While the Chick-fil-a argument is turning everyone against each other, there are other, far more egregious, violations to human rights being committed. Somehow though, everyone wants to jump on the Chick-fil-a band wagon. It's easy to go buy a tasty fried chicken sandwich, post the photo proudly, and say you are politically active. It is even easier to take the opposite stance. You can simply abstain from spending your money there, post snarky photo's on Facebook and your hip and aware.
The Chick-fil-a debate has all but obscured anything else that is going on now. I am not saying to stop caring about it, I am simply saying that it has gone too far, and has snowballed into more of a social thing than a political/philosophical issue.
During my time as a student, I have heard countless times, "Why do we have to take diversity courses? It's 2012!" The other popular statement, and my favorite is, "Racism is over. Sexism is over. I don't need to waste three credit hours on this." Here's why we have to take diversity courses still, a "White Only" pool sign in Cincinnati, OH. We've heard little about this since late last year. The court proceedings began before the Ohio Civil Rights Commission administrative judge this Friday. For those just joining this issue, it goes something like this: a teenage African-American girl went to the pool one day to find a "white only" sign. No, this is not from the year 1960, it happened last year. The landlord who posted the sign tried to appeal this issue on the grounds that it was not the color of the skin that bothered her it was the hair products the girl used. She stated that it clouded the pool water. The first asinine aspect of this argument is that you could probably dump and entire jar of hair product in a pool and see little effect. It is a pool, not a bathtub. Second, "whites only" would hardly fix the issue if there was one. Anyone who knows me for example, knows that I have to apply an oily product to my hair everyday before straightening it. I also apply oil to my skin everyday. I am as white as it gets. Thirdly, if there was an issue, requiring everyone to shower before entering the pool (an extremely common requirement for public pools) would have fixed the entire problem and would not have singled out anyone. How did someone think a "white only" sign was acceptable? It takes a great disrespect for the rights of others to behave in such a manner.
While researching to write this post, I was further sickened by the number of "whites only" resources on the internet. Don't believe me? Go to Google, type "whites only" and a long list of suggestions pops up. "White only dating", "white only schools", "whites only.net" to name a few.
So while everyone is so proud of themselves for eating (or not eating) a chicken sandwich, this is what is going on in our back yard.
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