This is a divided nation. Progressives are no better than tea baggers if they don’t recognize that fact. I want my way! Wah!! Or no way!

I’ll tell you what. Hold back, Hollywood! And let Romney or Gingrich become president. And you will see the crushing of progressives and progressive institutions like Planned Parenthood like you have never imagined.

Heritage labels have changed for two apparent reasons: pursuit of coolness and pursuit of respect. First, with labels as with other things, people get bored and want to start or conform to new fashions. Second and more important, many people believe that any heritage label inevitably degrades over time into a tool of bigotry. So labels keep changing in order to maybe stay one step ahead of bigotry.

Of course, some labels seem more ‘accurate’ or ‘precise’ than others. Kid-palette colors – like black, brown, red, white and yellow – clearly don’t well describe even actual personal skin color. But by now, though, these agreeably brief terms have fairly-well-understood reference to characteristic widely-shared physical and cultural heritage.

For those who refuse to be satisfied by these simple color labels, big-region labels – like ‘African’ – seem more on-point. However, as yet so few of these labels are in use that big and usually intended distinctions go unregistered – e.g. between Mediterranean North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. And, if we insist on such labels, equity and due respect demands that all our wide-heritage labels be of that kind. If we speak of African Americans, we should also speak of European Americans, Asian Americans, Siberian (or ‘Native’) Americans, etc.

But, precisely because life is short, we should reject the uninformative extra word ‘American’. Why not just ‘African’ or ‘European’? To be sure, if we don’t add SOMETHING, the label might be taken to refer not to your heritage but to your own land of birth or residence. But the 4-syllable suffix ‘American’ is too long.

The single-syllable ‘-am’ might work – especially if used with abbreviated forms of the region-label. That would give us workably short words like ‘Euram’, ‘Afram’, ‘Asiam’, ‘Sibram’. And of course ‘Medam’ – for someone like me who deems his heritage as ‘Mediterranean’ – not really or merely ‘European’ or ‘Asian’ or ‘African’.

Everybody happy now?

We had a mixture of people born from the 20′s though the 60′s living in small areas that couldn’t afford the local newspaper if there was one available.
Therefore children learned what they were taught in schools and from the adults to whom many weren’t educated beyond the 5th grade.
Even today there are many that have never gone outside of a fifty mile radius !
( not meant to sound or be made negative ). They only knew the world as black & white people…

Now the negative side is that those to whom was able to relocate to other states and had more access to the media didn’t make an attempt to inform the one’s that was left behind the truth regarding the different races ( nationalities ) . Often times they returned with negative input because they weren’t equipped to face so much change in a short period of time. So they saw the truth and didn’t attempt to inform others and that made them no better than the ones they left behind..

What does this have to do with being called black or colored ? History teaches us that blacks weren’t called colored and other names until the 19th century ! Then in the 50′s someone got the bright idea that we should be called some other name( NOW NO ONE ASK ME WHAT I WANTED TO BE CALLED) but if i didn’t go along with their ideas i had to be a reject or uncle Tom or some other foolish name.

Once i became old enough to relocate i realized right away that there were other groups of people in the world that simply wanted to call me by the name i was given at birth and it had nothing to do with the color of my skin.

It seems to me that in 2012 we’re worst than the people in the early 1900′s because we refuse to let go on both sides of the table regarding nationality .

As for me ! As long as you call me by my name and treat me with respect that i will have shown you.
I don’t care what you look like, I don’t need your phone number,FB,Church you attend, address or whether you’re democratic or republican.

With all the media outlets, sports, entertainment and everything else that we have in 2012..
These conversations should never be on the table other than to educate each other that when we die depending on where you live the same guys that will be throwing dirt in your face will be smiling while they are picking up their check preparing for the next guy to whom color won’t matter…

Jim

Grow up folks .

-Nate
(who’s 6′ tall but still can’t dunk)