MLK Jr. day of course spurred discussions about race and the USA. While these matters are always on my mind, given the various "races" (ooh I detest the vagueness of that term!) of my friends and, of course extra-special people in my life (and also the overwhelming non-white crowd of prisoners I know), I have been pondering these matters more than usual. Maybe it's because Feb. is Black History Month (yes, the shorest month of the year!) and TV has been spattered with commercials featuring snippets of African-American history, etc. Or maybe it's because I've been reading Ralph Ellison and R. Wright again lately (has Wright ever had a sympathetic white character, one who wasn't tar and feathering innocent black youths and watching their bodies burn like candles in the Southern night?!) Or maybe it's because today on the news the reporters smeared the Church with hateful speech, just because we happen to welcome Mexicans into this country?
Whatever the reason, I just feel compelled to re-state the already obvious. Any and all racism is a sin against God and His Creation, because man was made in His Image: not white man, or black man, or brown man, but all men, and unequality between men runs deeper than skin tone or ethnicity.
What I can't reconcile in my brain, and what I could never reconcile, is how someone can say: "I will never marry a member of another race," but then marry someone whose skin resembles them, but whose values and opinions are so opposite! What kind of a world is this, where religion, politics, morals and views mean nothing at all, and skin tone means everything? I'm using hyperbole of course, but I can't say how many people--white, black, Asian, Native American--seem to put race ahead of what really matters. The Church frowns upon "mixed marriages." "Mixed" here means different religions. A Jew will naturally have tension marrying a Catholic. If there is no tension, this is because neither actually believes in his religion. My friend B this year is marrying another Jew. She searched for a Jew. She broke up with her last boyfriend in no small part because he wasn't Jewish. She commends me for wanting to marry another Catholic. This makes sense to me. But commonly here in America, there seems to be a reversal of this belief. Here we frown upon "mixed marriages," but not in regards to religion: differentness of skin. How does this make any sense at all?
But it's everywhere: people tell me upfront they would never date a person of another race. And look at TV: who has ever seen even one commercial displaying an interracial couple? But everywhere we are expected to mingle and mate with those of various views, creeds, and politics. It just doesn't make any sense.
I'm not sponsoring interreligious bloody battles or condemning tolerance of opposing views. But I'm contrasting these ideas to show how strange it is that a person's skin is often treated more important than his beliefs, his ideas, his innovations, his G/god.
As someone who is white, I am neither a racist nor a hater of my own race. My race is the Slavic peoples, who have like all peoples, done bad and good througout history. Mainly we have been poor, hungry, oppressed, enslaved (the word "slave" comes from guess where?) and murdered in droves. But we've also fought to keep our cultures alive despite the tyranny over the centuries, and I'm proud of that.
But a Slav resembles a Briton from afar, and some may link us together as one race. What do I have in common with a Briton? My ancestors lived near the Black Sea, the Indians, Syria, the Holy Land, Africa. I have more in common with the Egyptians than a Briton. But because of my skin tone, who will believe me?
This is all to say that nobody thinks globally and historically when speaking of race today in this country. One is black or white or Mexican or Indian and that's it, the case is closed. But the world is so much bigger than that!
I am neither racist nor ashamed of my race. Many whites in this country who are liberal tend to oppress their own ancestors, blaming every ill on their choices, etc. But what good does that do? The Europeans who settled in this country years ago where good and bad like everyone. The slave trade of Africans was sickening and the world knows it now. So was the German Holocaust, and so was the 1,000+ period of slavery my people endured at the hands of 3 back to back civilizations. Every civilization has condemned another and every culture has ups and downs.
So this Feb. I will remember as usual the great heroes of America who were of African descent: Meadger Evers, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X (he changed so much during the final year of his life), and a million others. But I will never forget that really at the bottom of it all, we're all human. The only differences are deeper than the eye can see.
