UNLEARNING THE NON-SENSE OF RACISM

Even though there actually are no “races,” there is just the human race, we humans are very skilled at making non-existent distinctions and treating other family groups as if they were of another “race.” The whole idea is preposterous from the outset. It is further perpetuated by the word “race.” Korzybski declared it a pseudo-word since it actually has no referent. That’s why as long as we talk and use the term “race,” we are so likely to end up thinking that there are different races. You couldn’t find something so common that is such pure nonsense.

Imagine what would happen if we eliminated the word “race” and substituted “family” for it. Then we might legitimately talk about family characteristics, the tendencies of some families, family cultures, etc. How warm and inviting is the word family! How brutal and aggressive is the word race. Language does make a difference and does influence thinking and feeling.

Here’s the problem. Once you invent the word “race,” and once you assume that there are multiple “races,” you then can create the hateful concept of racism. That’s the crazy and dysfunctional idea that there are good and bad races, superior and inferior races, that one’s race is always better than other races, etc. Try to do that with family and it just doesn’t fly very well.

When we deal with individuals, it is obvious that we are all different and unique. You and I marry individual persons who are different from us and it is love that embraces the differences and creates the collaboration. Differences by themselves do not inherently invite hate or contempt. Even in the small groups— a family, brothers and sisters are different, they do not have the same capacities, predispositions, thinking or emoting styles, intelligence, etc. Differences within your immediate family are obvious, and yet even with those differences, we do not separate into categories of superior and inferior. Here we can recognize differences without condemning them. Could it be that the category itself is what’s doing the damage?

But enlarge the size of the family and, for some people, everything changes. Now some people look at the differences and distinguish them into categories of superior and inferior and somehow feel entitled to degrade, judge, condemn, and hate those who are inferior. That’s what we call racism. Yet to call it that creates an -ism that works as destructively on the body politic as cancer works on the physical body.

Question: Can a person be biased for his own family without hating and condemning those of other families? I would think so. In fact, I would think that is normal and natural. A person should love and care about his family first and then with maturity, love and care about other families. That kind of bias is not the same thing as “racism.” You can be biased for your immediate loved ones and have no antagonism against others.

Can you be biased for your social group, religious group, educational group, ethnic group, cultural group, etc. and not be hateful, ugly, or inflamatory toward others? I would hope so. Actually, it is a natural human tendency for us all to be ego-centric toward our family and ethnic- centric to the cultural group we identify with. There’s nothing inherently bad or ugly about that. It only becomes ugly when we over-exalt our group over others and judge the others as inferior and hateful.

The newest invention to promote racism today is “systemic racism.” Those who invent that have taken fallacious thinking to a new level of non-sense. First of all, even the words reveal that we are not talking about individuals, we are talking systems. Maybe a school system, maybe a legal system, maybe a financial system– some system has bias built into it so that some people are handicapped right from the start. Martin Luther King Jr. and the other leaders in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s addressed bias and unfairness in the legal system. They sought and helped to improve laws so that all people were equal in the eyes of the law.

Equal before the law does not mean that we are actually equal. Of course we are not. And we will never be. Nor do we need to be “the same” in all aspects of life. Actually it’s the differences that drive us to each other, to complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses. The solution lies in respect differences. It is in loving people — all people of the one singular human race, not trying to get rid of our differences or to create conformity.

How? That’s the big question. How can we unlearn “racism” and move beyond seeing each other in terms of the limited, narrow-minded perceptive of “race?” The answer begins with stop using the word ‘race.’ When you talk about “groups of people,” talk about family. Talk about embracing, respecting, and loving people. The solution is not more legislation, the next step is the heart— valuing all people because they are people and ending the demand for conformity. Then the judgments we make will be about a person’s character, not the color of the skin.