Racism. Is It According to the Skin I'm In?
There have been quite a few posts recently on racism. Between posts regarding the fringes in the Tea Party, the "New" BPP intimidating voters at the poles, murders of black children and anti-Semitic diatribes there sure is no loss for material.
What is racism?
Racism is the belief that the genetic factors which constitute race are a primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.
Wikipedia
"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla."
Charles Darwin
In the U.S. culture we are racially programmed, particularly in regard to the skin color issue. Because of our culture's racist roots, because of the way the world thinks, because of the influence of Darwinian thinking, we have been programmed to look at the exterior rather than the interior of a person, and to make broad judgments based on what we see.
Racism is the driving force behind all sorts of evil behavior, fears and compulsions. The racist individual is obligated to deny freedom to those they believe to be inferior.
Geneticists have found that if we were to take any two people from anywhere in the world, the basic genetic differences between these two people would typically be around 0.2 percent, even if they came from the same people group. One blood.
Scientists today agree that there is really only one biological race of humans. We would be well served to drop the term "race" from our vocabulary.
Skin color unfortunately still poses one of the greatest of problems to many people. Folk need to realize we are all the same. We all have the same coloring pigment in our skin—melanin. Whenever we speak of different "colors" we are referring to different shades of the one color. Some have more of it, some have less. Big deal.
In another post a fellow Ranter/Raver had this to say...
"True freedom would be to reject the entire premise that God's people came from the Middle East."
I beg to differ. True freedom and harmony will only come about through understanding that we are all one people, of one blood, from the same original ancestors. It will not come through the undermining of another's spiritual beliefs.
Sure, there are racists in some religious groups just like there are racist atheists, agnostics and skeptics. Many are bold enough to openly espouse it. But regardless of where the stupidity comes from it is still a symptom, not the problem. The problem is deeper than that. It's programming.
Had we not been programmed this way in this culture, we wouldn't see the differences as we do and make the inane judgments that all we all too often make.
In every case, without exception, it is the world and our sinfulness that drives our personal racism. It needs to stop.
We all need to treat every human being as our relative. We are of ONE BLOOD. All of us are equal in value before our Maker. The sooner we get there, the sooner this problem goes away.
The only race that matters is the HUMAN one.
Thank you for reading.
HN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQX3k4DiA...Cameo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipVSmmH0h...Watermelon Man
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hcgoLojO...Sly & The Family Stone