Who said racism is dead in America?

Post racial America is NOT post racial.  Racism is very much alive and well in America.  In small rural North Carolina’s Camden County a public school teacher’s bucket list is to kill all black people.  Math teacher Cynthia Ramsey works in a local high school and her remarks were directed towards students old enough to understand their implications.

It doesn’t end there…..Americans are xenophobic to the extent they can’t even tolerate hearing someone speaking a language other than English even though a person might not be talking to them.  Back in the day of my youth, speaking another language other than your mother’s tongue meant you had a degree of education that set you apart.  Indeed, learning a second language was a part of the public school education’s curriculum but no longer it seems. It probably didn’t help Asma Jama that much that she was a person of color who looked different….i.e. wore a head scarf and was clearly identifiable as a Muslim.  America doesn’t like nor tolerate Muslims either and especially those who talk to one another in language the average American can’t understand.  It could very well be they are planning some act of terrorism, perhaps?

Jodie Burchard-Risch, 43, and her husband had been sitting in the booth next to Jama, who was with her cousins and nieces. The couple became upset when they heard Jama and her family conversing in a foreign language, according to a criminal complaint.

Jama said the couple told them to “go home.” They said that “when you’re in America you should speak English.”

Jama, an ethnic Somali, came to Minnesota in 2000 from Kenya. She speaks three languages: English, Swahili and Somali.

“I’m home,” she told Burchard-Risch at the Applebee’s. “I can speak English, but we choose to speak whatever language we want.”

Authorities say that’s when Burchard-Risch hit Jama in the face with the glass mug.

….and in case you’re wondering if you click on the link detailing this story you can hear Jama speaking English in describing what happened to her better than 90% of Americans.