What is the Drop the Dash campaign really about?

This campaign "Drop the Dash" is about unity within our country. It is about:

• finding the common issues and concerns that we all care about.
• using these points to bring us all to the table to work them out.

Leave the arguments about who did what to whom when and why behind.

We have laws and policies that make it illegal to use race or ethnicity as a tool to hold any people down. These laws and policies are not a panacea to the effects of generational discrimination but it is up to the people - black, white, and brown - to make them work. As long as we keep trying to affix blame and/or claim victimhood, we will keep going around in circles.

Meanwhile, the next generation of Americans end up learning how to get on the same ride and it extends itself for another round.

Stop the rollercoaster ride.

Get off.

Step away and see what we are doing wrong.

We all contribute to the problem and we all know the solution. We just need to do what's right because its the right thing to do.

Accept that America's history has both good and bad chapters...Accept that, as a country, we have matured through many of the growing pains any country embracing varied ethnicities and races will experience. We did this without tearing ourselves down or apart.

So what do we do now?

• We need to all acknowledge the socio-economic divisions are more valid than any based on dominant genes.
• We need to try to understand why people do not rise above their birth status even when the building blocks to do so are readily available to the masses.
• We need to turn down all the over-sensitivity that keeps people from sharing their true feelings. You should be able to talk about racial issues without being labeled a racist just because you are not the race with the issues being discussed.

I am not condoning or encouraging field day against minorities with racial epithets and such.

There is a THICK line between talking racial and being a racist.

We all know it but we are scared to give an inch for fear lynchings and blaxploitation will return.

Be for-real people.

We are Americans and the vast majority of Americans will never allow our country to return to the ways of the wacko segregationists or even the radical black nationalists.

What do we know that needs to be said out loud?

• We know environments affect your being more than your skin color.
• We know public policies that diminish the individual's fire to achieve can infect entire socio-economic classes and extend the expectation of entitlements to another generation.
• We know some people want to get away from the cycle of destitution and others are okay with living their entire lives this way.
• We know education is the surest way out of the trailer park or ghetto but we also know many people in those environments don't see it that way.

My campaign is about trying to bring those of us who want to be together....together. It may mean some get left out or left behind. At some point, this is just a neccessary evil.

I believe the true Americans are those who want to contribute to America and get what they work for.

I believe this is what all my ancestors wanted to accomplish for their descendents in this country.

I believe they all wanted me to see myself as an American.

I believe they all expected me to call myself an American...regardless of which ethnicity dominated my external appearance.