Sam Smith - As the Supreme Court considers reviving the old south by cutting back black electoral strength I am reminded again of the ways in which Washington DC, where I was born and lived for many decades, evolved what might be called positive multiculturalism.
If you want several cultures to get along you not only have to end the sort of discrimination the Supremes are considering bringing back but you also have to find ways these cultures can live in a friendly and non-combative manner.
DC - which was even for some time the black majority capital of the US - has done better than many places yet it has gotten little attention in part because our media is little interested in good news.
What I came to realize was that there were a number of common issues - such as home rule, anti-freeways and DC statehood - that brought blacks and whites together and made friendly multiculturalism easier to come by in my hometown. My own introduction to the civil rights movement was thanks an article I wrote about a DC Transit fare increase, that appealed to the leading opponent who was, like me, a 20 something - a guy named Marion Barry.
We can probably come up with multi-cultural issues at a national level but the first job is to realize that different as our ethnicity may be we still have enough in common to get along and have some common goals.
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