Being Racist

WE ARE ALL RACISTS. Rather, most of us are. A "racist" is a person who accepts the concept of races as inherent to human beings, as real, a person who believes that the human species, or human "race", is naturally and really divided into discrete, identifiable, recognizable sub groups based on skin color, independent of whether we accept the divisions. Someone, anyone who understands that different races only exist because people choose to apply the concept to our species, and that the concept is a mere mental contrivance with no tangible manifestation independent of our imagination, is definitely not a racist. Race is a convenient device for purposes of classification and simplification, a device to help us simplify a world of infinite complexity and variety. Since our culture has accepted race as real, rather than purely conceptual, which it is, everyone is a racist in America, the most racist society in history. No matter your opinion of one race or another, if you believe in different races, you do so only because you choose to, not because they are real. If you compare the color of your skin to that of every other person in the world, you will never find a perfect match. In the real world, we all have different skin colors. Often, in fact usually, the difference is slight, barely noticeable. Obviously, if we didn't believe in races at all, we wouldn't form opinions concerning their relative merit. My skin color is different now than three months ago. My suntan has changed my race. Line up everyone in the world, according to height. Everyone is one millionth of an inch taller or shorter than the next person. At what point do we divide the tall people from the short people? When we choose to. Tall and short, like white and black, are choices, opinions, not facts. Once we choose to accept race as real, we invent racism, by forming opinions, making racism real. People who do not know history but think they do believe that racism has existed as long as people have. They are quite mistaken. Before the middle of the fifteenth century, there is not a single reference to racism in the entire body of human literature. That's because racism did not exist, until it was invented as a way to justify the enslavement of Africans. Racism first appears in a biography of the Portuguese explorer, Prince Henry the Navigator, in the fifteen forties. In the ancient and pre-modern world, us versus them was predicated on geography, language, religion, national identity. Our ancestors invented racism, and we modern people have long since decided the invention we inherited is evil, and universally we condemn it. We are quite correct in doing this. We cling to our imaginary concept of race, but condemn anyone who believes one race is superior to another. We are right to condemn Donald Trump for being a racist, for he is very obviously a racist. The fact that people who support Trump accept the false notion of the existence of different faces, but claim that he is not a racist, and that they are not racists, is nothing other than one of innumerable examples of human self deception, and human folly. We simply choose not to notice how widespread the human folly of racism is; it includes nearly all of us. In many ways, we do not really know much about ourselves. It is indeed quite possible to be a racist, and unaware of it. Recently former KKK leader David Duke stated that he and Donald Trump share the same message. One thing for certain; a confirmed, unapologetic racist recognizes a fellow racist when he sees one, even one who either is not aware of his own racism, or chooses to try to hide and deny it. Racism exists because we pretend that races exist, racism exists because of an abstraction, a concept. Concepts whose only existence are in the human mind often powerfully influence our minds. When others identify racists as racists, racists often respond by calling the person who identified the racist a racist, a clever attempt at "turning the tables". Therefore, when a president of the United States tells darkly pigmented people to leave the county, the best response might be, rather than accusing the president of being a racist, to accuse him of being hateful, for that is inarguably true.