More On Racism
A comment to a post of several days ago asserted that racism in some form is endemic to the human experience, without exception. The response was a bullseye, so I’ll attempt to repay the “two cents” worth of commentary with a bit of interest.
In my experience this appears to be the case. To be human is to be subject to “triggers” of various types: the overweight female barista behind the counter, anyone with multiple tats (almost certainly a generation or two younger than myself), the male jock, hail-fellow-well-met who can talk of nothing but the Chicago Bears, or of any other permutation of professional sports entertainment, a person expressing a conservative political opinion – especially if they have a southern/rural/provincial accent, etc.
You can easily understand my point. There are certain ways of life, or of their visual manifestation that evoke a critical negative, a reflex of disapproval. Apart from a split-second pause for reflection, the default move is to close my mind to whatever that person has to say, to be blind and deaf to the world as they experience it. I am almost certain to miss the injustice, the disappointment, the unique understanding of how-things- seem, — which the person in front of me has to offer.
As stated in the earlier response to be aware of my own resistance to “others” is to grant the possibility of a new beginning, of discovery that the person I assumed to be unlike me, has a great deal to offer in exchange.
Perhaps refugees are most likely to impress us as alien to us. They are far from their country of birth; their manner of dress will be linked to the environment of their origin; they are desperate, hoping against hope to discover that break or two that permits survival…. Can there be any more radical difference than to the status quo within which I live, of which I have wide understanding, within which my basic needs have always been met, and within which I have influence? There can be no greater gap of difference.
I conclude with a quotation of wise words from Slavoj Zizek.
The task is therefore
not to idealize refugees
but to accept them the way they are,
equal to ourselves
not in their humanity
but in their unprincipled opportunism and petty perversions.
–Excerpt The Courage Of Hopelessness
By Slavoj Zizek p. 183
2 thoughts on “More On Racism”
Aside from a hardwired propensity to fear the “other” we are an inherently flawed species. Not because of some glitch in the evolutionary process, but because we are caught in between “then” and “now”. What is meant by that statement is that our senses and reactions were developed over hundreds of thousands of years towards surviving as small nomadic tribes. Much of who our ancestors were during those times is still very much who we are today. But today’s environment is nowhere near the same as the Serengeti plains of central Africa. Civilization, industrialization, scientific understanding, technology and globalization have all had a profound effect on how we interact with the world and our fellow humans, but the filter through which we view today’s world is still based on that nomadic tribe of pre-historic times.
Survival is a strong motivator, perhaps the strongest. Yet we are choking ourselves to death by ignoring science and instead embracing fear, xenophobia, and ignorance under the guise of what we personally FEEL is the best avenue of addressing survival and the issues at hand.
Only if and when we can take a hard (and difficult) look at our own behavior and take responsibility for our responses will we be able to change course. As articulated in my last response, the ability to pause and reflect on our actions is the key. Gut reactions, emotional decisions, and Twitter diplomacy are all tantamount to the guaranteed destruction of the human race. Remaining steadfast in introspection is the only way to move towards a last ditch effort to avoid extinction.
Flawed species!? Certainly that’s an interpretation of our situation that should strike a “all hands on deck” alarm. I think that the proclivity to react, as a pre-rational mammal either to flight or fight mode has always been an advantage to survival, but not in the circumstances that now obtain. The civilization that we have built, thanks to advances in science and technology is unsustainable. There are just too many of us and our cast off waste overwhelms the planet. I agree with your conclusion, — if we do not do something about the trajectory of our customary way of living, our days are numbered as a species, and perhaps more tragic, many other species will go down with us. Post Industrial Age civilization is analogous to the Titanic, a supposedly unsinkable vessel steaming through a dark, ice choked sea. Ironically as a matter of fact we know there is to be too little ice in our future, as the sea rises to flood coastal towns and cities.