New Years Thoughts

Bill Moyers had the author Thomas Cahill on his show a while back. One of the questions he asked was what Cahill would focus on if he were alive in a thousand years and wanted to tell folks about the early 21st century. He responded by saying that in this society we have a shared nightmare and a shared dream. I can't recall what he said the dream is, but his discussion of our shared nightmare gave me food for thought. He said our shared nightmare is racism, and he gave examples like our slaughter of American Indians, enslavement of Africans, and bombing of the Japanese.
As a New Yorker I'd like to think that life here is a celebration of diversity and it is to a certain extent. It's also a hotbed of racial tension that you don't necessarily see in the paper but you do see if you look close enough to everyday interactions. But racism doesn't just involve whites, we're all guilty of racism whether it's a simple thought or unconscious action and we can all do ourselves some good by thinking about our own racist feelings. It's just too bad that we don't think about it enough. Happy New Year.