Racism is not dead

Today I was at the dentist. My hygienist said something about my birthday being on Christmas. Then she asked, "Did you get Jewed out of presents." I was stunned that someone would make that racist of a remark, that I just sat there dumbfounded. Also it's somewhat hard to talk with that sucking thing in my mouth. I guess that's kind of a cop out. I'm still debating on whether I should call the office to complain. For those that think just because we elected a Black President that racism is over, you are sorely mistaken. With such huge injustices in our judicial and educational systems and work discrimination, we need to remember that the fight against racism and injustice is never gone.

How old is 14?

This past week some of the kids at the ministry I work at had been talking about R Kelly. Many of them don't see a problem with what R Kelly did. They don't seem to care how old the participant in the now infamous R Kelly tape is. In my opinion part of this has to do with the acceptance in the inner city of older men being with much younger girls. Many teenage girls have twenty something boyfriends.

Obviously from a moral perspective what R Kelly did was wrong. However should his actions be illegal? Now I know the argument that the girl was well aware of what she was doing and made a choice. I'm also aware that many people feel that someone at the age of 14 is not adult enough to make those kind of decisions. The problem then lies with the hypocrisy of our system. Many conservative mouth pieces were outraged at what was done to this "child". However these are the same people in the media that would call for the same girl to be charged as an adult had she committed a crime. So the girl is not adult enough to make decisions about sex, but is completely adult enough to know the consequences of matters of life and death?

I for one think that it should be illegal for someone to have any sexual contact with a person under the age of 18. However I also think that there should be a flat age for when someone becomes an adult in the eyes of the state. If they are under 18, they get charged as a minor, no way around it. However our system has taken on a case by case basis, which has lead to widespread discrimination. Black youths are twice as likely to be charged as adults as white youths. In order to take bias and discrimination completely out of the equation there needs to be a national adult age. I would say that 18 makes the most sense. At 18 you should have all the rights and responsibilities of an adult. Before that you're a minor.

Is religion the problem?

The recent events in Mumbai have drawn our eyes once again to terrorism perpetrated by religious zealots. For a long time we have heard from the Bill Mahrs of the world that religion causes these terrible acts. Some of the world's worst acts were committed in the name of religion. However to say that these terrible acts of violence would not occur without religion is naive. Right now the Middle East is a hotbed of for "religious violence". Take religion completely out of the equation. Who gets the land? The Arabs/Palestinians or the Jews(as a race of people). For centuries developing countries and regions have fought and killed massive amounts of people for one thing, land. They aren't making any more of it. The European settlers committed genocide on the Native Americans for land. Many of the tribal genocides in Africa are over control of the land.

Genocide is a terrible thing, and many times religion is used as a backdrop or reason for it. However in many developing countries power, wealth, and control of the land is the ultimate goal. How can you claim power over an entire group of people? Tell your group that they are better than the others. There is a classic experiment that shows that they did this with eye color with elementary school students. In one day the students of one eye color had assumed a superiority complex over the other students just because of statements by a teacher. This idea of achieving power and wealth by superiority is what fuel Nazi Germany. It is what kept the conscience clean of American during the African slave trade.

The problem is whether it is religion, race, or stars on the bellies (Dr. Seuss reference) people will always uses their perceived superiority to step on others to gain what they want. Obviously not all horrendous acts are motivated this way. The new Batman movie said it best, "Some men just want to see the world burn". But aside from those that simply desire suffering, religion is just a tool to be misused in order to perpetuate violence. If you remove the tool, those who desire it will pick up another.