What we talk about when we talk about race.

Too frequently I will hear white people say that African Americans need to, 'get over it' in reference to American slave policies. It's too soon for that.

The Civil War wasn't that long ago. The last Civil War Widow, Maudie Hopkins, died in 2008.

The last one that was legally eligible to draw a widow's pension and produced offspring with their soldier/husband, Alberta Martin, died in 2004. She loved attending Civil War re-enactments and drew her pension as a widow of a Confederate soldier.

The last Yankee widow was Gertrude Janeway. She passed on in 2003.

When white folks talk about 'moving on' they are being completely unreasonable. It was only 4 years ago that the living history of those events passed away.

For all we know it was seeing a black man as the Democratic Presidential nominee that sent Ms. Hopkins to her grave! After all, she was married to a man who fought for State's Rights. Those rights being the right to own slaves and the right to withdraw from the Union when it appeared that they might not be able to own slaves indefinitely.

And "separate but equal" was still around in the 1960's. There are plenty of people alive and well who grew up in a part of the country where it was legal to treat blacks like inferiors as long as you didn't deny them a drink of water from a separate, dirtier drinking fountain.

I say this as someone who at one time thought that African Americans needed to just get over it and move on. I was wrong! We have a long way to go as a country before we can consider this all water under the bridge. I seriously doubt we can reach that state in my lifetime.

And judging by the behavior of the Grand Old Party, there are still plenty of people who miss, "The Good Old Days."