A Race We Should Finish

At a recent Tea Party in Moorhead, a critic noted that there wasn’t enough racial diversity. Similar criticisms populate news stories and opinion pieces across the nation in an attempt to discredit the call for freedom and liberty coming from the American people. This is not a phenomena exclusive to Tea Parties; the list of victims includes representatives, senators, and anyone who publicly criticizes policy decisions of the democrat party.

Racism today is a pale and fading shadow of the horrific violence of previous generations and the term (like so many others) has been co-opted by a group of people with a specific agenda. Racism is a simple issue to understand; the idea that one person would hate another due to an arbitrary attribute (usually color of skin) is deplorable. The simplicity of this concept makes it a prime label to paste on to people who disagree with you. That’s the real travesty of racism; that factual racism has been kidnapped and replaced with phony racism to push political policy. What service is that doing to the brave men and women of the civil rights struggles?

Our founding principles state that all men are created equal, and we all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Conservatism upholds these ideas. Conservatism is color-blind because color isn’t relevant to policy; all men are created equal. This isn’t, however, about ignoring our cultural heritage and family traditions. This is about writing law in Washington, and about having the freedom to disagree with the principles of other people.

Twice American means first knowing that we are all equal, and second celebrating that we are all different. Diversity is much more than skin deep; cheapening our individual experiences by viewing them through the lens of race goes against everything America should represent. When you are born in America, or become American by choice, you are American first. So let us shatter the looking glass of racial identification. Let’s shred the racial qualifiers we use to identify ourselves. We are Americans, we want to go back to the founding principles of equality, life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, and we want our government to remember that they represent us.

In November, we will remind them.