Black History Month 2011 is coming to a close.  And as a member of an interracial relationship, I want to pause and take a moment to make a note about race relations in this country.

 

I’ll steer clear of the obvious – that our President is Black (or half-Black or half-White) and that the actor who plays God more often than any other is Mr. Gravitas himself — Morgan Freeman.

 

No, I’d rather offer a more personal observation.

 

From where I sit, I believe the truth is, we’ve made great strides in race relations.  I’ll tell you how far we’ve come.  This week my girlfriend — a Black Woman — yelled at me (a White Guy).

 

40 years ago, a Black woman yells at a White guy, it’d a racial incident.  There would’ve been a special “racial incident” episode of Good Times or The Jeffersons, in which my girlfriend was Wilona, the sassy neighbor, and I was some jerky White guy, played by an actor that you would see later on Love Boat or Fantasy Island.  And, back in 1970, she couldn’t have been able to just yell at any White guy.  The guy would’ve had to do something awful.  For example, in the history of American television, there’s been no bigger bigot than Archie Bunker, and maybe only 1 Black person ever yelled at him — George Jefferson — and that was for something really racist.

 

But, what did I do that was so bad?  I’ll tell you what.  I forgot to wash my gym clothes, and they smelled bad.  That’s it.  There is nothing racist about that.  In fact,  just the opposite.  I left the white clothes and dark clothes all mixed together in one big heap.   Because I’m all about integration.

 

She let me have it.  And, no one did anything to stop her.  40 years ago, even Black people would’ve told her to stop.  Today, nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  It’s like we’re just 2 regular people.

 

It’s like the beginning of the end of racism.

 

Bear in mind, that I, like so many others, was raised on Sesame Street, and the song, “One of these things is not like the other.  One of these things just doesn’t belong.”  That song is the most racist thing out there.  That’s right, innocent little Sesame Street with all those cute Muppets has been teaching us since we were babies to hate people who were different.  Why do you think they made all the Muppets different colors?  So, you could know who was different, making it easier to discriminate against them.  But, now, that’s gone.  All that racism we learned from childhood is useless.

 

And, now, with the end of racism and stereotyping there will nothing left to talk about because we’ll all be the same.  All these great strides we’ve made will mean that no one will have any individuality.  Everyone will just be Mr. and Mrs. Starbuck’s, who live on the same block with the McDonald’s, the Bennigans, and the Red Lobsters.   We’ll all just be a bunch of overweight, White, right-of-center Republicans from Ohio, who talk about nothing except shopping at Wal-Mart and what we just saw on Fox news.

 

On the other hand, my girlfriend and I are having a kid, so maybe, just maybe, we’ll all eventually be part-Black and part-White and part-who-knows-what else?  And, then racism really will be antiquated, because instead of us all being homogeneous, closed-minded troglodytes, will all be a mix of a lot of different and cool things.