Once it was thought by slave owners and others that black people were less than human. They were animals born for work, for breeding, and to be bought and sold just as any other livestock.

Granted, the Civil Rights Bill passed. There is affirmative action and all sorts of programs indicating the necessity still exists of controlling behaviors that are not in any way, shape, or form based on thoughts of equalness amongst the different races.

The laws are made to control the actions, not the thoughts, of people. Sorry, but thoughts cannot be controlled by laws. Hate continues because people keep teaching hate rather than teaching we are all one and the same, people with equal rights. Bigotry exists because what we say doesn’t always match what is practiced or indicated by actions and verbalizations.

If our thoughts were non-prejudice, then, of course, there would not be any need for the laws controlling behaviors towards the different races or accepted practices of people of a specific race against people of other races. I read or hear otherwise but the plain truth is it is all a bunch of crap, a fact I hope to prove below with a very simple example.

We, meaning Americans since that is what I am, have not come far at all regardless of the rhetoric and in spite of the major religions and their teachings of Man being created in the image of God and with equal birth rights.

Religions are great about their spoutings of treating people the same. And that all people are equal in the eyes of God and, therefore, must be the same in the the thoughts of the religious.

We also have laws governing nudity, porn, and the like. Most people still cannot understand nudity is not a sex act and that it isn’t "nasty" or a sign of perversity. I know a lot of people mouth such thinking but, when it gets down to the nitty gritty, clothes remain on in public.

By the time kids are two to three, they have been taught the shame and nastiness of the human body and exposing it it its entirety. Not all, of course, but the majority. So, what does this have to do with prejudice and my statement that we haven’t come very far from the thinking of those people who treated slaves as property and farm animals?

Well, I watch shows which have topics of interest for me on the Discovery Channel and National Geographic. I used to read National Geographic every chance I had. But, I have more or less stopped when it comes to any show or article on native peoples.

One might ask why. See, we have all these laws and religions teaching the equality of Man. We knock the way the slave owners thought. We say we recognize other races as being equal to Americans, whether they be white, black, yellow, or any combination you can think of.

We say what a crime and tragedy it was to have the blacks brought here as slaves and then treated as breeding stock and the like. We say it was an intolerable situation and even try to teach the Civil War was a war to free the slaves. (It wasn’t but that is another story.)

Exposure to nudity is controlled. Controlling it is an indication that it is wrong for ‘civilized’ people to expose themselves to others. Television still, for the most part, prevents most nudity but does have a little. Nipples and labia majori still aren’t shown or, if they are, it is a flash.

The male penis is never shown (very rarely, anyway) and, for certain, close ups of nude women are not of the vulva region of their bodies. Nor is frontal nudity usually permitted below the navel or above the very upper thighs.

If some show such as America’s Funniest Home Videos show a clip that has bare breasts or otherwise in it, the bare breasts are blacked out or distorted. The same is true on police shows in which breasts or anatomical features of genitalia could be seen.

And, yet, when it comes to a show or a report on natives, suddenly breasts are shown openly. I even watched a newscast a year or more ago in which some report was being given (I think on ABC’s evening news) in which a native black man walking was clearly shown with his penis swinging in plain view.

It is nothing for the shows or reports to show frontal nudity of the native people, be they in Africa or South America. National Geographic (the publication that many young boys in my generation saw their first nude woman) has always shown frontal nudity in their pictures.

So, now one might ask - How is it that white women’s (or other races who live in this country) breasts aren’t shown as clearly? Why can’t the nipples be seen, or have close-ups, as with the native women. Why is it a man’s butt may be shown but, if it is a native (primitive, I suppose), even a male penis may be shown?

Isn’t it obvious. The primitive natives, be they black or otherwise, are treated the same as any other animal being exposed (no pun intended) by magazines, such as National Geographic, and shows on The Discovery Channel, including airings of National Geographic.

Say what you will but since white women’s crotches and breasts are distorted or blacked out so they can’t be seen, or are prevented from being seen on regular TV, or as long as men are only seen from the rear and their butts distorted or blacked out so they can’t be seen while natives are not, our thinking hasn’t really advanced at all.

We, for all our rhetoric, still think of the native people as nothing more than animals not subject to the same laws of decency and anti-nudity as are we “higher forms of life”. Therefore, they are thought of as less than human since there isn't any concern over their privacy and private parts.

How sad is that?