Core Principles: The momentum for 'racially-based' social policies is strong in our nation.  While many of these policies may have been well intentioned in their origin, they have not evolved to policies based solely on the pure needs of our fellow citizens without consideration of 'race'.  'Race-based' policies are a dividing force in our nation.  Only well reasoned principles will help guide an Unhyphenated American and his fellow citizens to remove the misconception of 'race' from our society and the divisiveness it engenders.  Unhyphenated Americans share the following principles: 

• We owe it to our children and grandchildren:  The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step.  Removing 'race' from our society will be a multi-generational effort and may not be accomplished in our life time.
  
  
• 'Race' is man-made: Genetically speaking, we as humans can't be categorized into races.  As the American Anthropological Association states "..physical variations in the human species have no meaning except the social ones that humans put on them".  This is not to say that we don't differ culturally; but the perceived 'racial' differences in humans don't have biological roots.  
  
  The differences some perceive as 'race' are just in our minds; an unfortunate consequence of the evolutionary skills humans developed to sort, categorize and distinguish.  Like many things in life, this innate (mis)categorization skill has turned out to be a two-edged sword; collectively getting us this far in our biological evolution, but a ball-and-chain with regards to our social evolution. 
  
  Furthermore, cultural differences are memes humans have developed in parallel to our biological evolution.  Cultural differences should be celebrated and cherished as long as the principles of a culture are founded on The Golden Rule.
  
  
• "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."- Mahatma Gandhi:  If we ask for 'race' to be removed from our government's interactions with its citizens, we should seek to remove it from our personal lives and the way we individually interact with our fellow Americans.  We must 'practice what we preach'. 
  
  One of the most personal decisions we make as individuals is selecting a spouse and mate.  It would be hypocritical to seek freedom from the misconceptions of 'race' and have it influence the loving union we make with another human.  If 'race' really doesn't exist, then it doesn't exist in any context.