With Martin Luther King, Jr. Day having come and gone this week, we thought it necessary to reflect on the state of our nation, to see how far we've come as a nation and to see how far we've still got left to go.
In a span of a little more than 40 years, we've gone from being a nation where black people couldn't vote to a nation with a black President.
That's something at least.
However, we are not yet where we should be.
We still have miles to go before we reach the mountain top King spoke of.
We're a nation divided, a people so obsessed with our personal identities and roles.
We emphasize the personal self over all else, and fail to notice the joys and benefits to be found in reaching out and learning something new.
We sequester ourselves into groups that help support our constructed identities, groups that bind us together by race, location, gender, sexual identity, religion, politics or any other value from a long laundry list.
We exclude ourselves, creating comfortable cliques we may never branch out of, limiting what we can discover about the world around us.
In a perfect world, we wouldn't need racial quotas, affirmative action or even our own Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs.
In a perfect world, we would take it upon ourselves to find out more about other people and other customs, finding a spirit of kinship and togetherness in the bonds of humanity.
The world we live in still desperately needs all of those things and could do with a great deal more.
The good folks at the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs can host all the forums and seminars they can think of, but they won't truly be effective until we begin to change what's in our hearts and minds.
Diversity is no longer an issue of skin tone, as gender and sexual identity are also moving to the forefront as critical issues.
We preach tolerance, as if tolerance were a virtue to be revered.
Tolerance allows us to "be patient with or indulge the opinions of others."
Tolerance is simply recognizing someone else's right to exist. You can still hate them; you just don't show it.
We think it's time to throw up the "Mission Accomplished" banner on tolerance and begin to move towards true equality and understanding.
This will not be an easy process. Change does not and should not come easily if it is change worth having.
Treat everyone with kindness and respect, not because you expect the same treatment in return, but because that's what we should do.
Or, to quote John 15:12: "This is my commandment: that you love one another, just as I have loved you."
Show love, Auburn.
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