Tommy Mann

My heart has been heavy over the past few weeks as we have seen what many would call racial unrest across our country. Terrible events in Texas, Minnesota, and Louisiana have polarized our nation. There are strong feelings, and emotions are high. While we can’t do much about what is happening in other states, we can come together right here in our county. I keep hearing words like race, racial, and racism, but I don’t like that word race. Until the 1850s the word race only referred to nationalities, like the English race, or the Spanish race. It had nothing to do with skin color. It wasn’t until Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species that the word took on a new meaning. He grouped people together by skin color, and his theory was that different races evolved over time, with some groups more evolved than others. This was the beginning of racism. Scientifically, there is only one race—the human race. We are all homo sapiens. Scientists have now mapped out the huma