So much for the president that was going to unite our country and help us  move beyond the color of a person’s epidermis or the make-up of their 26th chromosome.  I think I’ve heard more about race and gender relations in the past six months than I have in my entire life.

I have a vivid memory of the first time I realized that “black” people looked different than ‘white” people.  I was in summer care at The Boys and Girls Club, because both of my parents worked.  My best friend the summer I was seven had darker skin than me, but I never noticed it.  That is until I overheard some well meaning day camp counselor pointing out how nice it was that a white girl and a black girl were so chummy.  What did “white” and “black” mean in terms of describing us?  I looked at her, and I looked at myself.  I asked my friend if she knew what our counselor meant, and she said it had to be our hair, because she had black hair, and she’d once heard someone describing blond hair as white.  But that didn’t make sense to me, because as a blond, my hair was definitely yellow, not white.  So being the precocious seven year olds that we were, we asked our counselor what she meant by the comment.

The answer was confusing to us both.  She told us that “black” and “white” was our skin color.  That made about as much sense as my hair being white.  Anyone with eyes could see that her skin was brown and mine was peach.  At least, those were the crayon colors we chose when drawing self portraits.  And even if our skin was a different color, why would that have anything to do with our friendship?  We were stumped.  So we stopped worrying about it and resumed playing.

In the years since then, I have obviously become aware of the hardship and discrimination that once affected the dark-skinned citizens of our country.  I have become educated on the fight for gender equality in the workplace.  Until recently, I considered myself blessed to live in a time and place in which skin color and gender didn’t matter any more than eye or hair color.  Sure, a brunette and a red head are different, but it just doesn’t matter in terms of a person’s integrity or work ethic.  It didn’t matter that I was a girl.  No one was going to keep me out of the best schools or jobs based on that fact.  As long as I was willing to do the work, and I did a good job, I was rewarded.

We seem to have back-peddaled into racism.  In the Obama era, we are racists if we disagree with the President’s policies.  Our attorney general Eric Holder calls us racists if we refuse to acknowledge race.  And we’re going to have a United States Supreme Court Justice that believes she makes better decisions than others based on her skin color and gender.

I don’t want a black President just because he’s black anymore than I want a female President just because she’s female.  And I certainly don’t want a justice on the highest court in the US that believes she is superior to others based on skin tone and gender.  Those things are irrelevant to the tasks at hand, and they are racist.  They elevate one demographic over another for NO reason.

I am NOT saying that we shouldn’t have a black president, or woman Secretary of State, or a one armed Secretary of Defense, or a red headed  Chief of Staff, or anyone else serving the country that is not an old and plump white dude.  I’m just saying that it should not matter.

I hope that someday the liberals in our country will be able to move past the race and gender issue.  Until then, I guess racism is alive and well.  Only now it’s directed toward pale men.