Does America Still Play the Race Card? You Betcha.

I’m starting to see it. For the longest time I thought I had it figured out, but it turns out it was just an illusion. I’m talking about racial reconciliation.

When I started attending Crossroads Bible College in Indianapolis, I was required to take various classes, including one called, "Culture, Race, and the Church." Here’s the beautiful thing about my college and why I love it, we are a great mix of diversity! The entire mission of the college is "to reach a multi-ethnic, urban world for Christ."

To be quite honest with you, my main reason for attending Crossroads was because it was one of the few Bible colleges in town and it was close to home. So imagine my surprise when I had to take all these race-related classes. I went to a public high school, I never felt any racial tensions while there, aren’t we done with racial reconciliation?

The truth is, we are far from there. In the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., I’m still waiting for people to be "judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

So what brought about this blog idea? Obama. Yep, doesn’t everything nowadays have to do with the man? People have made such a great deal that he is our first African-American president. At first I thought to myself, "well, it is 2009, it’s about time." But what put it all in perspective was when I was talking to Pastor Wiggins prior to the election. The conversation went something like this:

"Brother Kiel, my wife likes to collect those presidential plates. And my kids, grandkids see these men… great men! But they look at these plates and say, ‘those men don’t look like me, does that mean I can’t be president someday?’ So I continue to wait for the day when my wife can put a plate up on the display where the kids can look at it and say, ‘look granddad, I can be president too!’"

Now some might say, "well, if we want people to be judged on the content of their character and not their skin color, why should it matter what color our president is?" The truth is that humans need someone to look up to, to find a characteristic that they identify with. "That guy grew up in my neighborhood, I can grow up to be like him!" or "She had breast cancer, I have breast cancer, I can identify with that."

When Pastor Wiggins was growing up, becoming president was probably something he never thought he could aspire to, because the culture back then told him that no black man could ever be president. Or we think of those who grew up in slavery ever wondering if future generations of people who looked like them (because they were slaves based on their color), would ever live to be free men and women.

I bring up race today friends, because it’s something that’s still prevalent. Oh, we may hide it well, but the truth is, many of us have racial prejudices. It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, Latino, or Asian. Since there’s still some segregation amongst the races, it leaves the door open misunderstandings and prejudices to creep in. Take a few of these examples:

• Glenn Beck said this today on Fox News: "This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture. I don’t what it is. You can’t sit in a pew with Jeremiah Wright for 20 years and not hear some of that stuff, and not have it wash over."
• During his new crusade of Birtherism, Lou Dobbs suggested on his radio show this past Wednesday, right before the Gates flare-up, that Obama could be an illegal immigrant, tying this into his usual preoccupation. "I’m starting to think we have a document issue," Dobbs said. "You suppose he’s un– no, I won’t even use the word ‘undocumented,’ it wouldn’t be right."
• There are people that LOVE to use his full name, "Barack Hussein Obama" or BHO. Over the entire history of the presidency, I don’t ever recall people using the President’s full name in regular conversation. "George HERBERT WALKER Bush," "William JEFFERSON Clinton," "Jimmy EARL Carter." The only reason, people use Barack’s middle name is because it is of Muslim origin and the prejudice people have towards Muslims. I can find no other reason. America is a melting pot of weird names, GET OVER IT. Using "Barack Hussein Obama" or BHO doesn’t make you racist, although you may want to check your motives before doing so. Let’s go back to calling presidents by their last name in conversation, "Bush, Clinton, Reagan, Carter, Kennedy."

America is such a melting pot of diversity, it’s not pre-dominantly white anymore… and that’s a good thing! What are these guys afraid of? They sit in front of the camera and spout this non-sense about race. The reason why race is still in issue is because they make it one.

I’m happy that we have a black president. And I’ll be happy when we have a Latino president and an Asian president. Hopefully there will come a day when someone will run for president and his or her skin color will not matter and Dr. King’s dream of "judging a man, not by the color of his skin, but on the content of his character" will truly be realized.

We’ve got a long way to go for Dr. King’s dream to become a reality.