[Haunted]

The thing that affects minorities today isn't so much racial as socio-economic. For instance, if we look at the Civil Rights movement as the mechanism to help minorities (in this case, mostly black minorities) assimilate into the career world and elevate in that infrastructure we're going to see some lag. It's only been forty or so odd years since the Civil Rights movement. People have had a hard time advancing in the professional world.

If you want to look at Latinos then we have a different situation. In the late 1800's and early 1900's we had a mass immigration of Italian and other eastern European nationalities. They didn't come to America speaking English. People thought they were dirty and ignorant. So, they could only advance so far in the working world, and we're talking about inner cities. Over time, they've become part of American culture. It took over a hundred years, though.

The big group that part of my family is actually apart of are the Native Americans. They DON'T WANT to assimilate. They want to maintain their own culture without much interferance. You may say, "Yeah, but Haunted, what about the casinos?" Many Native American groups don't want to be associated with those casinos. Those casinos were an act of desperation. It's very ridiculous and very sad the conditions that many Native Americans live in as they are forced to sort of be a tourist attraction or novelty.

However, they've got several programs and various efforts to reestablish their heritage and work toward the betterment of their people.

As for racism itself: There's no excuse for it. In fact, there is no such thing as race. It's ethnicity. By and large human beings are biologically identical. We've developed skin colorations and hair textures for adaptive purposes. Race indicates different types of humans, which there aren't any.