Something every group can hate

What's that? A hate/stereotype filled reality show called "Welcome to the Neighborhood" that ABC just canceled under pressure from all sorts of groups. Rare is the day when the FRC (Family Research Counsel) and GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) are united in their dislike in the characterizations on the same show.

FRC hated it because it made their clientele- Rich, White, Religious Conservatives from Red States- come off as moral bigots. GLAAD disliked how the FRC-types found the gay couple on the show's affection for another "disgusting."

Hispanics were mocked as overbreeding animals. I don't know what things they had in store for the black family, or the pierced family, or the family with a Wiccan, or the family with a stripper.

"Why should people of color and others ... be humiliated and degraded to teach white people not to be bigots?" said Shanna Smith, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance. "That's not good for race relations in America."

What's really not good for race relations in America is how semi-self-segregated our country is becoming. Why is it that this neighborhood is filled with White people? Why is it there are Black neighborhoods and Hispanic neighborhoods and Gay neighborhoods? Why is it that schools over the last several decades have become as segregated now as they were pre-Brown v. Board of Education? Do Americans of different sorts really not like each other that much? Is the melting pot really a salad bowl? Or is it due to the widening gap between rich and poor, between the suburbs and the inner cities?

Studies have shown that when people call about housing with a "black voice" or a "gay voice" they get different responses as to the housing's availability than if a "white voice" calls (I am sure the same would happen for a "hispanic voice" or an "asian voice"). I would like to think that things really have changed a lot since the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, but has it really?

Sure, ethnic and racial minorities (and openly out homosexuals) now have the ability to move into the middle class and upper management and to move into any neighborhood they please, the color lines are gone. But yet, you still don't see very many truely diverse neighborhoods in Suburbs or in cities like Chicago or Washington, DC.

Debasing shows like "Welcome to the Neighborhood" to me show that we still have a long ways to go in the battle for civil rights. Even a coalition of GLAAD and FRC can't make that ugly fact go away.