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To reach its full potential as a city, Philadelphia must eliminate racism against Latino population. From left to right the featured 40 Under 40 2021 honorees: Noel Ramirez, Natasha Daniela De Lima, Melvin Smith y Maridarlyn Gonzalez.   Harrison Brink/AL DÍA News
To reach its full potential as a city, Philadelphia must eliminate racism against Latino population. From left to right the featured 40 Under 40 2021 honorees: Noel Ramirez, Natasha Daniela De Lima, Melvin Smith y Maridarlyn Gonzalez.   Harrison Brink/AL…

The Uprooting of Racism | OP-ED

Our children have funny eyes. Their smiles are sparkling and beautiful. The thoughtful grin should give pause and make you think twice.

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We Latino parents have the most beautiful children on planet earth.

Their eyes can look Asian, Mediterranean, or Nordic Green or Blue.

Their skin is also often any tinge, ranging from dark-chocolate Brown to Jet Black, or Lily-White, to the point that people don’t catch thay are Americans of Latino descent until they are asked to speak and have to say their names in the room.

They often are the smartest people in the room, but are shy and don’t know how to say it — plus those who know are slow to publicly acknowledge it...

They often are the smartest people in the room, but they are shy and they don’t know how to say it, plus those who know are slow to publicly acknowledge it...

When schooled in our universities — still the best in the world — they likely become CEO material, Executive Board Material, C-Suite Material — rejected, however, as inadequate rocks, when often, they can easily be the cornerstone of the building.

Their intrinsic value, their unit weight, makes them, as I have called them here before, “America’s Next Greatest Generation”— a book I will eventually write if this column’s befriended Tom Brokaw declines to turn it into his next best-seller after my insistent invitations.

Just take a look into new class of AL DIA’s “40 under 40”, a sort of #Local&RealFacebook or a more #AuthenticLinkedIn of Leaders from our region — or simply a microcosm of the new generation of young leaders that will remake, and also strengthen, America in the current century and millennium.

They look all “Brown,” all “White,” and all “Black,” all “Asian,” all “Native American”.... ALL at the same time. 

In other words, they are very likely Americans of Latino descent from the 21st Century, all mixed-in, all-in, #AllinItTogether already, as the newly created AL DÍA slogan goes.

We can hide the sun with the palm of our hand..

...because it could burn your hand if you leave it there for a while.

We can’t close our eyes to this unspeakable truth.

It can hurt the next time we open them, as the Platonic truth is supposed to hurt the eyes of our ignorance, comfortably accustomed to the Dark Cave and prone to remain in the Dark Ages.

The quicker we acknowledge the new reality, the faster America will progress in its economy, to the point the one billion citizens of China and India, and their extraordinary capacity to produce and replicate, won’t be game for the newly-found American ingenuity of the new century.

Perhaps, we won’t need to build new bombardiers or smart weapons because of plain genius operating in a free-enterprise system, with clear rules of engagement open to anybody, will be enough to produce the new wave of innovation and wealth.

"This may be the end of race in America, and, by the Grace of God, of God’s Children all over, the beginning of the uprooting of Racism from our midst..."

Count on it.

Count our blessings, Philadelphia region, please. 

We are already one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the country, and that is our strategic advantage in the world, both our raw material and atomic power to produce miracles from the Delaware Valley.

Count the #ALDIA40Under40, Class of 2021, slowly read their names, titles and placed of origin, one by one, to learn what I mean.

Dear Leaders from Philadelphia and the Mid-Atlantic Region:

Por favor, smell this deep-scented coffee, both brown, plus latté, plus cappuccino, white chocolate and lily white, but, finally, racially neutral human species.

We may ad portas of the end of race in America, people.

And, by the Grace of God, of God’s Children all over, the beginning of the healthy and necessary uprooting of toxic racism from our midst, incapable of stopping history from happening.

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