"Humiliating Day"

   According to the Vancouver Sun (link), a critic called the release of Obama's birth certificate a "humiliating day" since it was caused by the ignorant "suspicions" of people such as Donald Trump. Because Trump made a statement about Obama needing to release his birth certificate to the public to end the suspicions of people who think he might be Muslim...(um, I think the U.S. gov would have figured that out by now if it was true), Obama went ahead and did it. And this is humiliating for our nation because it shows the continued existence of racism in 2011. Do you think we as a nation ever demanded to see a Caucasian president's birth certificate? No. It upsets me that things haven't really changed for the better. And I hope I'm not the only one upset by it.

As Racist As Ever

   As we reviewed and discussed Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech in class this week, I wondered if it's true that we are just as ignorant about race as we were when we enslaved innocent people for the color of their skin. Since this past week we basically entered the study of the horrific slavery period in the United States right after hearing a lecture on Obama's speech about the prevalence of racism today, I couldn't help but connect the two in a way that shocked me. We may not be enslaving people or supporting the idea of "white superiority" in a lawful way anymore, but people today still judge people for the color of their skin, the religion they believe in, or where they were born. As many people pointed out in class, stereotypes about races and religions still exist in a strong and unjust way. Someone even gave the example of cops pulling people over in suspicion of their race.
   This also brings to my mind the fact that any middle-Eastern-looking person in an airport has to arrive 3 hours ahead of time because we all know that they will be strip-searched and questioned thoroughly. This all relates back to 9/11, an earlier post blog I posted. We think we are so much better today than we were hundreds of years back. But the only difference is that we are separating ourselves from these "outsiders" on our own time, rather than with hateful laws. I think we need to progress much, much further as a society in order to be done with racism once and for all, and I don't think there is any argument that could be made and supported against that. What good does racism do, but separate people based on physical judgments?