There is sign
carried by one of the members for Veterans
for Peace that reads: THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR IS TRUTH and nothing could
be more appropriate than to lead the discussion on this important topic of
race. There has always been differentiation or segmentation of human beings
since primitive hunter/gathering tribal groups migrated out of the African
savannah millennia ago. It is not my intention or interest to teach a course on
Cultural Anthropology, Biblical Archaeology, Biology, Sociology, Microbiology,
Genetics, or even History, but rather to mention these disciplines as a
possible starting point when it pertains to understanding race; so let’s begin.
Any cursory reading of our nation’s most cherished document, the Constitution,
will reveal in plain language that “race” was an issue from the founding of the
Republic. This problem was a concern that Thomas Jefferson addressed in his
personal letters, as well as those of the “Great Emancipator” Abraham Lincoln.
The color line on race, especially as it pertains to the American experience,
was drawn a long time ago and was exported by the colonial settlers from Europe
(old, medieval, renaissance, or classical, etc.); it doesn’t matter which era.
Christianity played
no small role in the formation of a hierarchy or strata of people based on
interpretation of the Bible relative to geography, cultural traditions,
language, and physical characteristics. Not only that, color schema throughout
Holy Writ depict ‘white’ as something holy, pure, virtuous, light, good,
saintly, heavenly and more like God. On the other hand, blackness/darkness is
considered evil, corrupt, defiled, rejected, hellish (outer darkness, the
blackness of darkness), pain, misery, death (Sheol/the grave), and God
separated the Darkness from the Light; there is no fellowship between light and
darkness, though your sins be as scarlet (crimson red) they shall be as white
as snow; and so on. The implicit meaning is one of “otherness” and doubtless
may have influenced the cultural foundation for instituting a system for racial
discrimination based on the distinctiveness of skin pigmentation due to
phenotype. The scientific research only served as a backdrop to justify social
attitudes that had already been inculcated among the masses of the White
majority, even if it was on a subconscious or subliminal level. Race is a
cultural construct but it has deep meaning in the society, eliciting emotional
and physiological reactions because of constant and unrelenting exaggerated
stereotype propaganda. Of course, it doesn’t necessarily have to be negative
but it is an identifying marker for certain group behavior that supposedly is
measured against the values and normative lifestyle of the dominant control group
against whom everyone else (the ‘other/s’) are measured. There was, and the
attitude might still linger among Whites, that no matter how worse off your
circumstances you are still better than any Black person (or non-White for that
matter)-simply because of having White skin. White skin privilege, physicality,
or intellectual superiority is a myth that has been shattered long time ago but
statistics have to be skewed and history deconstructed in a revisionist version
to perpetuate this false belief.
Be that as it may,
race is a convenient lie, an invention created by those who exert power in
society and control the factors of production as well as all the other systems
and institutions-to safeguard their propertied interests. The thing that is
real is physical biology, and even those attributes aren’t all that
significantly different among exogenous and endogenous groups. Since race is an
illusion then the idea of a ‘pure’ race or some kind of inherent racial
superiority divinely bestowed upon a particular people of European stock based
on “Manifest Destiny” is also not true as well. In attempting to deconstruct
this inherited fallacy of race I almost forgot to address the main purpose for
the article, namely, to raise a serious question as to the absurdity of those
proponents of an America where ‘race’ is no longer a concern. I can understand
if mainstream media talks about a post-racial America but when Black
intellectuals advocate this lunacy then I have to take notice. This reminds me
of the lyrics to a song by Curtiss Mayfield of the soul group ‘The Impressions’
back in the 1960’s where he says “educated fools from uneducated schools. . .”
So, to the individuals who cling to the neoliberal diatribe that class has
replaced race, I have a little exercise for you, although in point of fact you
take it every day-but here goes: When you walk out of your residence and come
in contact with any person while engaging in some type of transaction for a
product, service, or whatever it might be, do you notice class or race? What
class, or is it race, that comprise the people that you interact with at the
supermarket, bank, department store, restaurant, car dealership, or on your
job? What class is in the majority of nearly every institution or organization
in America-or is it no longer race? I could go on and on but I think the point
has been made. No, race is still an issue in this country as it was from its
foundation and will continue to be for as long as people continue to be
spoon-fed on a steady diet of lies, half-truths and distortions. Yes, we are
different but it is not because of ‘race’ but rather differentiation in our
genetic markers. These changes and adaptations were necessary evolutionary
mechanisms for survival as members of one race of Homo sapiens whose primordial
ancestors made serial migrations away from our common place of origin from the
African continent. Our diversity as far as phenotype is a badge of triumph in
overcoming environments that were hostile, deadly and threatened our continuity
as a human species, and of which we should celebrate instead of getting bogged
down in the miry quicksand of race delusion.
Robert Randle
776 Commerce St.
#B-11
Tacoma, WA 98402
October 7, 2014
