Dear Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona,

A funny thing happened on my way to the market...

The Backstory:

I recently posted, on Facebook, an article about a Southern justice of the peace (JOP) who refused to marry interracial couples due to his personal biases. Many of my friends reacted strongly against the behavior and some reposted the article on their own pages, with their own comments. I was glad to see a universal outcry of righteous indignation, but a little confused by some of the responses they got. Not so much because people agreed with the JOP, for the most part they didn't, but because of the muddled idea of race, race relations, multiculturalism and for some reason Obama that came out of them. I was also dismayed to find that advocacy groups are being labeled in negative ways that compromise their legitimacy, which leads to today's lesson. First though, I would like to share one conversation attached to a repost of the article. Note that I have not edited the comments other than to protect identities and clarify a reference. I've only removed comments from non-prinicpals for the sake of brevity. This, verbatim, was in response to the JOP not marrying interracial couples, which I, and most of the world, call racist:

EB: Actually, someone who is racist usually believes their race is superior to another. Not believing in mixing races is not necessarily racist. It would depend on what his reasons are for not believing in mixing races.

October 15 at 9:52pm

EB: Just for the record, I'm not saying I agree with him.

October 15 at 10:05pm

Al Rodriguez "Not mixing races" is stomach-emptyingly racist, EB. I know you don't espouse that drivel. I'm just informing you that "superiority and inferiority" is only a small part of racism.

October 16 at 1:53am

RB: The Council of La Raza is unashamedly racist in the most blatant fashion. Obama endorses, supports and even had one of its members nominated (and ultimately accepted) to the US Supreme Court. So Al, I guess your support of Obama makes you a racist by proxy.

October 16 at 8:22am

Al Rodriguez Dear RB, where do I start?

1. Your 6 degrees of Obama separation is pathetic.

2. What do you know about La Raza except the propaganda you swallowed since the Sotomayor nomination? And don' give me that, "For the race..." crap because that was an org. called Aztlan, which La Raza denounces.

3. Be careful which Latinos you call racist or 2012, when white-people concentration camps are implemented, might be a bad year for you. Frank's got his pass. So does my wife and three members of her family.

Seriously, race is still a sensitive discussion in this country. But it needs to be addressed, as you've so eagerly proved by belly-flopping into a conversation about a Jim Crow throwback (which is illegal, by the by) and our understandings of what racism is.

October 16 at 10:19am

RB: My wife clearly demonstrated that she did not agree with the judge's statement, she was merely pointing out a different aspect of the discussion that is often overlooked. What most people fail to recognize, and are all too eager to jump on the "racist" name-calling bandwagon, is that race and culture are often interchangeable in discussion.

For example, my "culture" does not support wealth redistribution, abortion, homosexuality, child sacrifice, cannibalism, extramarital sex... the list goes on and on. Many cultures support things I would never consider mixing with my culture, especially when it involves marriage.

There are clear differences in cultures, and often times, those cultures are closely related to race. Honestly, I don't care what race anyone is. I abhor the culture of Islam, but one of my heroes is a Christian American of Lebanese Muslim descent. I don't think we should be getting into race debates at all, but culture debates... absolutely!

For the record, I follow current events very closely and I knew about La Raza long before the racist Sotomayor was in the news.

October 16 at 10:43am

Al Rodriguez I think your strong sense of personal identity is awesome, BL [another commentator].

As you can see above, there are major misunderstandings of race, culture, civil rights (and groups protecting them like La Raza) and hate. I never accused EB of anything, but RB feels compelled to explain a muddled and ultimately unfounded position on race and culture, that I hope he is overstating on EB's part.

Unfortunately understanding the issues at stake in the race discussion can't happen in a church, because they are bigger than the Church. It's sad that there are more RBs than BLs who are educated in culture through their churches (and don't forget conservative media) who haven't critically challenged what they've learned and done major soul searching about issues of race. Their definitions are rock solid and unchangeable. Whereas the actual sciences that look at race and culture are constantly changing and getting better, more refined. RB, take two classes, sociology and anthropology and then get back to me.

October 16 at 11:45am

EB: RB chose to bow out of this discussion. Not because he is wrong, but probably because he is not going to argue with someone who is unwilling to hear another side. All my life I heard the saying, "I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with facts." That seems to be the theme running through this thread. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks because everyone has their own perspective. RB is very knowledgable on this subject, trust me. He just has a different opinion than you. That doesn't make him wrong. I don't think he's wrong. A LOT of people don't think he's wrong. But that doesn't matter to those who have made up their minds. Therefore, I think I can speak for him as well as myself when I say that I am done with this conversation.

Sun at 12:50am

Well, EB and RB are both wrong: I am willing to hear another side; facts enlighten, not confuse; and most importantly, "race" and "culture" are not interchangeable words in this or any discussion. Also, for the record, prior to RB's belly flop, I never mentioned the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) or President Obama. No one did.

The fact that RB would define the NCLR, an advocacy group that has absolutely no history of unashamed racism (though mind you some of its membership and even boards past and present may be racist) is appalling. By RB's definition, any group that provides legal services to minorities, housing assistance to minorities, social services to minorities, etc... is racist. Never mind that the NCLR, in its height of government funding, provided services to anyone who came to them regardless of race OR culture.

Which brings us to the present:

Here is an article that flew under the radar, while I was dealing with the B. family's racist denials. It is about a four member group of U.S. Congress persons who are charging that the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamic-American advocacy group, is attempting to infiltrate Congress and influence major American legislation with the eventual goal of turning the U.S. to Sharia (Islamic) law. FYI, this is exactly the goal of "Third Wave" Christianity, stated as such, and they aren't just stopping at America, but that's a WHOLE other topic.

Unfortunately, as is usually the case with Faux News, we can't always believe what we see at first pass. One might think that the four Congress members are heroes and the CAIR rep. is a smug, crafty conspirator. Fox doesn't say as much, but... c'mon.

Here's what the Fair and Balanced News doesn't tell you:

• The full title of the book is Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that's Conspiring to Islamize America ... an underworld that comprises all of two sitting Congress members, an insignificant number of interns (who'd haven't much influence anyway, and CAIR memo that hopes to, "focus on influencing congressmen responsible for policy that directly impacts the American Muslim community." The devils!

• The book is co-authored by P. David Gaubatz, a former civilian agent, working for the USAF Special Investigations who claimed to have found Saddam's WMD cache, called President Obama a "crack head," writing "a vote for Hussein Obama is a vote for Sharia Law." This unstable individual has proudly touted his report in which he maps every mosque and Islamic school in America. You know... just in case.

• The foreword was written by... Sue Myrick! Yes, one of the Congress members who held the press conference, where they call for the Sergeant at Arms to investigate Muslim Congressional interns has a writing credit in her reference material. She investigated it. She wrote about it. So it must be true.

• The Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. Congress has not received a formal request to investigate neither Jack nor Squat. This, to me, is the saddest part of the deal. I can handle racism and xenophobia, because it’s no different than I’ve already experienced, even though I keep expecting not to see it any more. I can handle unhinged people writing unhinged books that blame all their kampfs on someone else. World history is littered with books that for better or worse change the social and political landscape. Shame on us were we to let this pap affect how we relate to Muslim Americans or choose our Congressional interns. But to make show of a book published by WorldNET Daily... to say the things each Congress member said in that press conference... to align yourself with ignorance and hate and not DO ANYTHING about it... that’s just fear-mongering. That’s just race baiting. That’s just playing to the passions of what you expect to be an equally uninformed and unhinged populace as you.

As far as we’ve come in race relations in this country, we have further yet to go. Some people might read this and think that religion and race aren’t interchangeable terms, like culture and race aren’t interchangeable. And they’re not. I agree with that. But we, culturally, tend to treat them the same and allow our aversions to dictate how we act towards them: race, religion and culture. Our attitudes toward race, religion and culture are shaped without much, if any, information and if either doesn’t fit a pre-described set of norms, we aren’t very nice. We need to stop turning a blind eye to racism and focus on it, removing our behaviors influenced by our biases. We need to vote jackasses like Congressmen Shadegg, Broun, Myrick and Trent Franks the hell out of office and replace them with more forward thinking people who are willing to represent ALL Americans and not just those that looks and think like they do.