The Day Racism Died(Tim Norland) When they arrived, it changed everything. Not in the way we saw the universe, but in the way we saw ourselves.

Suddenly everyone looked the same. Next to the alien delegation, that is. Maybe it was the tentacles. Or possibly the gaping orifice that one could only guess was a mouth. The attached breathing apparatus adding to the other worldliness of the image. The real clincher were the eight eyes, looking everywhere at once.

In comparison, the human delegation suddenly seemed very homogeneous. Minimal differences in height, and although there were representatives from every continent, only a slight variation in tone.

The concept of race was difficult to explain to the aliens. Even somewhat embarrassing. They didn't really get it. And when they brought up the fact that they had studied our genome and found no gene for 'race' the human representative stood there and stammered out an incoherent explanation that sounded, well, racist. That was the moment that racism, in the official sense, died.

The fact that the aliens vibrated varying colors according to their mood only added to the difficulty in explaining our plainish monochromatic existence. The fact that we were only one color our whole lives made us seem rather dull. They dismissed this shortcoming with as much politeness as they could muster. Then moved onto other topics that seemed to interest them, like how were we able to get along with only four appendages, two of which were completely devoted to walking. And they had this fascination with our hands, which they found to be a bit creepy. All those fingers. Their exobiologist was very excited about the evolutionary path of our opposable thumbs. So much so he was going to devote an academic study to it.

Yes, racism was dead. Even short jokes didn't seem to make sense anymore.

The big picture is toxic to little minds. Especially with just the one brain of ours.

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