U.S. fight against racism not over

 Recognizing February as Black History Month, we celebrate the judicial and executive decisions that opened doors for African Americans.
However, enough has not been done to ensure equality of individuals.
The African American plight is recognized through holidays and minority opportunities, but is this really enough to compensate for years of oppression?
Many might say yes until faced with the cold facts of hate-crime statistics; the FBI reported a drop in violent crimes against African Americans over the last four years.
The FBI recorded over two thousand in 2003.
Federal authorities unsealed a case Jan. 26 dealing with the 2001 stabbing of an African-American man by five white male assailants at a Denny’s in Springfield, Mo.
If convicted of the alleged racially motivated assault, the men face a maximum of 10 years imprisonment. The knife wounds have healed, but their victim will carry the memory of his assault.
Assault warrants prosecution, but a racially motivated attack injures the entire community, U.S. Attorney Todd Graves told press representatives last Wednesday.
Among the accused are two members of the Midland Hammerskins, a white supremacist group and a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Three and four generations after the Emancipation Proclamation, white supremacy and racism are still very commonplace.
Many people still argue that if the African American does not like the way he is treated he should return to Africa.
This argument holds no water, considering American settlers paid for these people to be hunted down, rounded up, shipped and auctioned like cattle.
Minorities are given many opportunities, in penitence of our forefather’s mistakes, but these programs have a stigma attached to them, such as reverse racism or affirmative action, in the eyes of the white-driven corporate world.
The stereotypes affixed to the African-American culture are prevalent and continue to degrade the race.
In October 2003 Kweisi Mfume, President and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took a stand against game producer David P. Chang for degrading African-American culture.
Chang produced Ghettopoly, a game based on Monopoly with the objective of buying neighborhoods and building crack houses instead of hotels.
“It is disturbing that you would choose to promote and capitalize off such negative aspects of society that cause great harm to individuals and to the African-American community at-large,” Mfume said in a letter to Chang.
The NAACP has worked more than 95 years to bring equality to the African-American community. They are still working hard to obtain their goals.
Incidents such as these show the American pubic how little ground we have gained in our fight against racism in this country.