Watch this video and then let’s talk.

Some questions:

• What if a white man and a black man both agree on something that I strongly disagree with? If I express my disagreement with the white man but not the black man, isn’t THAT racism? Am I treating the person who is different than me as someone less than me because I won’t disagree with him/her?

• Am I only permitted to express disagreement with people who look like me? How far will we carry this thinking? If we carry it to its extremes I’m in trouble since I live in a house filled with the opposite sex! Will I be allowed to disagree with the opposite sex without being called “sexist”?

I am deeply troubled by this increasingly popular commentary – “If you disagree with someone of a different race, and you express those disagreements, you must be a racist.”

I believe in racial equality, and my belief in racial equality has a theological underpinning.

If you trace our family tree all the way back the beginning (assuming you embrace the idea that we were created by God) this is what you find:

• Adam named his wife Eve, because she would be the mother of all people everywhere. (Genesis 3:20)
• From one man [Adam] He [God] created all the nations throughout the whole earth. (Acts 17:26)

Mr. President, if we were to trace our family tree back to its roots… we’d all be at the same family reunion.

So, if we look to the past, we find that we’re connected… all of us… red and yellow, black and white.

Secondly, if you look to the future you will see this, (St. John’s vision of Heaven):

• I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.  10 And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”  11 All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God (Revelation 7:9-11)

All races come from a common heritage and all races will end up side by side before God, our Creator. We have much in common Mr. President. We are all human. Sure there are differences among us but there are more fundamental commonalities than there are fundamental differences.

I resent you labeling me and anyone else that disagrees with another human as a racist. I respect my President, though I do not always agree with him. I respect him enough to treat him just like I would a white man, or a yellow man, or an old man, or a poor man, or a woman of any economic or racial status.

Mr. President, you are wrong on this. I think you owe our President an apology for assuming that people don’t like him because of his color rather than the content of his ideas AND I believe you owe the public an apology for pejoratively labeling millions of people as racist.

We’re waiting Mr. President.