abolish. We are Americans, and that is all that should matter. If some of these Americans have personality aspects that they wish to acknowledge, that is a great thing, but these should not be what we use to define ourselves. If Americans are allowed to be classified into thousands of categories, they cease to be Americans, but instead continue to take the minority status that creates problems and belies the melting pot of all humans in our country.. Separating by race, creed, religion, sex, etc. is something that has gotten some countries in the greatest of trouble and is a crux that we have fought since the founding of our very country.

Education

Education

One thing that is often misinterpreted is that certain institutions get their prestige because of what they produce. Although this has at times in the past been true, it is not to be automatically assumed at this point in American history. Many of the United States best known universities are not prestigious on current accomplishments alone. They possibly are accomplished on the past doings of professors or students, but currently fail to meet up to the expectations that are put on the top schools in our country. A problem is that instead of continuing to move our though forward and advance ideas that have been the foundation of intellectual thought, educated people continue to build on fallacies from the past, or create new ideas, sufficing small amounts of evidence to prove their point and disprove past points.

Current intellectual thought is not precisely that. In many of these institutions, knowledge is not necessarily rewarded. Professors from the get-go teach students that they don't know things, in order to create a student body who believes that they do not know things, as opposed to teaching this student body what they need to know in order to form opinions and create knowledgeable ideas of their own. I make this statement based on the fact that many students in todays colleges don't come out knowing or needing to know what it is they study, which allows professors to in turn substitute rhetoric and personal beliefs in place of actual learning. From the beginning of postsecondary education, students are taught to believe whatever it may be that their professors are saying. This allows the professors to suffice propaganda for proper knowledge. Professors in turn use this extremely modifiable minds to meet their own ends. An example of this is Barack Obama. Mr. Obama is none the wiser for what he was taught at elitist schools. Listening to him speak belies the fact that he even went to one of these institutions, because of his seeming lack of knowledge about relevant thought and political ideas. The idea that tire inflation and tuneups will allow for as much oil to be saved as would be gotten from drilling is an idiotic hope that is unfounded, unintelligent and otherwise worthless. If, perhaps, 300 million Americans were driving around on flat tires with untuned engines, then that idea might work out. This, however, is not true as many Americans do the simple things that they can to make their cars run more efficiently and correctly. If institutions taught what knowledge driven thought consisted of, civic leaders would not be leading us into the same cruxes that have plagued our society since the beginning of the 20^th Century.

The beacon of American thought is learning and knowledge, yet somehow the people in the places that matter most have let that go, in hopes of passing their own agendas. Allowances for personal error are seldom made in American politics and society as it is seen as a weakness. As Americans are taught to be more accepting of others, those preaching that have done the opposite with their own. When a politician changes his or her opinion because they have realized the err of their ways, they are seen as a “flip flopper”, and not as someone who upon closer examination has decided to fix where they have wronged. I do not see the progress in politics or society that once set America apart from the rest of the world. Even the one institution that we perfected and allowed to function under our watch has started to come under fire from the elitist people who have become the bane of it in the first place. I am of course talking about capitalism, which if left to its own devices will function better than any known, and possible unknown, economic system. Adam Smith frequently spoke of an invisible hand that guided the economy to perfection or at least proper function. This invisible hand allowed for consumers and producers to decide where and what their desired price would be. An invisible hand was not government intervention, nor was it pressure from unrelated or uninvolved parties. This would be a visible hand, and would be synonymous with a communist or socialist economy.

Now is a more important time than the time of Adam Smith, as we not only have to stick up for our economy, but also our way of life and our rights as politicians and the educational elite allow more people to be a part of their plan to take over the American way of thinking. The American way of thinking is for individuals to have their own opinions, not for a elite group to tell people how to think, and if there is one thing to hold onto, that is it.