In my last essay, I addressed sexism. This article is about another type of pain, the pain of discrimination. Alexandre Dumas said, “There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is merely the comparison of one state to the other. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.” That quote by Dumas seems like an odd insight for someone who wrote The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, and voluminous other books or articles. Someone actually tallied the numbers of pages that he wrote in his lifetime, which was more than 100,000 pages.

Dumas was born in 1802 and died in 1870. However, one of the main issues that always haunted him was his place in society due to racism. His father was born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, which is now Haiti. His father was a French soldier who married an African slave. His father died in 1806, which resulted in Dumas winding up in Paris.

When Dumas grew up and was beginning his career in writing, someone questioned him being biracial to which he replied, “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.”

Alexandre Dumas

Dumas, while not enjoying discrimination, said, “Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.” Essentially, what Dumas said is merely a more poetic way to state, no pain, no gain.

Interestingly, on the bicentennial of Alexandre Dumas’ birth, which was in 2002, President Jacques Chirac addressed racism in France. Additionally, he re-interred Dumas’ ashes at the Panthéon of Paris. He rests now with other famous authors like Émile Zola and Victor Hugo. In Chirac’s eulogy, he said that France has had some great writers but no one that is more read than Dumas.

In reality, we haven’t progressed much with our dealing with racism and dissing others based upon their birth in America. Donald the Dumb spoke about good White Nationalists in Charlottesville. Our fake president has issues with Mexicans. He sees them as “druggies, drug dealers, rapists and killers.” Donald the Dumb dislikes Muslims and wants to ban all Muslims from entering our country. The ban would even be Muslims that are Americans citizens. He wants to stop asylum seekers from Central America by building his wall along our Southern border.

While none of us will be seen as great writers, we need to do two things to address the issue of racism. First is to be honest and recognize what is obvious. Donald the Dumb is our fake president, but he is also emblematic of the fact that we have a serious issue with racism. We need to take to heart and apply Dumas’ word to our lives, “There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is merely the comparison of one state to the other. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.” All forms of discrimination will haunt us until we address them.