Racism and the 21st Century

Since the beginning of the 1800s, America has been engaged in a battle against racism. Great men and women have fought bravely, enduring suffering, hardship, rejection, and even death; but now, in the beginning of the 21st century, we have conquered racism, and guaranteed to all equal rights...

Or have we?

There exists today a different battle. It is an ephemeral, ill-defined battle; one sordid with rage, hatred, and injustice; one unspoken, an anger that has no name. The racism of today is of a subtler, more dangerous form than its earlier roots; no longer is it confined to the white man against the black, but it rather proliferates, turning black against white, Asian against Mexican, chink against cracker...

Growing up in a sheltered family of 8 - with two black siblings and mixed cultural background - the concept of racism never occurred to me naturally. I had no idea, as a child, that it would really be possible to distinguish man from man on the basis of skin color, any more than - yes - by the color of his eyes. The idea that "we are all the same underneath our skin" was never one i was taught - it was one I took for granted, assumed as a natural truth of the world. Oh, I learned about the civil war and the abolitionists, but to me the idea of such behavior was merely a concept, as fascinating and horrifying as the un-reality of Gengis Khan or the Holocaust. As I grew older, however, I faced a harsh reality: the undeniable and even prolific existence of racism in the real world.

I recently recieved the following bulletin, via e-mail forward, and it sent shivers down my spine. Not because it was false (for it was certainly true), and niether because it was true (for it was terribly, horribly false); but because it was both, and it is this combination that offers the most deadly deception.

Bulletin Message
From: Resewn Thought
Date: Apr 30, 2007 10:23 AM

You can call me: "redneck" ,"hillbilly", "slaker" , "Cracker", "Honkey", "Whitey", "Gringo" and you think it's OK.

...But when I call you coon, jiggaboo, Kike, sand nigger, rag head ,Towelhead, WOP, Camel Jockey, Gook, nigger, slant eyes or Chink you call me a racist.

-You have the United Negro College Fund.
-You have Martin Luther King Day.
-You have Black History Month.
-You have Cesar Chavez Day.
-You have Yom Hashoah
-You have Ma'uled Al-Nabi
-You have the NAACP.
-You have BET.

-If we had WET(white entertainment television) ...we'd be racist.
-If we had a White Pride Day... you would call us racist.
-If we had white history month... we'd be racist.
-If we had an organization for only whites to "advance" our lives... we'd be racist.
-If we had a college fund that only gave white students scholarships...you know we'd be racist.
-In the Million Man March, you believed that you were marching for your race and rights. If we marched for our race and rights...you would call us racist.

-Did you know that some high school students decided to make a club for only the white students because the other ethnicities had them... they all got sent to court for being racist but the african-american, Latino, and Asia clubs were not even questioned.

-You are proud to be black, brown, yellow and orange, and you're not afraid to announce it. But when we announce our white pride, you call us racists.

I am white.

I am proud.
But, you call me a racist.

Why is it that only whites can be racists?

And below, my response:

It is not the content (which is true) but the sentiment (which is deadly) that marks this bulletin; the use of the words "we" and "you". These are two of the most dangerous, threatening, ominous words in the English language; and as in our current political situation, they are weapons of tremendous power.

By defining "we", and "you", and most of all "them", we create an enemy; and the enemy is a distraction from our deepest, darkest, truest enemy - ourselves.

Since Hitler, great leaders, great deceivers, and great terrorists have used this same weapon - separation, creation of an "us against them" mentality, and the voice of our government whispering....distract...distract...deceive....

and for this, we will pay with our lives.

"until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes...there be war."
-Marley

PS. But you are right. It is an equal injustice to give preference as disdain; an equal violation to create an opportunity based on race as to deny one.

What is equality? We live now in an age where no school would reject a worthy student based on minority race...but some, perhaps, would accept a student because of minority status. There is no longer an active voice of the Ku Klux Klan, or of the white supremecists...and nor is there really a place for any sort of Caucasian celebration. But there are Latino Clubs and Black Pride holidays, Chinatown and Black History Month.

There are of course no white-male scholarships - that would be unthinkable; but there are scholarships offered specifically for every other race, as well as other minorities, including (I swear to God) The Society For The Acceptance of Fat People Scholarship (minimum weight 160) and the Short People Scholarship (available only to those under 5' tall). These cultural tributes, steadfastly clung to, are honorable and worthy of celebration, but there is one group noticeably absent: the Caucasians. The majority group, the enemy, the patriotic, the fools - the people that are so many things, from so many backgrounds, that they no longer have an identity of their own.

The amazing thing is, we suffer all of this struggle in a land that is supposed to be "a mixing pot of cultures," a land, incidentally, which truly belongs to none of us. In the words of Bill Cosby: "How you gonna have racism in a land that don't belong to nobody but the Indians" Of course, in the past centuries of humanitarian crisis, the native americans have suffered perhaps more than anyone, even into the present day.

"If they could go back," remarks the ironic comedian, "You know what they'd say? Don't let them get off the boat. Give 'em some corn, some dead antelope, but don't let them step FOOT off of that boat!!"

We live in a forest of lies, a web of contradictions. And so resentment festers, bitterness builds. The white-male-middle class continues to surge on its path of dominance, although the exclusiveness of its nature is no longer admitted. The new racism is deceptive, manipulative; nearly every person is grasped in its clutches, but the people do not speak of it. Hatred and prejudice continue to grow, like silent cancer, unrecognized, never faced. It reflects not only in our domestic culture, but on a bigger, more menacing scale - our interactions overseas. We are we, and they are them, and it is, and has been, and perhaps it will always be (unhappily) us against them; and if so, this will truly be our undoing.

"Until the color of a man's skin
Is of no more significance
than the color of his eyes...
there be war."
- Marley, Exodus