"We hold these truth to be self-evident,...

that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." So said Thomas Jefferson is the Declaration of Independence, and this has been the credo by which we have identified ourselves to the world for the last 250 years.

That is what makes what happened in Texas recently so deplorable. A black man was run over and dragged to the point where his body was mangled and officials were still finding pieces of his skull 3 days later. One of the two men involved in the crime was a member of a prison white supremacist gang during a four year stint that began in 2003, which was for a murder charge that was pleaded down to manslaughter. The 3 men were known to each other before the incident and there was alcohol involved. However, whether this was an actual hate crime or not, the fact that it echoes a similar incident that WAS a hate crime that occurred only 200 miles away leaves a bad taste in the mouth of many. All 3 of these men were born after civil rights were enacted and became a part of daily life in this country. None of them grew up in a culture of legally enforced segregation. Racism was not a legally mandated and protected state of being, and to be racist was by choice for these men.

Is Texas an isolated hotbed of racism? To think that is true is downplaying the breadth of the issue and painting an unfair portrait of a considerable number of whites in Texas. It does lead you to wonder why, in a generation with no direct experience with legal segregation, the behaviors and attitudes of racism and segregation remain? While it is naive to assume that just because a form of oppression is outlawed, the oppression is going to miraculously disappear. It takes time for people to change, especially those who lived the bulk of their life under by it. But you would think that there would be hope for those who were never a part of that system, for whom equality under the law was a given and was legally protected. Why is this not the case?

How much improvement in race relations has there truly been in the last 40 years? I think that now that some of the newness has worn off and the assumption of civil rights has become commonplace, we have lost the sense of urgency in safeguarding its implementation. I speak to both whites and blacks. Self-segregation is as common now as it ever was and it is being justified now on a cultural basis instead of a racial one. There is little dialogue to promote common understanding between the average white and black person in this country, so there is little chance that this is going to change. After fighting so hard and paying such high costs to de-segregate this country and bring legal equality, why are we voluntarily segregating ourselves and leaving opportunities for misunderstanding that can lead to such acts of hate?

At the end of the day, we are all humans in the eyes of God and the rest of the creatures of earth. We are all Americans in the eyes of the rest of the world's citizens. We need to look for the common bonds that unite us as a way to open up dialogue and to create the open and free society initially envisioned by our founding fathers and expanded by men like Martin Luther King. We can not afford- economically, culturally, and in societal terms- to have two such distinct "countries" existing here. The last time we had two distinct nations within our walls, we were almost torn apart and destroyed by the Civil War. The cost to all would be too high if that were to happen again.

Let us remember the principles which define this nation and truly be "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."