Listen to this radio ad put out by aRicherLife.org (a public awareness campaign developed by the National Fair Housing Alliance) and see if you can spot the racism. (I'll wait)
Did you hear it? If not, then I'll spell it out for you. Here's the dialog:
First guy: "I grew up in an all white neighborhood."
Second guy: "I grew up in a diverse neighborhood."
First guy: "Everyone I knew was just like me."
Second guy: "Everyone I knew brought something different to the party."
First guy: "They looked like me, thought like me, acted like me - so my neighborhood always stayed the same."
Second guy: "They introduced me to different tastse, different ideas, different ways of doing things - so my neighborhood always got more interesting."
Together: "They definitely helped shape the way I look at things"
Second guy: "and they prepared me for the future."
First guy: "They did?"
Second guy "They did."
The announcer then goes on to tell us how great diversity is.
So, if you still don't get it, here's the racism: the implication that all white people look, think and act alike simply because of their skin color. That, my friends, is textbook racism.
Think about this for a minute... Do all white people really act and think alike? Think about all the white people you know. There are white people who are liberals, and white people who are conservatives - white Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Independants, Greens... There are white Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, atheists, agnostics... and even within the white Christians there are Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Pentecostals, Seventh-Day Adventists... There are white Packer fans, Bronco fans, Laker fans, Celtic fans... white soccer fans, baseball fans... white scientists, white vegetarians, meat lovers, broccoli haters... well you get the picture.
If all white people thought and acted alike, they'd all be Libertarian Ron Paul supporters and Black Sabbath fans whose favorite football team was the Denver Broncos. (I'm pretty sure that's not true.) And that's because diversity is not due to the color of one's skin - diversity comes from our uniqueness as human individuals. So not all white people think and act alike, and not all black people think and act alike (and I'll save you the suspense; neither do all brown, red, yellow or any color in between). There is no race that thinks and acts alike simply because their skin is the same color.
To think otherwise is to be a racist.
I wonder if you would like to continue the discussion here?
ReplyDeleteI recommend to you an article on Individualism that was published at the Catholic site The Crisis yesterday on the thought of John Courtney Murray,:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2012/barbaric-fragmentation-john-courtney-murray-foresaw-the-u-s-united-in-confusion
"Note the perverse nature of the civil religion of freedom—it serves as the underlying spiritual capital by which a people are formed, and yet it forms a people united only in their mutual alienation from each other"
When you say
ReplyDelete"you can voluntarily leave any nation or group."
you are using "nation" in a very liberal sense-a voluntary association like a set of friends or neighborhood.
But reflect on the meaning of the word "nation"--it is related to native, nativity
It comes from Latin for "to be born".
One can not choose one's nation or even leave it. Even if you go and settle in France, you would be known as an American and strictly speaking you would be a sojourner there-a resident alien, socially speaking, even if you manage to get a French passport.
Hi Gyan,
ReplyDeleteI don't know that your points affect my beliefs.
First post: We will always be sectarian (and always have been) so there can only be the myth of unity. Also, the extreme individuality offered as an example is so far removed from reality that it borders on irrelevance. People are social animals by nature. They will always form societal bonds. The kinds of freedoms a libertarian philosophy promotes is one where one group cannot force its will upon another. True, you might end up with a clad of atheists as the main force in society, but that will be because more people embrace atheism - not because the Church wasn't forcefully backed by the State.
Second post: While it is true that you can't change where you were born, if you choose to disassociate yourself with your natural birthplace you can do so. Many people do that when they come to America. We have always accepted them as Americans.