I was thinking about racism in America and how we hear the complaints that America is racist, but we rarely hear solutions.

The same tactic is being used with COVID-19.  What happened when somebody tested positive?  Such people were sent home and told to stay away from other people.  They were not given a treatment plan.

I have said before and am more convinced now than ever that this is part of the larger plan to divide us.  The ultimate goal of that plan is to have complete control over us.

You may say there is a plan to combat racism because of the laws that require minorities to be considered or to be given special opportunities.  You might say that quarantining someone who tested positive is preventing others from becoming infected, which in some weird way is a plan.  But neither of those is a plan to end racism or stop COVID-19.  By using race as a determining factor in hiring decisions, we are extending racism.  By not treating people with existing drugs or holistic modalities, we have extended the life and run of COVID-19.

We know from history that tyranny can take hold by spreading fear and hatred.  Its method is to get the citizens to be suspicious or hateful of someone who might be different in some way.  You can pick the demographic characteristic that you want to target.  It has been done along religious, ethnic, sex-based, economic, and many other lines in history.

History also tells us that no matter which laws are put into place to discriminate against certain groups, people of that group can still succeed.  The so-called "black Wall Street" in Oklahoma was one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in America if not the world despite state laws that promoted segregation and discrimination against blacks.  Harlem was similarly an upper-middle-class neighborhood at the time when slavery and discrimination were legal.  This did not happen because white people allowed it to happen; it happened because people in those communities refused to comply with the ultimate goal of those biased, racist laws.

People in those communities live by the principles upon which this nation was founded.  They decided they were going to take care of themselves and their families by working hard, taking advantage of the opportunities that were still available to them, and overcoming the obstacles to build the life that they wanted.  I will argue that the racists saw this and have changed their tactics over the years.

I would also argue that the tactics taken by the racists today are to teach everyone that minorities or other groups are victims, incapable of succeeding on their own because of the roadblocks put in their way.  That white people control everything that would allow them to succeed on their own and white people must ordain them to succeed.  How else do you explain people like Oprah Winfrey, LeBron James, or any number of other ultra-rich, ultra-successful black people?  If America has truly stacked the deck against them so they cannot succeed, it must have been white people who ordained them and allowed them to succeed.

So how do we end the racism and division being sown upon America?  Familiarity is one way.  By not allowing ourselves to be segregated along arbitrary demographic lines, we would find out what we already know: that each of us regardless, of our backgrounds, wants the same things.  We want an opportunity to build a better life for ourselves and our families as well as our communities and nation.  We want to be free to make our own choices, to live our lives in the way that we desire, and not to hate people because they are different from us.

We must also place expectations upon each other that we will live by these principles.  It does not matter what you are; it matters who you are.  If you are willing to live by the principles of self-determination, individual responsibility, and a belief in freedom for everyone, then we will help you succeed.  We will also understand that those demographic characteristics over which none of us has any control mean little to who we are as individuals, families, communities, or a nation.  It is not the color of our skin, our sex, or our physical characteristics that unite us as a community.  It is our shared beliefs as expressed in the founding documents of this country that make us a great nation.

It is up to each of us to reject the narrative of the political elite and those who support it in any way.  It is up to each of us to live our lives as free people.  It is up to us to see each other through the prism of actions and character, rather than anything else.  That is not only how we minimize racism and bigotry, but it's also the way we reduce the power of those that would seek to control us.  This is as true of racism as it is of COVID.

Michael Rowse writes regularly for the regional website, The Grant County Beat, in New Mexico.

Image: Pixabay, Pixabay License.