a suggestion for looking at race and racism differently: (what I’m about to tell is no white story)
race is a real and an artificial invention. Real, because so many people operate within its construction. Artificial because so many people don’t. We all stem from the same people. We all come from the same mother and father originally. So how did division and categories like race come to be?
Among the different reasons, one of the core reasons was an event which actually occurred in ancient Iraq/Iran regions where a giant tower to reach the heavens was erected. Our Fashioner Himself scrambled our tongues so that we could no longer understand each other. Why? Because that evil inside of us (the same evil which fuels the worst parts of racism/oppression/neglect/abuse you are hitting on here) was fomenting in an agreed upon competition with the place and society where our Creator resides. By scrambling mankind’s speech, humanity was spread throughout the world. Why did they need to spread? Because self-preservation, self-elevation over and above the looking after the well-being of a neighbor equates to eventual torment and murders of various kinds. So the peoples scattered.
What does this have to do with racism? Well . . ., the idea is something more akin to self-ism, or those-I-care-about-ism, those-who-are-with-me-ism, family-ism, the-ones-I-most-agree-with-and-identify-with-ism. So, with things like this in mind, we can begin to see why chasing the concept of “racism” is wrong-headed at times, or like chasing a ghost, or chasing your tail. Why? Because . . ., well, let me give another example:
Think of “political correctness speech solutions”. Let’s use the word “retarded”. Let’s say that long ago someone attached an adjective like “retarded” to a behavior or a person to indicate that something wasn’t firing or connecting as quickly in them and in their thinking as it did in the most common expression of thought and activity by most people. It is probable that the observational or scientific or solution-minded folk who came up with this category of behavior were not by it trying to demean the value of any person, but rather naming forth a phenomenon, declaring that such condition existed. But as time went by, many people heard of the phenomenon, assessed value to it, and when wanting to punish someone for whatever reason, began hatefully labeling a person as “retarded”, which slowly began to take on the meaning of horrible things like “to dumb to breathe”, “not worth investing in”, categorically “less than others”. Now what I am arguing is that the labeling of the phenomenon of “retardation” (delayed processing/delayed learning/delayed reacting/delayed development) was not itself a punitive or intentionally oppressive thing, it was “scientific” so to speak. It was seeking to learn about phenomena. But wickedness in us as people sprouts up and allows or causes us to stripe a person with their “weakness” as the all encompassing characteristic of their persona and “voila” you have hate on parade. SO . . . -later on, along come some sort of helpful “do-gooders” who want to fix all this. They sort of understand the power inherent in language (but are maybe a bit oblivious to the deep darkness in most every soul) and they believe in they can control the speech, they can control the “oppression” or the “harm to neighbor”. So a new word is devised. It doesn’t really matter what the word is. Let’s for today’s purposes call it “gifted”. This word starts off sounding much more pleasant. Almost like whatever difference or burden the person in question might wear, it is a potentially good thing, a “blessing” of sorts. But it doesn’t take long for the people when they are mooding out something like pain or hate or grievance or rage one day to recognize the same condition as before is being named with just a different name. And rather than being in awe of or respect of the “human dignity”, the grand design of this creature made by a great God, they just start toning by mockery this more pleasant word “gifted” into the same morbid and gross sound as the previous one and all of the sadness it had taken on: “retarded”. S0, the point of all of this is that we are solving nothing the way we are going about it. So, now let’s tag this back to racism.
In these days, racism is the worst thing one can be accused of manifesting. The people who do the accusing are seen as enlightened because of their suffering by experience and because they are deemed to be quite free of the disease themselves by virtue of their past/present role as it’s victim and by their heroic courage to call it out. But does this mean the disease is not in them. I am arguing it is absolutely in them. When a marginalized group, a minoritized group stands up and with their wit, whim and vigor, with their research, collaboration and ire, and they target their neighbors (oppressing those they at times might be or have been viewed to have been), they are doing nothing very different than manifesting the self-ism as the so-called racists they despise and are wounded by. For innate to racism and selfism is that I don’t give you the same benefits of the doubt as I give those I am with. You are demented in your development, or stunted, or retarded, or locked in it. You begin to be “the other”, “the enemy”, the “unsaveable opponent”.
Lastly, something obvious, but without the explanations just gone into, wouldn’t make as much sense maybe or wouldn’t be much listened to. Clearly, when we argue that skin color doesn’t matter, that race shouldn’t be a judgeable criterion, that religion or ideology shouldn’t block us from fair (or benefit of the doubt) treatment, well . . ., then we can’t talk about things like “white privilege”, for obviously all white experience and white behavior and white learning would not be the same. Or if it were viewed to be, then whatever criteria earlier “white perpetrators” used when they belittled “blacks” or “browns” would be justified as well. It doesn’t matter too terribly much what that criteria was, whether ugly labels like “backwardsness”, “poor work ethic”, “animalistic behavior”, “undisciplined aggression”. The point is that you either believe such behavior or labeling or oppressing or forgetting of the dignity of people is wrong or you don’t.
I think much of the behavior and messaging lately by so many “activists” shows that we are not really after healing and solution as much as we are hungry for power and revenge. These are there own goals, and in fact I believe the other more “holy seeming” ventures are being shed, and the real monster inside of all of us (the quest for joy for us at the expense of pain for them) is coming out!
