John McCain has not evolved

I was born one month and five days after the assasination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Whenever I think about this fact, I imagine my mother, eight months pregnant with her first child, watching the world of civil rights change right before her eyes. The feelings of devastation my parents must have felt losing the man that everyone had put so much love, trust, admiration and confidence in to move the world past the turbulant times it had been experiencing.

Forty years later, admittedly, things have changed for the better. My children have never had to battle racism straight on. We moved them to a "good" community and put them in "safe" schools. Not only do we teach them tolerance for children of other races, children with disabilities, children of other religions, we actually teach then about those races and disabilities and religions so that they understand; so that they learn to empathize rather than sympathize.

And for the first time in history, we had a viable contender of African descent being considered for the Presidency of the United States. He isn't a fluke or a token or a red herring. He's the Real Deal and he could actually win! He's a regular guy; a very smart man with a good heart. And yet people are still considering John McCain for this country's highest office. Also smart and I'm sure he also has a good heart. But he's old-school. His heart is still telling him that Blacks are not yet equal, not really.

And the funny thing is that when you get to "know" Barack Obama, when you hear the things that he has to say and read the things that he is trying to teach us, you realize that his ethnic background doesn't really matter, aside from the fact that it molded him into the man that he has become. It's his heart that matters. Can we say the same about McCain?

Click on the title above to visit ColorOfChange.org and read about John McCain's voting record regarding civil rights in this country. See what his heart is telling you.