It took one African American woman, Rosa Parks, to put a fire under the Civil Rights movement.

And now, it has taken another African American woman, Shirley Sherrod, to get America to come face to face with some sad but true facts about where we are as a nation when it comes to race.

The debacle all started when Ben Jealous had the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) draw up a resolution denouncing the “racist elements” of the Tea Party. The Tea Party shot back that the entire NAACP was racist, and then, Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams did a tasteless “satire” in which Ben Jealous writes President Abraham Lincoln wondering what “us coloreds” would do since we were being expected to take care of ourselves.

Some people were incensed by the all-too-dreaded “race card” being played, and got very defensive. BigGovernment.com then comes to the rescue of accused white racists by playing a snippet of a speech given by Shirley Sherrod in which it appeared that she had discriminated against a white person simply because he was white.

Ah! The die were cast! The NAACP was beholden, said many, to decry racism among black people! This woman was clearly racist! Bill O’Reilly of Fox News went on a predictable rampage, calling for Sherrod’s resignation! The story had not been verified, mind you. O’Reilly merely went on the strength of the video clip.

But O’Reilly and Fox News were not the only ones. The White House apparently called Ms. Sherrod three times, according to her account, pressuring her to resign, and, adding insult to injury, Ben Jealous excoriated her as well. Nobody had bothered to check into the validity of the story, in spite of the fact that doing so is journalistic protocol.

It was knee-jerk politics. Everybody, not in the least the White House, is looking at the 2012 elections. Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of “the race question.” The White House didn’t want to look “soft” on racism, and neither did the NAACP.

Meanwhile, Shirley Sherrod, whose father was murdered by the Klan, and who decided the night he died that she would stay in the South to help bring about change, swallowed her shock and began to protest, loudly. Someone would hear her. She might lose her job, but, by golly, the world was going to know what really happened.

And so she talked. With courage and class, she talked, just like Rosa Parks sat, with dignity and grace, in the front of a bus, determined that the craziness would stop, and just like Mamie Till demanded that her son’s casket be left open and photographers be allowed to take pictures of her butchered son, so that people would see what racism is.

It took a woman, in all three cases. It took an African American woman to put her foot down and say, “no more!”

The media, all day, has been acting and reacting in humility and shame, and, it seems, some surprise that such racism is still so rampant, in this, the era where America was supposed to be post-racial.

Mr. Obama is afraid to touch the race question. The Conservative Right has the president and the 2012 race by the neck, almost daring him to seem “too black.” The president has avoided race like the plague. The Right knows how sensitive the race question is, and is preparing its election strategies, as much as possible, on race. Everyone jumped because The Right put a false story involving race on television and acted like it was the gospel truth. Ms. Sherrod said today we have to stop being afraid of The Right. That would include the president …but, he’s in a tough place.

He is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t.

Meanwhile, Ms. Sherrod has confronted the Big World with an empty jar, a trumpet and a torch. She has confounded the opposition by being who she is and standing on Truth.

It took a woman, an African American woman.

That is … a candid observation.

America will never be “post-racial.”

When Barack Obama was elected president, so many people whom I would have thought had better sense said that America was now “post racial.” The election of an African American proved it.

Yes, it was nice and all, and I am sure many white people were nervously patting themselves on the back, saying, “I did it. I voted for a black man.” That meant to them, I would suppose, that they had transcended their racism.

But America’s racism is America’s thorn. It is deep-seated and it has metastasized. It permeates everything that happens here. It affects not only African Americans, but people of color, period.

When I was little, I used to ask, “What’s wrong with white people? Why are they so mean?”

As I get older, I have wondered, and have heard people say, “Why did God create white people, or at least why did and does God allow them to think as they do? C’mon God!!”

The new immigration law in Arizona, the law that now makes it no longer OK to teach ethnic studies in Arizona public schools, and now, the vote in Texas to rewrite American history, lifting up “American” ideals like free enterprise, and taking away important truths about the Civil War, for starters, is the truth to my statement that America will never be post racial.

Karen Armstrong, prolific religious writer, says that fundamentalism erupts when people feel threatened, when they fear that what they have always known will be taken away.

I have come to the conclusion that there is religious fundamentalism, but there is racial fundamentalism as well, in America for sure, and probably throughout the world.

When Tea Party members say they want their country back, what they are saying is that they want the “good ol’ days” when white people had almost absolute power, when there was no way paved for people of color to get onto the playing field, and when it was all justified by God. What they want “back” is a time when people of color knew their “place” and stayed there.

That reality seems to be unraveling before their very eyes, and they are frightened and angry.

Now, to add insult to injury, there is a man named Rand Paul in Kentucky, who, among other things, thinks private businesses ought to be allowed to not serve black people if they want. Big business, according to him and probably scores of others, has done much to erode the rights of white people.

And to add a hit to that injury, the folks in Texas want to teach kids that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War. One woman said the cause of the war was a dispute over states’ rights. Right. It was … because states wanted the right to have slaves, and too many people, including people in the federal government, were saying that slavery were wrong.

The special on CNN on what people are teach their children about race was revealing. Little black kids and little white kids still think that black people are bad. They are getting that message from we adults who have not been healed. And when sick people teach children, they become sick children who become sick adults.

There was an interesting episode on “Law and Order.” An avowed racist shot a black man to death who he thought had taken “his” cab. The white man felt no remorse; he felt that black people, and Muslims, and whomever .. were bad people and were out to hurt white people. His attorney created an interesting defense: to be racist was to be mentally ill.

It was a cop out defense. It made me sick. The racist was convicted but the episode, coupled with all I see and hear, made me come up with my belief that America will never be post racial.

We have never dealt with our illness, our thorn, and we are now becoming even more infected.

Racism is America’s thorn.

That is a candid observation.

I do not understand.

A white police officer in Philadelphia shoots himself but puts out the story that he was shot by an African American male who was dark skinned with braided hair and a tatoo on his face.

In Arizona, there has been not only a controversial and divisive immigration law passed,but now a law has been passed which prohibits ethnic studies in Arizona public schools.

In an interview on CNN, anchor Ali Veshi said that the law was aiming at stopping courses that promoted “overthrow of the American government.”

I do not understand.

Well, maybe I do. I remember author Karen Armstrong saying that fundamentalism always raises up when that with which people are familiar, or that which people know, begins to change, or changes too much.

She was talking about fundamentalism in religion, but could it be that there is a sociological or societal fundamentalism as well?

When Tea Party members say they “want their country back,” are they rebelling against a nation which has changed too much?

This is a new day, for sure. The days of America being a country ruled and controlled primarily by white men is over. The days of the dominant population of this nation being white Anglo Saxon Protestant are also over, and, presumably, so is all that that domination meant.

That has to be scary for the dominant group and maybe scary for others, too. African Americans are no longer the largest minority ethnic group in the United States, and, if human nature may safely be predicted, I would assume that we will see the historically oppressed oppress the new majority.

I see the bigotry coming up out of the pores of America’s skin. There is some concern that the United States Supreme Court will have no Protestants for the first time in its history. CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, introducing a story on President Obama’s newest nominee for court, Elena Kagan, said, “There are only Catholics and Jews on the court. What’s up with that?”

I winced when he said it because it didn’t sound complimentary, though I don’t think he meant any harm, but again, there is that sociological/society bigotry rising up.

The words being used, the laws being passed, the antics being carried out (as with the white cop in Philly who lied about being shot by an African American man) are not a good thing, not a good mix. One group of people are scared out of their wits that everything they have ever known is falling apart at the seams. Other groups are getting angrier and angrier at the scared group of people, who will act and react to their anger in fear and, probably, with violence.

It feels like we are in a bubbling cauldron, and it feels like it’s all about to spill over. Bigotry never cooks well, and when it spills over, its residue is hard and not easily removable.

We need to do something, and soon, before the bubbling cauldron spills its contents and we have a mess that we will never be able to clean up.

That would be a candid observation.

I guess I have been naive as concerns religion.

I say that because it has just hit me that, although there is but one God, there is no one theology. As many people as there are, there are that many different “theologies,” or belief about God.

I used to be confused, when I was little, because my mother taught us that God was good, and that God wanted us to love everybody and forgive everyone. She would say that even more as we saw people squirting water from fire hoses on innocent women and children, and allowing dogs to attack them.

I was confused, because it didn’t seem like this God that my mother had taught me about would be OK with that, and, with a little girl’s reasoning, I couldn’t understand why, if these people with the hoses and dogs were so mad, why didn’t they just pray to Jesus so they could forgive them? I didn’t yet understand racism.

As I have gotten older, I have become even more fiercely wedded to my belief that God is good, that God made everyone, that God loves everyone and that everyone is precious to God. I have grown more and more convicted of my belief that God didn’t make any mistakes, in terms of who God created.

But I have also finally come to understand that not everyone has that conception of God. I have come to understand that theology is subjective, not objective at all.

For some, it is OK to hate someone else, just because of his or her color, race, sexual orientation or religion … and still claim to love God completely. For some, it is even all right to kill someone of another race, color or religion. They believe that they are doing right in God’s eyes.

It blows me away. It’s like there are two Gods, or at least two.

We believers even read the Bible differently. While it is crystal clear to me that the Bible says we are to care for each other and do justice and hate oppression, not everyone agrees with that or sees that in the same Bible!

In my moments of frustration, I question God, and ask why He or She doesn’t fix it. Fix .. what? Fix the people who are obviously mistaken in my mind because they don’t see God like I do, nor do they understand what God wants according to the Bible as I understand it?

Sometimes, it feels like there might be less angst on my part if there were no religions. It would be a really nice thing if God would just make a visit to earth and set the record straight. But that record … would be things as I see them. If God were to come and do that, I mean, explain and interpret things as I do, would vast numbers of people reject Him or Her?

I wonder, if we got a group of “believers” in a room, how many different interpretations of The Lord’s Prayer or the Sermon on the Mount would emerge? How many different interpretations would emerge of the 10 commandments, or even THE definition of agape love?

I find it all very disconcerting. One God. One Jesus…and millions of different theologies.

That is a candid observation.

I am trying to understand.

When the health care reform bill passed, I wept, because, finally, scores of Americans would have access to health care. People with pre-existing conditions would be able to get health insurance. I wept because I have seen too many people suffering needlessly in this country, because they haven’t had access to health care.

I knew and know that the Republicans were mad as hell about the passage of the bill, but a friend of mine, heavily involved in politics, sought to clear my confusion about the reason for their anger. I asked him how anyone could be against millions of people now having access to health care.

“It’s not that,” he said. “They are upset about the cost.”

Oh.

Well, that’s good and all, but there’s a problem here, for me, one who struggles to understand why some things are as they are in this country. My friend reminded me that Republicans don’t like big government and big spending. I didn’t reply, and he could hear the question coming.

“Doesn’t the war in Iraq cost a lot of money?” I asked, “and the war in Afghanistan? Isn’t that government spending? Isn’t that big government?” And my friend said, “That’s different. We are fighting to defend our nation.”

“Well, isn’t making sure Americans are healthy a good move, too? I mean, why is it OK to spend money to kill people and not OK to spend money to protect rights of people here?” My friend got ready to say something, but I interrupted him. “Yes, I believe health care is a right.”

And it is right there that I am stuck. I am struggling to understand an ideology that says it’s OK to spend money to kill people and fight for democracy in other countries but it’s not OK to take care of Americans.

If it is a fact that the GOP is worried about the huge amount of money “our children” are going to have to pay, why haven’t we heard about that worry as it pertains to the money they will be paying back because of the war? I’ve never heard a peep about that expense. Our deficit was bumped up to this ridiculous level because of those wars…

Meanwhile, too many Americans still cannot get health care.

A businessman-friend of mine agreed, soberly, that the fight IS about money, and, more specifically, about the “bottom line” of insurance companies. “They are fighting to protect their profits,” he said, almost apologetically. “It’s sad, but it’s the truth.”

So, does that mean that when people say “I want my country back,” they are saying they want big business, which by definition will do anything to make a buck, to remain in control? Are they saying that to be a patriot means one has to support a government run by big business and big business concerns?

America likes to set itself up and aside as a role-model nation. We are the nation which treats people right. We are the nation that others should seek to shadow …

Really? How can that be true, when many, too many, people in America cannot get the health care they need because big business is running the show? I get absolutely livid when I think that some business person sitting at a desk can and does blithely decide what treatments I can get, and when, and that same business person decides that some people will just not be able to have treatment…UNLESS they go to an emergency room.

I guess the fact that those emergency room visits drive the costs up for all who have insurance doesn’t bother folks? It doesn’t seem to bother the GOP.

At its heart, this fight for health care reform is a social movement, a movement to protect the civil rights of Americans, and all social movement legislation has run into stiff resistance. Wanting the country back seems to want the country “back” to a state where injustice was the law of the land.

It’s a candid observation … and one, which is, frankly, very painful.