The End of White Civilization

A politician in Poland said that Barack's election to the office of president is the "end of white civilization". Maybe he's right. For the last few hundred years we've been obsessed with racial and ethnic classifications as a way of assigning humanity to one another. Perhaps Barack Obama's victory is the end of white civilization and the beginning of human civilization.

Race and culture are significant factors in our everyday lives. We cannot pretend that they do not exist. However our species has managed to figure out how to bring people of different ethnic backgrounds together to form nations and international groups that work towards the betterment of the human condition. It was only 60 years ago that Europe was tearing itself apart over ethnic tension, going so far as to build factories to massacre Jews and Gypsies. Today a union exists that forges numerous nations and ethnic groups together in that continent.

There is definitely some backlash among cultural throwbacks that see race or ethnicity as more important than our shared humanity. And the world as they see it, as divided into white civilization, black civilization, or Asians civilization is collapsing. The end is neigh for the racist worldview. But human civilization is just blossoming. Shared belief in common human rights, in pushing the next generation higher than we can go, in being humane to one another, is on the rise. So the racist are right to fear the election of Obama and his counterparts all across the world. Because the era of tribal infighting within our species is coming to an end, as is our use for bigots who stoke hatred among us.

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