Please don't forget Aryan supremacy, Chinese supremacy, Japanese supremacy, etc. It doesn't seem to end, the belief that one is superior because of an accident of birth. I'm not proud to be white; I had nothing to do with it.
I liked much of what you said… and especially how you said it! I’d add that, at least in America, it seems like it takes a couple decades for public opinion to catch up to reality. Currently, it’s socially acceptable to say disparaging things only about white people and Jews (as long as you say “Zionists,” even when talking about American Jews…) Even the most well-meaning comments about POC and trans people, for example, will get you fired and branded “phobic,” but you can say openly hateful things about white men with impunity. Being part of a historically oppressed group has some social advantages now, and vice versa for the “oppressors” group. There is a disconnect between the world and people’s attitudes towards it, or at least a time gap.
I’m not interested in trauma competition, nor am I saying “being white is so hard!” LOL. I just see so much racial obsession and division in a way that would have been totally bizarre even 15 years ago, and I think it’s actually harmful- for everyone. Whether you see yourself as a righteous victim, or see your group as embarrassing and inferior, or morally more pure through your suffering -thinking this way is never the truth.
This is an interesting take that can be expressed, as it is here, in no-nonsense, no bs language that actually means something, and can be understood without decoding. I like it.
Racism is a competitive relationship between groups for ownership and control of resources for wealth and power. Europeans got the headstart with genocide, free black labor, colonization, apartheid, and Jim Crow which mal-distributed massive generational wealth and power to whites. It's proven to be a team sport. Forfeiting the game (reality)? Racism will be here until the end of time. Colorblindness is an ideal, not truth.
"I am somebody!" is what Jesse Jackson told me to believe when he came to my mixed race DC area school in the '70s and had us all chant after him. My little white girl self believed him, and I still do. Like Rob Henderson, I had a "troubled" childhood and envied my black friends who had families and identities that allowed them to belong as brothers and sisters. Black is beautiful, as we used to say, and so is white and brown and every shade of man and woman God created. Every race been slaves, as a wise black friend once reminded me when I got too apologetic about slavery. Fawning apologies often cover for a noblesse oblige sense of superiority. We all have good and evil in our ancestry, slaves and slaveholders, rapists and raped. The only reason we're here is that they were all survivors who bequeathed us their strength. What we do in our own lives is what matters. Thank you for this inspiration!
That's cool, what do the millions of still-colored people who live with the effects of racist policies and attitudes do? How does society appropriately address a problem if we cannot accurately describe what it is? Why can't still-colored Christians hold multiple complexities at the same time - identity in Christ, made in the image of God as a colored person, racism exists, God is good, sovereign, and loving?
"I look at race—the deification and demonization of skin and bones by social color-codes—as idolatry."
Beautifully stated!
I don't think most white people give a damn about being white. It would be nice to be rid of the embarrassment.
Please don't forget Aryan supremacy, Chinese supremacy, Japanese supremacy, etc. It doesn't seem to end, the belief that one is superior because of an accident of birth. I'm not proud to be white; I had nothing to do with it.
I liked much of what you said… and especially how you said it! I’d add that, at least in America, it seems like it takes a couple decades for public opinion to catch up to reality. Currently, it’s socially acceptable to say disparaging things only about white people and Jews (as long as you say “Zionists,” even when talking about American Jews…) Even the most well-meaning comments about POC and trans people, for example, will get you fired and branded “phobic,” but you can say openly hateful things about white men with impunity. Being part of a historically oppressed group has some social advantages now, and vice versa for the “oppressors” group. There is a disconnect between the world and people’s attitudes towards it, or at least a time gap.
I’m not interested in trauma competition, nor am I saying “being white is so hard!” LOL. I just see so much racial obsession and division in a way that would have been totally bizarre even 15 years ago, and I think it’s actually harmful- for everyone. Whether you see yourself as a righteous victim, or see your group as embarrassing and inferior, or morally more pure through your suffering -thinking this way is never the truth.
This is an interesting take that can be expressed, as it is here, in no-nonsense, no bs language that actually means something, and can be understood without decoding. I like it.
Amen!
Racism is a competitive relationship between groups for ownership and control of resources for wealth and power. Europeans got the headstart with genocide, free black labor, colonization, apartheid, and Jim Crow which mal-distributed massive generational wealth and power to whites. It's proven to be a team sport. Forfeiting the game (reality)? Racism will be here until the end of time. Colorblindness is an ideal, not truth.
"I am somebody!" is what Jesse Jackson told me to believe when he came to my mixed race DC area school in the '70s and had us all chant after him. My little white girl self believed him, and I still do. Like Rob Henderson, I had a "troubled" childhood and envied my black friends who had families and identities that allowed them to belong as brothers and sisters. Black is beautiful, as we used to say, and so is white and brown and every shade of man and woman God created. Every race been slaves, as a wise black friend once reminded me when I got too apologetic about slavery. Fawning apologies often cover for a noblesse oblige sense of superiority. We all have good and evil in our ancestry, slaves and slaveholders, rapists and raped. The only reason we're here is that they were all survivors who bequeathed us their strength. What we do in our own lives is what matters. Thank you for this inspiration!
Amen!
A more realistic aim would be for us citizens of predominantly African descent to assert our American identity forthrightly.
OMG
What is a trained theologian?
I decided that I was an agnostic in 7th grade. That was a while ago. Like before the Moon landing.
That's cool, what do the millions of still-colored people who live with the effects of racist policies and attitudes do? How does society appropriately address a problem if we cannot accurately describe what it is? Why can't still-colored Christians hold multiple complexities at the same time - identity in Christ, made in the image of God as a colored person, racism exists, God is good, sovereign, and loving?