This isn’t going to be an “everybody love everybody!” 1970s cry like Jackie Moon’s in the movie “Semi Pro.”
However, we must be vigilant to treat everyone equally no matter their quality of life, ethnicity or personal characteristics such as race, belief or even something as minuscule as clothing.
As a curly haired red-head, I’ve been unable to escape people’s jest about my permanent non-human condition. Try living in the shoes of a person who must stockpile a year’s worth of sunscreen at the end of each summer sale.
I remember being told by family members that my thousands of sun burnt freckles were angel kisses when I was a child. That’s when I decided I should study biology.
I wrote satirically in an article published last year which mocked being merely a genetic mutation.
You see, I’m not human because I have the recessive gene for a soul on my chromosome 16. The recessive gene caused a mutation in the protein in my body, MCR1, which determines whether a person is genetically born with a soul or not.
In the article, I mention my impossible-to-miss hair in my headshot, and I poke fun at my gingervitis to underline the exclaiming issue which prevails to this day, “Prejudice is ruining us.”
Obviously, my claim about lacking a soul can’t be even half truthful if I’m writing a column. I couldn’t be happier as the carrier of the jovial ginger disease.
I digress.
We are a curious species.
The daily phenomenon of prejudice is in human nature. We do it by a natural, hard-wired instinct in an effort for survival.
Before skin color came into play, our evolutionary ancestors, popularly known as cavemen, would discern simply between unibrow length (joking), tribal association (be they Crip or Blood) and strength (the latter two being more likely).
United States President Barack Obama delivered his second inaugural speech, and in it he called attention to the right of freedom in America.
“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” Obama said. “We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall.”
Let’s progress from the 1960s belief that only heterosexual white people should be treated with utmost equality. Whatever sexual preference you have with another human should be acceptable in the great United States of ‘Murica, no matter what kind of house you live in.
In other words, it’s time to put the past behind us and make our own history by moving on.
It’s OK to be open-minded and accepting. Though, it may be wise to refrain from being detailed with the grandparents for now.
The age-old debate should finally come to an end in Obama’s last term. Our black president has the cojones to make a dream come true that no other acting man in the United States could.
A key is needed to remove the padlock from the rusty chains wrapped around the wretched tongues that have prevented the socially alienated from feeling like anything more than a fetid skid mark lining the underwear of American society.
This parochial prattle must come to an end, though there are already wounds too deep to mend and the thick-skinned have emaciated.