Race for Freedom

To put America in perspective from the point of view of someone who came from the human gumbo that is my native state of Louisiana, my family member range in skin color from eggplant to cauliflower, so I have been blessed by virtue of the Creole exposure with an outlook on race in America that needs to be re-examined. The subject has been talked at - not about, but AT - a good many times, and there have emerged well-intentioned statements like: There’s only one Race, the HUMAN RACE. That statement is true. We are a race of humanity, but there is no denying that regardless of how we try to spin it, ever since the fall of the Biblical Tower of Babel, Earth’s people have acknowledged a distinction in themselves.
I was born in 1956 in Shreveport, Louisiana, in a hospital called Confederate Memorial, at a time when colored people did indeed have a distinct place. I would grow to experience riding at the back of public buses, drinking from colored and white water fountains, and going to wh