As someone who lived abroad for more than 20 years during my diplomatic career, I can't tell you how happy my late wife, Consuelo, and I were every time we returned to the U.S. from wherever we were stationed, even from nice places like Madrid, Spain and Canberra, Australia.
So as I watched the Mills Park fireworks last Saturday night and celebrated the birth of our extraordinary country with my fellow Americans, I thought about those few embittered citizens who weren't celebrating — those who were denigrating our great country and turning their collective backs on the American Flag. I wondered how many of those angry, bitter Americans had lived overseas or served in the armed forces.
Writing in “The Hill” last week, former award-winning CBS reporter/producer Bernard Goldberg wrote about “elites on the hard left” who hate America and see the rest of us, especially white people, as “racist, sexist, homophobic, and hostile to anyone who isn't as decent as they believe themselves to be.” Those “progressive” elites would include people who write nasty letters to the editor every time I discuss race relations because, as an old white guy, I'm a racist by definition. Little do they know.
They may not know that I was married for more than 40 years to a beautiful, intelligent Mexican woman who became a proud American citizen so that I could join the U.S. Foreign Service, and they probably don't know about my beautiful, intelligent Mexican- American daughter and my brilliant Mexican - American twin grandsons, who turn 17 on Monday, all three of whom are “people of color” in the current jargon.
I tell personal stories when someone calls me a racist because I don't believe people should be stereotyped on the basis of their age, ethnicity, religion, skin color, sexual preference or anything else. As the late, great Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. told us during the historic 1963 March on Washington, people should be judged on the content of their character and not on the color of their skin. Amen!
I never tire of writing that line because it embodies how I feel about race relations. You may get tired of my race relations columns, but I always feel good when I write them because they express my feelings about enduring American values I've defended and promoted throughout my entire adult life -- values related to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
When I write about race relations I write for departed colleagues and friends like my good buddy Bobby Thomas, a black trumpet player from Philadelphia turned Foreign Service officer. We used to watch “All in the Family” together in Mexico City and laugh like crazy people.
And I write for the only black officer in my Air Force squadron, Capt. Clarence “Jack” Peoples, my Klamath Falls, Oregon, roommate who lost his life when he punched out of the back seat of a supersonic F-101B “Voodoo” on a dark night off the coast of Northern California. Jack, an outstanding student and gifted athlete, had been student body president at North Carolina A&T. He died much too soon.
So those are some of my thoughts when people accuse me of being a racist, or when those who hate our country disrespect the American Flag. Bernie Goldberg asked the right question: “Why would so many Latinos want to come to a country that supposedly has so little respect for minorities?” Why aren't those folks headed for China, Cuba, Russia or Venezuela? Neil Diamond sang that story, “They're coming to America.” Yes they are, in droves, and we welcome those who love America, as we do.
Guy W. Farmer is the Appeal's senior political columnist.
