Arizona bans ethnic studies in school.
Honestly, to me as an American of European descent, ethnic stuidies really grate on my nerves. My family is Irish, Italian and French. And German. And Russian. And English. Yet it seems forbidden to teach or celebrate your history if you're white in this country.
Respectfully my European-American heritage has a LOT to celebrate. So many innovations have come from those countries in the past four hundred years that have bettered mankind it's just off the chart! But all we are allowed to remember is what's bad from the white history in class and in the media.
I had proposed in letters to our congress instead of "black history month" we have "family history month" where people learn their roots and all children learn where they came from and their histories and to be proud of them. Martin Luther King's dream wasn't that colored people would be given unearned and undeserved favoritism in perpetuity because of the wrongs of the past but that his children would one day be judged on the content of their character and not on the color of their skin. That they would have equal opportunities. I think the time for affirmative action and such has come to an end.
It's time that Americans realize the abounding wealth and oportunities that are had here. We have libraries that anyone can go into to read free information and free education to prepare for anything. The American dream wasn't that it would all be given to you but that you could earn it or build it.
We've all suffered racism in this country - I can't get scholarships for my skin color here! There aren't quotas that I will get favored for a job because of my color. If I want to discuss my racial heritage in class - I've heard stuff in college classes that would get me kicked out if I said them as a white student.
Of course there are idiots who will think I'm a white supremacist for writing this. I just grow tired of being the enemy of mankind for something I didn't do and I can't help: my color and the wrongs of the past. And my ancestry has done so much more than its greatest wrongs. And it seems despite the prosperity and peace here all we can remember are the offenses of decades and centuries past that have been ended and we miss the blessings that are around us and in our hands and we are missing them.
What's wrong with being an American? My family's greatest achievements have come in this country and not in the old world. It's here I'm proud of. And in my military service - we didn't care about color - only that we were Americans. To come home to the racial division here and racism was absolutely offensive to me and I wish it were like it was out there - we were on the same side and it didn't matter where you came from.
