You may have noticed that all comments on this site are moderated.  It’s not because I fear a variety of opinions on the issues that I write about.  Rather it is because I will not allow my blog to promote racism.

For example, I was consulting About.com the other day as I researched for my blog article about the Mexican Repatriation of the 1930’s. Innocent enough, right? And then I found this comment:

Multiculturalism has pretty much destroyed the area I grew up in (Los Angeles). Gone are the fields, farms, good jobs, safe manicured lawns filled with white-bread middle class families that supported each other. In their place are hordes of latinos and blacks that have turned the entire area into a very dangerous drugged out cesspool of every type of wickedness. That’s what modern liberal multiculturalism did to my town.

Of course, I’m all for repatriation of latinos back to their countries of origin and the area restored to what it once was.

I also think blacks should have been repatriated to Africa after the Civil War with massive reparations. That would have been best for everyone.

Racism, it appears, never dies. Note the sentiments of the last sentence. I was exposed to this over 50 years ago. Quite frankly, the re-emergence and legitimization of this sentiment the reason for this blog.

We can argue that slavery should never have existed. But it definitely did, with negative consequences spanning many generations. So what good does it do to castigate the African-Americans among us?

We can argue that it would have been better for all Latinos to enter the country legally.  Nonetheless, when our economy was strong, there were many jobs available to them, many employers happy to hire them, and we benefited from their willingness to work jobs that others did not want to work.

Besides, many Latinos are American citizens.  Again I ask, what good does it do to punish the Latino-Americans among us?

The truth is, this person is pretty clear. He or she is ready to deport everyone who is not white;  he/she does not want them here, legal or not.

Racism is the unwillingness to share a country with anyone different than oneself, along with the implied assumption that one race is superior to another.  It ultimately leads to “ethnic cleansing”.

It is dangerous, malicious, and should be viewed as totally unacceptable to anyone or any political party. Yet I promise you. There will be candidates quite happy to pander to racism in exchange for votes!

What do you think? I am happy to host comments that speak to the problem, and offer a solution without resorting to an attack on a particular ethnicity.