"What is your ethnic background?"

[Micjones]

Originally Posted by Raiderhader

I did not mean to suggest that you responded with inflammatory comments, I was trying to avoid any confusion about my own words, seeing as how it could be taken as the old "love it or leave it" remark that tends to send reasonable discusions spiraling down the drain.

Understood.

How is it divisive? Gee, I don't know, we have minorities who say they want equality, who say skin color makes no difference, yet they insist on proclaiming themselves as being different from everyone else when they refuse to just simply say American.

In my experience minorities have never been interested in obscuring their differences entirely. They simply don't want to be judged by them.

Again, I think you're asking an awful lot of ANY group of people who have been stripped of their culture when you suggest they abandon what's left of their heritage to embrace Americana in all its glory (which in many ways has contributed to what they lack culturally).

Do you want to be thought of as equals, or do you want to be thought of as different.

The labeling itself doesn't determine equality, but many conditions in American society do. And until those issues have been addressed people will continue to preserve their own culture in whatever ways they deem appropriate and necessary.

Someone constantly reminding everyone that they are "different" is not going to speed along the equal rights movement by any means.

And with all due respect, neither is pretending that there aren't still obstacles that threaten the very equality of which you speak.