First of all, I'm not talking about "being American".  America is composed of many cultures, and it doesn't matter if the right wing doesn't want to acknowledge that.

Midwestern American culture*, which is the culture in which I was raised, is unique in the world, although it may dominate our country for now.  Yes, it's predominantly white because mostly whites live there, but there are a lot of blacks and even hispanics who identify themselves as members of that culture.  To not consider them as being members of that culture or to exclude them from membership in that culture because of their skin color, which is what you are doing, is racist.

When I go to LA, on the other hand, I sometimes feel like a fish out of water.  When I was younger I wondered why my cousins, who are third-generation residents of the area, were acting "black", until I learned that they weren't acting, and their skin color was irrelevant to what they thought was "normal" behavior.

Of course, my cousins who's families have lived in Alabama for seven generations are right-wing idiots lacking any ethics whatsoever, but that's a feature of that whites-only culture.  I despise their behavior as much as the behavior of people who seek to promote a blacks-only culture.

Equating culture with race is not only immoral, it's also a good way to get people killed.

I agree that there are many residents of this country who do not "feel like" Americans and that a universal feeling that "We are all Americans" might not be a realistic goal to strive for.  Hell, racial equality might not be a realistic goal.  But I'm not talking about being American.  I'm not talking about assimilating cultures, which happens no matter what we do -- I think that in a hundred years, my culture will be a minority culture on this continent.

I'm talking about reducing strife by ignoring skin color.

There are things that I don't like about some cultures.  Ludefisk, for instance, is an abomination unto God, and it's a wonder to me that more people don't get killed in crashes at polka dances.  But that has nothing to do with skin color.  Black polka dancers -- and I've seen them -- are just as dangerous as white polka dancers.

And I agree that Black History Month may have had an empowering effect for blacks, although I don't understand how people can think that power can be found in skin color when it is inherent, instead, in culture.

But just because the right wing, a predominantly but not exclusively white subculture, many of whose members are also members of other cultures, abuses a concept to create fear among its white members does not mean that the importance of culture over race should be ignored, or that race should not be ignored when identifying cultural membership.  A culture may be composed primarily of members of one race, but if you exclude considering others as members of that culture simply because of their race, you deprive them of their heritage, and of their choices about how and where they want to live.

That's racism.  I thought we'd generally agreed that racism is immoral.  If it is, then we need to stop focusing on skin color in all our affairs.

--------------------------- ------------
* Not being a sociologist, I'm not sure that I've identified my culture correctly, but you get the idea.