The number one piece of unfinished business from the last
century is bringing an end to racial discrimination. Despite
all that we have learned and the progress we have achieved in
erasing discriminatory laws from the books at the federal,
state and local level, racism is still alive and well, and it
is a reality faced by people of color every day of their
lives.
We seem stuck in the muck of racism and are unable to make
headway. We are far behind and have a long way to go to
fulfilling the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
enunciated so clearly and memorably at the Lincoln Memorial in
1963. We see this particularly in the headlong retreat from
affirmative action and in the reprehensible practice of racial
profiling.
Scientists working on the Human Genome Project discovered
that the DNA of all human beings is 99.9% identical. Clearly
the sum of our similarities far outweighs our differences.
Nevertheless, we stubbornly continue to focus so much
attention on differences that constitute less than 1/10th of
1% of our genetic code.
Jim Carnes writes in Teaching Tolerance, "The fraction
of a percent of genes that are not universal play a
disproportionate share in defining our world. They have
inspired conquest, enslavement, the Holocaust and the social
construct of race itself. Over time, human societies have
clashed and fragmented as if our 99.9 percent shared
inheritance didn't count for much.
"But against this dissonance, the idea of human
oneness has persisted, like a biological memory. Religions
enshrine it to varying degrees. Individuals grasp it through
faculties such as empathy, love, and conscience." Racial
discrimination robs our economy of much valuable human
resource day in and day out. We need to focus on the 99.9% of
the genetic material that is identical! Jim Carnes concludes,
"The Human Genome Project lends scientific credence to a
fact of life that the Oglala Lakota people have observed for
centuries, not from decoded genes but from lived experience:
mitakuye oyasin-"We are all related."
We have the challenge and the responsibility to live in
harmony with all our fellow human beings and to celebrate the
diversity that does exist among us. The Creator calls us to
love, to care, to venture, and to take risks on people, aware
that they may disappoint us or let us down. To do that is to
really experience the fullness of life as the Creator gives
it. Jesus said these words on the night before his death, I
give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as
I have loved you, you also should love one another. (John
13:34)
Since that electrifying moment when God said "Let us
make humankind in our image," there has never been a
greater need than now for people of faith in the Creator of
life to lead in the struggle to protect this incredibly
wonderful yet terribly fragile gift--human life.
--John Gugel
