Why are We Back-Peddling on Racial Color-Blindness? On slavery and discrimination,
First slavery...there has almost always (the last 5000 years at least) been people who were servants to others in anything after tribal nations. If you were indentured they would pay (housing in a safe location, food, sometimes even support for their families). The longer you worked for them the better the benefits. During raids you gained servants, you treat them well because they treated yours well and eventually they were either returned or became part of the tribe/clan. What we would consider as slaves, in the distant past, were not beaten because there was a certain amount of trust and respect was imbued upon them and there was a common dignity for all men. If you mistreated a person after they died those mistreated ones would become hostile spirits that would ruin crops, fishing and hunts. In later periods, there were a lot more indentured servants and there were people taken to ward off future raids and conquests.
Then came the ability to capture whole villages and take them greater distances to them where they became slaves because there was no commonality between and their captors. Still they had to clothe and feed them because they needed them to be physically robust day in, day out. The greater the distance the easier it was maintain control over them. And using captured slaves to control the other captured slaves.
No it wasn't okay or right but it is what happened but we as intelligent people need to put this behind us and learn to be a society.
And this society, in America, is changing for the better and in some ways towards the worst. The better is because there were blatant wrongs done to fellow citizens. These wrongs cannot be taken back and now there has to be a reckoning and I see this as an opportunity for this country to grow for the better for all the people.
This country was built by war and that war did not end with the signing of the Declaration of Independence; July 4th 1776 was the start of a war ... a bloody war. In some ways that war never stopped. The Declaration of Independence was not meant to be a stopping point with the amendments in the Bill of Rights ... it was meant to be a starting point. And at times it has been it has grown with us. It was written when there were only 14 colonies on a part of one of our coasts. Now we have a vast country with fifty states.
It hasn't grown enough. That does not mean that we should scrap everything and start over. Logistically that will not work; a quorum let alone a consensus would never be reached. We cannot do it with everyone shouting only their own thoughts and ideas, we still need a method of representation: a representation that all people can feel is fair and just: that has equality in its representation for everyone. But in the end it should be one person one vote. No electoral college. We have the technology to achieve this. Maybe it cannot be from our own homes: from our own personal computers, at least not yet. This is the only way we can achieve an honest representation of our people, without prejudice ... without discrimination. But that is politically.
How to do it on a personal level is a lot harder. It is a lot easier to be nonracist than it is to become antiracist. Even our 'color-blind' portion of society. "Oh I am color-blind", "I am not prejudice", " I don't discriminate". Crap! Do you go to their rallies? March with them, right up in front holding the banner? Actively go pamphleteering door-to-door in your nice WASP neighborhood? "Well yeah I am for them, I put 5 dollars in their tin at the grocery store. They were there getting sodas for the march they were going to." "But they never come out to my neighborhood!" "I am friends with all of them at work." "When they came applying for the job at work, I gave them all the chances in the world and then some." Discrimination Is an insidious critter. It sneaks in like a thief in the middle of the night. Ya got your windows locked don'tcha?
The problem is systemic. We learned it from birth. I am no better, I have to watch what I say all the time. I am also a victim of it everyday. I am White and I was raised in an upper middle-class suburban neighborhood, a stone's throw from my Catholic church. But I was a sickly child, plagued by chronic asthma before the days of inhalers. When I got sick it was rush me to the hospital and get me in an oxygen tent. I missed a lot of school, luckily I have an eidetic memory and was raised with books. I was a straight 'A' student. Dropped out of first year high school because I learned so fast they couldn't keep me interested. Went to work and got a GED. Grew my hair out long and had a car at 16. I was skinny still am rather effeminate in appearance with my ponytail. I get along with women great. But then there are the people who I intimidate with my intellect and my ease with women. I learn fast so I always get extra raises at work. Minorities think of me as a scrawny dude so they intimidate me. It has been going on all my life. I was raised to be respectful of women and to be a pacifist. Bullies find me to be an easy prey since I never have thrown a punch.
And I still find myself with some prejudice habits because I give minorities the benefit of the doubt and an extra chance to do what I would do or what I consider as applicable or have what a White person would want to have. But I don't stop to think that I am thinking the same way 19th century Northern landowners thought, that they want what a White man would want; that by giving them an extra chance I am not giving them the chance to do what I do not consider applicable or the chance to fail and learn from it. We have sat back and tried to teach them to be White people of European descent which is not what they want to be.
In college learning anthropology I learned Black Urban Vernacular but that was the 1980's a different time a different place. Hell, in 1934, the National Conference for Christians and Jews (NCCJ) came up with the bold idea of celebrating National Brotherhood Week during the third week of February. That lasted until the 1980’s. Totally different time and place.
So I ask you what do you actively do to change this culture ... this country ... this broken world?