I received the following humor via email:

A minister was completing a temperance sermon.
With great emphasis he said, "If I had all the beer in the world, I'd take it and pour it into the river."
With even greater emphasis he said, "And if I had all the wine in the world, I'd take it and pour it into the river".
And then finally, shaking his fist in the air, he said, "And if I had all the whiskey in the world,
I'd take it and pour it into the river."
When the Sermon was complete, he sat down. The song leader stood very cautiously and announced with a smile, nearly laughing,
"For our closing song, let us sing Hymn #365, "Shall We Gather at the River."

I also began this morning reading this book called "Where the Nations Meet. In the first chapter the author is discussing the difference between pluralism and diveristy, where pluralism is the acknowledgement that a large number of differences are present, including worldviews, value systems, and the like. Diversity on the other hand implies that we hold a common truth but express it in different ways. He then goes on to say that America is becoming more and more pluralistic, emphasizing group, ethnic, or tribal identity over other unifying social or national identify. To further illustrate this, he references a Doonsebury cartoon from years past where the university president replies to a group of protesting African-American students, "Look, I let you have your own African-American studies program and your own black student union, but I draw the line at letting you have your own drinking fountain." How true, how true! He ends by noting that America is becoming a nation of minorities and that "membership in one or another ethnic group is the basic American experience," we are moving from the "melting pot" paradigm to the "unmeltable ethnics." Good stuff.

It reminds me of a movie called "Higher Learning" which is set on a college campus and meant to show that ethnic groups tend to stick together and cease to interact with others different from them. It ends with a white man going postal on the campus, and healing beginning to occur from that experience and the in the final screen, the word "UNLEARN" is typed out, meaning we have to unlearn the racism and fear of others that we have grown accustomed to.