Teaching people how to be different

Insensitivity seems to be a rampant problem in America these days. Everywhere you look you see diversity classes and sensitivity training and harassment seminars. The problem is that there is a real difference between everyday behavior and things that are actually harassment. While I would be foolish if I didn't acknowledge that black people are superficially different from white people, the difference is, metaphorically, skin deep. Most people do not need to go to sensitivity training, and most people SHOULDN'T have to. Sane, rational people know what is too far. Sensitivity training cripples people who go through it. Men have to constantly second guess themselves around women, white folks worry about every word they say for fear that it might upset a "minority". What's worse, it makes women and minorities overly sensitive about the enviroment they work in. When it gets to the point that you cannot even tell a joke, it has gone too far.

"How many blonds does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Five, one to hold the lightbulb, four to hold up and turn the blond."

Is that really worth a lawsuit? Of course not. The problem is that people ten to be guillible, and they eventually end up believing the message. So men and women all over the country are tricked into thinking they are different, and that they are too weak to stand up for themselves if they are offended. It's so easy to take a little personal responsibility and either say "Hey, y'mind?" or better yet, learn to laugh at yourself a little. It does us all a lot of good not to take ourselves too seriously. To demand that a certain class of people cannot say or do certain things because of their genitals or the color of their skin is rediculous, a complete mockery of what this country stands for.

What ever happened to "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it?"

What is not alright is the systematic abuse of a person or class of people based on a percieved difference that ends up being merely cosmetic, or in some cases, imaginary. Sensetivity training isn't, however, the only way people learn to put people into groups. Pride days, history months, diversity weeks, all of them celebrate the "differences" between us. For me to say to the black man sitting next to me, "You are different than I am so I will devote a month to saying you are special because you are black" is emphasizing a trivial difference between us. It would be much better to celebrate the fact that we are all thinking, caring human beings; because that is what matters, not the color of our skin, the shape of our face, or the cultures we come from. We are people, and we can rise above that to work together to accomplish truely spectacular things. People should be judged by their actions, not by their features or their beliefs. People who are actually violent because of a percieved difference, whether physically, socially, or mentally, are the worst kind of scum. It falls to us, the regular people, of whatever sex or race, to show the bigots of the world that they are wrong. The way we do this is by acting like a community, a whole, rather than a lump of disparate minorities.