Good Day World!
America didn't start out being a safe haven for all races.
White Europeans ruled from day one. Slavery was in fashion and people of color had no rights.
It nearly took two centuries before Americans came together and demanded equality for all. During that time, if you weren't white, life was hard on people of color and foreign origin.
The Pollyanna's of the country may claim inroads were made on racial issues for many years. Not so. It wasn't until the 1960's before Americans got serious about treating all of it's citizens equally.
It was a long hard fight that resulted in nearly 50 years of all Americans coming together, regardless of race, gender, and place of origin.
It wasn't a golden age of enlightenment however. There were still issues to be resolved, but it was a period in our history when Americans did their best to follow the tenets of the Declaration of Independence which declared:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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."
That has sadly changed in the 21st century when polarization became the norm. Congress was, and is, a good example.
But race took on more significance and groups like the KKK and White Supremacists have crawled out from their bunkers and have slipped into the mainstream with the election of Donald Trump.
Now under the Trump regime we're seeing the results. So far he's appointed Jeff Sessions the 84th attorney general position.
This is the same man who was rejected as a federal judge over allegations he called a black attorney "boy" suggesting a white lawyer working for black clients was a race traitor.
Sessions once joked that the only issue he had with the KKK was their drug use, and referred to civil rights groups as "Un-American" organizations trying to "force civil rights down the throats of people who werew trying to put problems behind them."
Even of more concern, Trump's closest paid advisor is Stephen Bannon, a racist, leader of the alt-right who managed - as the executive chairman - to make the Breitbart website into a mainstream portal for hate and racism in America.
Trump continues to gather the forces of hate and violent change around him. A new age is dawning. There will be no pretense of equality for all.
Perhaps we're going back to our roots. The part where we signed a so-called nobel document, but didn't bother living up to what it said.
Time for me to walk on down the road...
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