If I look at you reading this now what do I see? Do i judge you by who you are (or to be more accurate the face you show the world) or do I judge you by vastly generalizing about things like your sex, your sexual inclination or your religion? So far we’ve covered those and shown I hope how illogical they are. But by a carpet mile the most widespread intolerance is that where we judge people based only on the colour of their skin. As I’ve mentioned before my skin through whatever accident of birth assigns us to the parents we have, mean I am white… any paler and I’d be mistaken for a corpse. But I had the good luck to be born to parents who were not racist, weren't particularly sexist, weren't homophobic and I spent from the ages of 6months old to 5 living in Leeds. (Which is a large city in Yorkshire in England).
One of the things about Leeds that coloured me for the rest of my life is it was a multicultural melting pot. I got used to seeing different colours of skin, different religions and the fact that you cannot and should not generalise. Simple mathematics dictate that at some future point the idea of skin colour will disappear as we all mix together over the coming millennia. There will be no black, no white, just people.
Lets try a little mental exercise to show how stupid racism is.
Let's assume that skin colour doesn't exist for the moment. If people started to judge each other and say for example people with no wisdom teeth were stupid, prone to violence and obviously must be less highly evolved what would your reaction be? If small groups of white sheeted pointy hood wearing idiots started burning crosses outside of the houses of people with no wisdom teeth what would you say then? No doubt people with wisdom teeth would congregate themselves into areas that those with wisdom teeth would basically turn into ghettos over time. Suddenly you’d hear people saying on news interviews “well we all know crime is far higher among the wisdom toothless hordes, so our prejudice is with good reason”.
Suddenly you might even see police officers shooting far more of these wisdom toothless people… some may even think it would be a form of extermination. The media may even be horrified at it all...but nothing would change it would only get progressively worse.
...all because some people were born without wisdom teeth. So how is that any different to skin colour? We no longer live in an isolated world where the idea of seeing someone from a very different culture, religion or skin colour is unusual. We see people very different to ourselves all the time. Is ginger hair any different really than dark skin? That fact that some people get to save on suntan lotion in hot weather is really no different to people who may have for example a larger than usual lung capacity.
If you victimize a group of people eventually they will stick together for protection, this will then be used as yet another excuse why they are ‘bad’. So regardless of the colour of your god damned skin, if you're an asshat I am going to tell you you're an asshat. Not based on skin colour...but based on the fact that you actually are a terrific asshat. Some people are idiots, some people are evil motherfuckers… skin colour plays no part in that. if you removed the skin from everyone right now could you tell the difference? What would you judge by? Body language? Accent?
I often hear how people being proud of their race is fine if you're not white. Do you know why I think this is? Its because every single time a movement of white people being proud of being white it gets taken over by idiots wanting to exterminate people, or march them into death camps. To take away any money or rights they have. THAT is why white people do not need movements like that. We already have white privilege, white skin isn't going to give you a greater chance of getting shot or stopped by the police. Imagine if you had to have a talk to your kids when they got old enough to go out on their own with friends about why it’d be a good idea not to wear a hoodie...or to not look directly in the eye of a police officer in case they shot them for no god damned good reason.
So the colour of a person's skin should never be used to judge them, and certainly not to judge them badly. Maybe we should start judging people by what type of person they are instead of if they need to buy suntan oil on a summers day. That seems to be a rather silly way to judge what sort of person someone is.
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