Discrimination of one race against another should have by now been confined to history books, to the ignorance of the past.

There is no denying that, during the pre-scientific era when it was either not possible or difficult for one race to interact or even communicate with another, there were mutual suspicions and fairy-tales told about different races. Some of these stories were scaring and so formed basis for distrust. Allow me to cite a couple of examples here. First, I can still recall one of my classmates in 1982 telling me that while he was in grade school, one of his class-mates was brought to the principal for fighting in the rest room with his Caucasian class-mate. The child had wanted to see his tail, since he was told by his parents that people of African descent had tails like monkeys.

Second, I remember something that happened to me in 1985 during my post graduate studies in Rome. When I was going to help out in a parish at Easter celebration, some of the children who had obviously never seen any person of my brown complexion, came over following the celebration. They talked with me, and held and examined my hands to see if there would be any mark from my hands left in theirs. These two stories from different settings indicate the willingness of children, in their innocence, to step out from their enclosure to look for facts, not just the fairy tales they are saddled with. The question here is this: if children can embark on this fact- finding strategy, why should adults prefer to remain comfortable in their ignorance rather than recognizing the fact that, just as there are varieties of things to make life much more meaningful, so are there people from different races created by God, differing in size, charisma, colors or complexions, or any other endowments. Besides this, in this contemporary global village of ours, where all means of knowledge is made available for those who care to know, it has become obvious that the worth of any human being does not depend on which part of the globe the individual was born or on his/her complexion but the type of human being, good or bad he/she chooses to be.

AMERICAN Background Check: There is no justification for anyone to be a Racist

In this country, we know that before someone is hired for any reasonable job background check is of utmost importance. In this context, we are going to examine the background check not of individuals but of the country itself to show that there is no justification for someone to be a racist. Historically it is a well-known fact that the original inhabitants, the owners of this land are the Indian Americans (Native Americans) who, initially happily welcomed immigrants from Europe and helped them to settle and cultivate the land. Unfortunately they were gradually sidelined by the very guests who, through technology had access to weapons with which the Native Americans were pushed aside and consequently confined to a small section of the country. They were considered too primitive to be allowed to mingle with the "enlightened or civilized Europeans". The Obama's administration is now realistically incorporating their culture into the mainstream of this country. For example in 2013, Obama appointed a Native American woman to serve as federal judge.

There is no doubt that the fertility of the land brought about the negative and long standing injustice of the American enslavement of the unfortunate Africans brought in chains into this country. Beginning in the 16th century, Africans were brought to cultivate the land for the Caucasians, since they were naturally endowed with strength with which to till the ground and conquer it (Gen. 1: 28). Before delving into how African-Americans were actually brought and forced into the country as slaves, it is important to briefly examine how the immigrants from Europe first kept Native Americans as slaves.

Conflicts of the European immigrants with the Native - Americans

From the end of the 15th century, the emigration of those of European extraction to the Americas led to centuries of conflicts and adjustment periods between the immigrants and the natives. Many Native Americans lived as hunter gatherer societies and preserved their history in oral tradition and artwork. Therefore the first written accounts of conflict were authored by European immigrants. As would be expected, the indigenous cultures were quite different from those of proto-industrial immigrants. These differences, along with the shifting alliances among different nations at the time caused extensive political tension, ethnic violence and social disruption.

Following the revolt of the then colonies against Britain, President George Washington and Henry Knox conceived the idea of "civilizing" Native Americans in preparation for assimilation as US citizens either voluntarily-- as with Choctaw-- or by force. The expansion of the European American populations to the west following the American revolution resulted in increased pressure on Native American lands, warfare between groups and rising tensions. In 1830 the US congress passed the Indian Removal Act authorizing the government to relocate Native Americans from their own lands within the established states to lands west of the Mississippi River to accommodate the European American expansion. This led to the near genocide of many tribes, with brutally forced marches known as the trial...