The Unrealized American Dream

By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon

I am a Star Trek fan. One of the byproducts of discovering life on other planets is the realization there is only one race of human beings. It seems during the time of Captain Kirk and Captain Picard, the idea of discriminating agsinst one's ethnicity or gender is something that has become extinct in the future.

I always wondered what it would be like if this country and this planet would realize Martin Luther King Jr's dream of judging someone by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.

I fear this is something that will never come to pass.

The United States was supposed to be the biggest incubator for the biggest social experiment on the planet. Would a group of castaways and rejects from other corners of the earth be able to join together and melt away their cultural differences to form a new type of person? Would you come to the United States and become an American?

For a while it seemed like it was going to work. 

After the horrid practice of slavery left a scar on our society, our government, and our landscape, and after the passage of some critical Constitutional Amendments, the Americanization movement and cultural assimilation was the order of the day.

During the early 1900s, a large wave of immigrants to the United States crashed on both coasts. Immigrants from Europe flooded Ellis Island in New York and Immigrants from Asia flooded Angel Island in California. Several states passed laws encouraging immigrants to become "Americanized," and schools taught people how to become "Americanized." They taught immigrants how to speak English and taught immigrants key elements of American government and civics. 

It almost worked.

It might have worked, if two World Wars hadn't broken out with an economic depression sandwiched between them that ground the planet to a halt.

It seems when we're crippled by fear, we look for someone to blame, and that someone is usually someone different. They're usually poor, or a different skin color, or speak a different language, or they practice a different religion.

During the better part of the 20th century, we ripped eachother apart based on political, social, and economic differences. Militant organizations and radical religious fundamentalist organizations preached ethnic purity and used the veil of religion to argue their skin color, or their beliefs were the right ones and everyone else was wrong. Some people wanted all those different people to go back to the country they came from, forgetting they aren't native to this land, either - forgetting they methodically and slowly decimated entire generations' worth of Native Americans as they expanded their territory from sea to shining sea.

Then the Technological Revolution happened. We saw the world get smaller as global communication and trade made the other side of the planet seem not so far away. Social media and the internet now made it possible for every culture to spread it's wealth of knowledge. 

But that didn't happen.

Instead the internet and social media became tools to continue dividing people and highlighting and enhancing people's differences rather than forgetting them. I guess it is true what people say. It is way easier to destroy something than it is to create something; it's easier to burn something to the ground rather than building it from the ground up.

I have not been exposed to a whole lot of racism and prejudice in person. For most of my almost 44 years on this planet I've lived among a rather homogeneous population. Even when I worked in Austin I was not exposed to a whole lot of racism. I worked among a culturally diverse crowd and even though I lived just north of Bastrop, I didn't experience a lot of problems. 

But the internet is a whole different story. Among the relative anonymity the cyber world provides, people's true, dark nature is exposed. Because of my last name, I've been called almost every name in the book and I've been told to go back where I came from, forgetting for a minute I was born in Texas. I'm at where I'm from. 

Just today someone from Poland made racist comments about African Americans and then decided to throw Hispanic people in the mix when he saw I responded to him and called out his racist comments. Then another man rushed to his defense, calling me the classic "snowflake," a liberal, then asking what bathroom I used just before blocking me.

In addition, I've been called gay slurs, Cuban, a criminal, a rapist, a dirty Mexican, a wetbaack, and my personal favorite, transgender. 

I have come to the conclusion we will never be rid of racism. No matter how enlightened or tolerant we think we've become as a society, when nobody is listening, or when nobody is obligated to identify themselves on the internet, humanity's true nature is revealed. Hate, fear, and discontent will always overpower and defeat love and those who have good intentions. 

I wish I could say good will always defeat evil. I'm afraid that will never be the case. The darkness will always consume the light.

One need only peruse the comments section on one of the local blogs. There are often comments making fun of the author as a "stupid Mexican" while others make fun of others' ethnicity and sexual orientation.

I won't even mention just how our politicians and political parties have encouraged the divisiveness and hatred. Some politicians are content to encourage these hate groups and radical organizations, but I'm sure you've read and seen plenty about that.

It is in our nature to be negative and hate. It is said the earliest human-like remains found in archaeological digs showed signs of violence. Skulls were crushed by weapons and other skeletal remains show evidence of being damaged by man-made weaponry. It is in our nature to destroy one another.

We will never be rid of this curse of hatred. We will never be content to live and let live. Try as we might, we would much rather hate, argue, and fight.

It's in our nature.

"And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures."

-President John F. Kennedy