Obama's America.

Thanks to Chris Matthews "Hardball" at MSNBC and Boeing Corp for their combined work via Texas Southern University. The presentation on Race during the Martin Luther King holiday was a significant sumation of progress acheived since the election of President Obama. Obama's America and the presentaion of stats from Mr Matthews gave evidence of a comming together of racial divide among Americans. I hope he can continue such great work every year on the same holiday. Significant members of the news and radio community offered challenging viewpoints and student participation brought forth pains that cannot be surmounted among us eassily. The professional level of discussion maintained order but yet allowed the refference to the vernacular and barbershop chatter that often creates the level of conversation where race is used in a challenging atmosphere. The difference between race and racist are opposing poles in the habits of mindless ignorant hurtfull speech. It was established that the refference to race need not be corrected for it is who we are. However racial ignorance in a hurtfull way is an all powerfull negative. An Arab woman speaker who's name I don't recall, I appologize for that, made an interesting observation that I think is a classic point of view of an immigrant comming into the US. She mentioned that her students often would admit to voting for Obama without being familiar with his policies. She possed the question that if you voted for him based on just race alone is that then a racist vote? My viewpoint is that voting for someone is not a negative or hurtfull intent of my vote. Could it be termed racial? Well no doubt it could. But turning racial to racist is not a given equal assignment of value. I would say to her the difference is similar to the difference between Islam and Islamist. I'm sure she would agree that her students votes did not make them terrorists.