I usually don’t do diatribes, but when I do…
What I’ve witnessed in my 50 years or so is the creation of racism. There was racism before me, but it has to get created each time. The US was created with a stated goal of preferring white men of Northern European descent. They would get to vote and own not just land, but people. To maintain the union, they gave in to what the rest of the world believed about slavery, but replaced that law with a series of laws that continued to favor themselves. Somehow, without the right to vote, women got that right, and for a while, things were getting a little bit better.
Meanwhile, the men who owned everything were making deals with men on the other side of the world for the new engine of the world economy, oil. No one called them terrorists. They may have been viewed as a little backwards, but there are lots of places on the planet that are not modern. We kind of like that. Then we started carving up their tribes and creating national borders, installing dictators in them, building military bases. And people were shocked when they protested this. That is, if you hadn’t read a book about it outside of what was assigned in high school.
The Soviets were doing the same things, and those who fought them were called freedom fighters. Until they won, and turned their sights on us, then they were terrorists. And we knew they had weapons, because we sold them to them. If you didn’t know any of this history, you might assume they hated our freedom, especially since the President was telling you that. If you didn’t know their culture, you might think “death to America" actually meant they wanted to kill us. If you took a few minutes to try to understand what was going on, you would find they say, “death to traffic". As Inigo Montoya said, “…that word, I do not think it means what you think it means."
Unfortunately, just getting to know their culture will not stop the wars. There are things some of them want that are the complete opposite of what a free and open democracy wants. But all of them do not want the same things, any more than a Texas oil millionaire and a boy from Chicago want the same things. As I mentioned in the beginning, a democracy doesn’t give everyone what they want. Sometimes you have to fight for it.
But you can’t tell someone’s motives just from the fact that they are fighting. They will probably say they are fighting for some higher justice, but that doesn’t mean they are being honest. And if they are honest, it doesn’t mean they are right. And fighting is not always bullets and bombs. Words can have a lot of power, especially if you already have the bombs and have shown you are not afraid to use them. We all hope words like “you can’t judge a man by the color of his skin" win out in the end. But day to day, that’s a struggle.
Nicely said.
You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
Rogers and Hammerstein, South Pacific.
Just to be a little pedantic, since we mapped the human genome and discovered that there is no such thing as “race”, isn’t the term “racist” now rather redundant? It’s just bigotry.
Just to be a little pedantic, since we mapped the human genome and discovered that there is no such thing as "race", isn't the term "racist" now rather redundant? It's just bigotry.Yeah, kinda sort of. One battle at a time though. We have more important issues than word definitions, which change as society changes. When I was younger I saw social progress happening and was naively confident that we'd be past racism and discrimination by the time the 21 Century dawned. Sigh. Seems we've reversed course and racism is becoming acceptable again. Is it OK to not like orange-skinned people or is that bigotry too?
If racism has to be created, then it seems the materials needed to create it are never in short supply.
If racism has to be created, then it seems the materials needed to create it are never in short supply.Sadly true. I wish you were wrong.
Just to be a little pedantic, since we mapped the human genome and discovered that there is no such thing as "race", isn't the term "racist" now rather redundant? It's just bigotry.Yeah, kinda sort of. One battle at a time though. We have more important issues than word definitions, which change as society changes. That would depend upon what is established as "more important", wouldn't it? For me personally, it's the capacity for critical thinking, and understanding language is a big part of critical thinking. Next would be the appreciation of emotional content within language that we all individually ascribe to words so that we can learn to divorce ourselves from the emotional content of the material. We all ascribe emotional content to language, but often quite differently to each other....a simple example of that would be how different people respond to profanities....for some it's like water off a duck's back, some get mildly offended while others get grossly offended, yet it's the same word(s). Well, we all individually do that with basically all words but to varying degrees with every individual word, which is why we see so many people responding to a post but not talking about anything that the original poster mentioned, as the respondent has gone off on their own track for they are subjectively reasoning (or emotionally reasoning), not objectively reasoning (or critical thinking)….they are substantiating what they feel about something, not responding dispassionately to the facts and overall material content. They respond to their own emotional content within words that the original poster used, but not the facts of the material. And basically, that's the same dynamic of how propaganda works, except propaganda usually has the added component of repetition as well. It always uses highly emotive language and descriptors for effect and is then repetitive ad infinitum....which is why we call our current enemies "terrorists" instead of "freedom fighters", and they would use the opposite language about us, calling themselves freedom fighters and us terrorists....it helps establish my team from their team, emotively. Or think of this, try to establish how many times you've heard or used the word "terrorist" in the last 15 years....it's impossible to calculate, isn't it? So the third thing for me would be that people need to learn to be suspicious of any information that is repeated to them ad infinitum. Though I consider those things important, there's no right or wrong here, it's only my personal view, what bigger fish do have to fry? :)
When I was younger I saw social progress happening and was naively confident that we'd be past racism and discrimination by the time the 21 Century dawned. Sigh. Seems we've reversed course and racism is becoming acceptable again. Is it OK to not like orange-skinned people or is that bigotry too?Yes, I suffered the same naivety. Yes, I would have to agree that racism seems to be on the rise, and it would seem that the Muslims are taking the brunt of it, with Asians fighting for that position....yet, it strikes me as understandable when you consider that at a political level, they are also spoken of in derogatory terms for they are basically political, economic, and in the case of Muslims, religious foes. Social media is flooded with anti-Muslim disinformation, fear-mongering and crass anecdotes, and the US and rest of the Western Economy are all concerned that China has now become capitalist, and so, is now competing for the same resources. And it's a numerical/logistic problem that's plain and simple...China is one land mass and one government with a population of around 2 billion, which is about the size of the entire Western economy under about 50 or so national governments, spread around the globe. Plus the West is a saturated marketplace, while Asia is a blossoming one. So America is attempting to "put the squeeze" on China by interjecting into their activities in the South China Sea. The US has been actively doing the same with Russia for the same reasons, but they're white, so we're not racist with them, we just revert to the bigotry and rhetoric of the Cold War (someone needs to remind America that the Cold War finished nearly 30 years ago).
Us vs. Them has been present since the dawn of humanity. It’s a fundamental organizing principle of humans sociologically.
And although we’ve improved since the Enlightenment, it’s hardly been a soaring upward trajectory.
If it’s perceived that times are difficult for the mass of the dominant population that feels threatened, the instinct is to look outward for the source of that trouble.
Certainly not everyone, but a significant percentage of Caucasians in the US and Western Europe want to return to a “better time” when there was no question who was in control.
I’m probably being naive, but I am of the belief that reason and rational thought will continue to make progress in gaining control over baser instincts.
You've got to be taught To hate and fear, You've got to be taught From year to year, It's got to be drummed In your dear little ear You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade, You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught before it's too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You've got to be carefully taught! Rogers and Hammerstein, South Pacific.Nice!!
You've got to be taught To hate and fear, You've got to be taught From year to year, It's got to be drummed In your dear little ear You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught to be afraid Of people whose eyes are oddly made, And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade, You've got to be carefully taught. You've got to be taught before it's too late, Before you are six or seven or eight, To hate all the people your relatives hate, You've got to be carefully taught! Rogers and Hammerstein, South Pacific.to keep the working class divided, capitalism breed nationalism which in turn breeds racism