One of the obligations of being in a family is that whenever one of your young relatives performs in public, you feel obligated, if not proud, to arrange your calender in order to go out and see them…..

So it was at the year end concert I attended tonight…….A gaggle of 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders encompassing the entire range of talent humanly available, assembled wearing jet black pants and bleached white shirts, before parents and family to perform (or for some, to endure) their 15 minutes of fame.

After each of the individual class acts, the entire assembly of students was assembled for a grand finale.

They preformed their school song and the last song on the ticket was according to the program…..some patriotic song…..Of course I thought……

The piano started and among the children, the singing broke out……..

“We are the colors of America. A bright and vivid tapestry, With each one shining bright, reflecting its own light, We are our nations destiny.……

Tears started to well…..

As my mind grasped the immensity of what I was beholding…..it was America I was seeing, right to the core….It was what makes this nation different from any other past or present…….

For on that stage, there were no blacks…..there were no whites……one could tell by the contrast with those clothes they were wearing…….just many, many, different shades of brown…..Some with red hair, were a light brown. others with black hair were a dark brown….But from the audience level looking up it would be rather hard to quantify among most of them whether we were gazing at a light skinned dark person, or a dark skinned light person in a majority of those pouring their hearts out in singing those words…..

So why is so much effort being used to quantify race in this election year. Who cares?

What was obvious to me, as one Delawarean school performed for their families, was anyone pushing us back down the way of division, was leading us the wrong way…..That is not where America needs to go. Rather we need to be going the opposite way….the way in which every American can prosper and by each person’s cumulative growth, together our nation prospers at the same time…. The key word is “every”. And I’d be willing to settle for a definition of 98% as being the practical definition of “every”.

America does not need to prosper….as Republicans have touted as they roll back taxes on the wealthy. But every human American does….if this nation is to remain a bastion of Democracy against the new threats of Russia, and China. both technological equals with vast resources at their disposal…..

There may come a time when we may need assistance from the rest of the world if our nation is to survive….. Having a multicultural nation would be our best defense against any national attack…. Who could not support a nation which allowed ones relatives to work and send back the very money one needed to survive upon?

Allow me the luxury of this theoretical example. One of our best defenses which we have going for us to keep China from attacking us, is to have a large number of Chinese living here and calling us their home…. How can an attacking nation convince its citizenery that we are evil when each individual soldiers relatives back home are telling him otherwise?

Likewise with Russians, Indians, Arabs, and Latin Americans…..Our common defense rests on our friendships, probably a little more than it rests on our weapons…..

America needs to become color blind…and recognize in some way that we are all some shade of brown….some are East Asian brown, some are Central Asian brown, some are West Asian brown. Some are western Eurasian brown. And some come from the Mother continent of Africa. Those indigenous Americans are immigrants themselves whose ancestors migrated across the Siberian land bridge and spread across both continents……Genetically among the whole planet’s pool, we are (rounded) 99% alike.

It is time for Obama. I haven’t paid that much attention. What is he? West Eurasian, East Asian? Is he west or east African? And if one honestly comes to terms with the fact that one really doesn’t know,.,… then how can that person automatically collate him as a black man, when my own television screen shows me his skin is light brown? Obama throws our racial stereotypes right on edge. Furthermore this controversy brings up a valid point. If any child comes from parents of two different shades of skin, why do we automatically call that child black? Why is he not white? This controversy is solved if we choose to call it as it is…. “If a dark brown mothers the baby of a light brown, it’s a medium brown…” “Whoop de doo.” Anyone with married friends of different shades of brown, who happen to have children, knows full well the impossibility of pigeonholing each of their progeny’s behavior based on their skin’s shade of brown…..

If one looks at race with a clear eye….it is laughable.

Our country is crumbling apart, is currently fighting just to say we didn’t lose in some dry ungamely place, and is flat broke. Meanwhile billions and billions, are spent switching corporations from one owner to the next, and back again at an even higher price…..and for what?

America cannot afford to stay the same……McCain is the same…..Hillary…..likewise is the same…..Yes, they both are good people….Yes, they both have reasons for proposing what they do. And yes, they could each make a much better president than the one we have just endure.

But to use Galactica termonolgy, America needs “to Jump”….. We need to move our entire nation, en masse, to some point into the future. The last person to make a jump of the likes we now need, was Franklin D. Roosevelt. The one before that, was Lincoln….. So these events don’t come that often.

It would be wise to reflect that as little as a year ago, even within our little forums here in “the first state”, there was general excitement among progressives of both parties, who were clamoring over whether Gore would eventually rise high enough in stature to take back the presidency, and after an 8 year delay, put us back on the proven course to success…..

It would be worth noting as well that at this time last year, Clinton was odds on favorite to be elected. So what has happened, is that an upstart has risen through his own party, and beaten back the efforts of a front runner, who all had assumed would waltz into the White House because there was no one who could beat her (sort of like the New England Patriots)……..But someone did, and when they came out of the fight, they did so unbloodied with negatives, as did their opponent…..Democrats across the nation have spoken….and this is… a nation of all…..Collectively they have said ” wow, we had two wonderful candidates; we each voted for our favorite; it’s tough to settle, but in the end, maybe by only a field goal, one will win.”

Undeniably the winner will need to jump America’s ship far into America’s future…..We can’t wait for the shattering of our infrastructure and economic markets, the poisoning of our planet, or the breakdown of our people to occur before we take action. We know what needs done and that action will need to be taken as quickly as possible. Having either one of the two candidates with a ligher shade of brown calling the shots, means we will still have to relive those same old controversies that should have been put behind us many years ago……

Race should not be an issue…..it certainly isn’t for kids in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades…..ask them…..They’ll tell you….”Who cares what shade of brown lurks in one’s skin? We’re all the same.”