Progress takes time, sometimes an inordinate amount of time, to simply first make a wrong, right. But it is a necessary step to move forward. Perhaps, that is a good way to put into perspective the announcement today by the Smithsonian Institution that it will build a National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).
With more than one in five children in the United States now living below the poverty line, the answer for Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is for them to "learn the value of work" by becoming school janitors.
Seriously, learning to scrub a toilet is Gingrich's answer to millions of poor children, as if they aren't already suffering enough with a lack of nutrition, poor education, and limited or having zero access to healthcare, and housing.
When candidates for President of the United States choose to play to racial stereotypes, it does little to educate and improve race relations among a growing ethnically diverse electorate. The travesty and tragedy of resorting to using distorted, divisive and derogatory languages and images to describe a whole group of people have untold, and unfortunately, lasting consequences.
