I saw Spike Lee’s movie Black Klansman yesterday and it is a powerful reminder that racism is still alive and well. Many of us thought that we were going to live in a post racist period but that belief was naïve. It is not unpatriotic to discuss the fact that racism has been a shameful thread that has run through the history of our wonderful democratic experiment. If you have never worked in a community of color it is easy to miss the daily racial issues that still prevail. Many dismiss these realities by stating that they have never done anything to harm a person of color. This is true ,but it misses the point. Racism in so many ways is inbred in even the most vital institutions that are the fabric of our world. It is in industry, schools and every layer of society. For some, the hatred is visible as we have seen in places like Charlottesville while a great deal of it is subliminal.
There is no simple cure for the cancer of bias but each of us can model some behavior that reaches out to signal the beauty of diversity.