I can't help but notice that several times a day I hear something in the news or see some television show that talks about, or alludes to racism. It's a well-known tactic in politics and on any given day it will lead off multiple 24-hour news stations looking to overhype their stories for a ratings boost. Now I'm not suggesting that racism doesn't exist, but is that really what consumes most of our daily lives?

There are a lot of dark times in our nation's history when it comes to equality, nobody can deny that. The arguments you hear about the constructors of our constitution aren't always accurate when it comes to the three-fifths compromise. It wasn't written in to degrade the African slaves, it was there because the politicians at the time knew that the southern states would never ratify a constitution that abolished slavery outright. If the slaves were only counted as three for every five in the census, the slave states would have less representation, and therefore less power in the federal government. The problem was that the southern leaders never caught on to the whole abolition idea.

Many times I hear the argument that men like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were bigots and racist because they believed that black slaves were only three-fifths of a person, when that was the furthest from the truth. Even in today's world, where minority buying power is growing faster than whites, I still hear hatred towards "rich, white men," especially if they happen to be republican politicians. If a black man doesn't get a job at a Fortune 500 company, it's almost automatically assumed, particularly by the ACLU, that the company is run by racists.

Hollywood doesn't exactly help with these cries of bigotry and discrimination. I couldn't tell you how many documentaries I've seen this week telling us how racism was inherent in hurricane Katrina. I didn't know natural disasters sought out minority communities for destruction, but I guess that's the case since there were no white people affected by the storm. Also, one of last years' Academy Award winners was the movie "Crash", which was supposedly a compelling look at the everyday lives of prejudiced Americans. Has Hollywood ever done anything constructive when it comes to race relations?

I couldn't tell you the last time I woke up and said, "Alright, what can I do to oppress minorites today?" Probably because that has never happened. If you believe everything you hear in the media or see on television, you'd think that every white business owner in America wakes with that thought every day. I've actually grown pretty weary of it. I do not own slaves. My father did not own slaves. My grandfather did not own slaves. It's been quite a few generations since anyone has even been a slave in this country, so let's stop using that in our "Racism 101" playbooks.

Furthermore, racism isn't confined to white hatred towards all other races. I'm sure it can be found in all cultures and societies, but that doesn't mean that all the people in different cultures and societies are racist. I think it's nothing but pure ignorance to believe that to be true. It's time to stop blaming everybody, and everything else for things that go wrong in your life and grow up and start taking responsibility. If we would stop pointing our fingers at each other as the reason why we can't accomplish our dreams or goals and start seeing each other as a partnership that will help us reach them, I think we'd be a lot better off.