This is about Racism

After spending three weeks in Australia I realised what I really loved about that country. There are no racial tensions among the people. While the Aboriginals may have not received equal treatment until very recently, the Australian nation is making efforts at correcting this. Every so often, you hear some stereotypical opinions of the Aboriginals, but these are the type of stereotypes based on truths. Aboriginals are known to go on 'walkabouts.' They don't last long in a job. They like change. They move. That's just who they are. I saw far more respect for their culture, art and music than any other nation with a minority. There are museums all over Australia of Aboriginal art. There are shops selling aboriginal art and music.

The only comparison I can make with America is the native Indians. Indians today receive far more respect than any other minority that lives in America. That's my perception at least. While the blacks, no matter what their origin may be (African or born in the America for the past eight generations), receive no such respect.

Why am I bringing this up? Because a friend of mine, a black guy (and no, he's not an African-American, he's an immigrant from an African country), noticed a printed piece of paper that was anonymously placed in a common area at his workplace, in the US.

Now, in his office there are only two immigrants - himself and another one from Europe.

When you read what the printed paper, I'm hoping you will all be as appalled as I was at this outrageous show of racism in the workplace in the US. This really bothers me that in a country supposedly based on equal right and equal treatment for all humans, that immigrants and particularly blacks get treated as second class citizens. What really shocked me is that someone would do this to my friend who comes across far more intelligent and smart than any American I've ever met!

On a personal level I was upset at the reference to immigrants, as if we're all second level citizens in this country. We may contribute far more to this country than some slacker getting unemployment paychecks, and we may be paying our taxes, volunteering in the community, giving to charity - but no, we're not good enough for this President. We're just second hand citizens who should not be treated as equals.

You know what, if a celebrity makes a statement it doesn't make it right! Especially if it's a President. Your American presidents are just as opinionated as any asshole on the street. Their only qualification to be in their job is - they were luck enough to be born in the US. There is no other qualification from them - no degree requirement, no intelligence test, no IQ test, no social test. Yet, for some reason people believe that if a President says something it must be true.

So for all you racists out there - you're just a bunch of mindless followers who think that if President Roosevelt or President Nixon said it - then it carries weight. It's a pity you're too stupid to even understand how wrong you are in your judgement of others. I don't expect you to change. I don't expect you to even understand what is wrong with racism. Assholes remain assholes for life. I'm just upset I have to share this country with you.

This is what was printed on the paper:

"In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.
But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile...We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language...and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."
"The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, or preventing all possibility of its continuing as a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities." "A perfectly stupid race can never rise to a very high place. The Negro, for instance, has been kept down as much by his lack of intellectual development as by anything else."
-Theodore Roosevelt

Todah La'El Hayom Yom Shishi