Americans, Canadians and Britons are about to celebrate a half-century of treating race as a taboo subject. As a result, most of us are ill-informed about race and ethnicity and unequipped to talk about it.
Now we have two kinds of people talking about race: the deniers and the realists. The deniers insist that we are all the same under the skin, and that there's no reason why we can't all be one big happy family -- the family of man. [Hey! "family of man" is not p.c.! ed.] They deny an interent trait of human nature -- the preference to associate with people who are like ourselves. That is, people who look the same, sound the same and have the same cultural habits and practices. Anyone who denies this is just closing his eyes to reality.
The other group is the race realists, and the race deniers. The race realists get no government (i.e. taxpayer) funding and little time or space in the lame liberal media, because they speak "race heresies" in a world gone stupid with political correctness.
Instead, we hear only the bile and vitriol of the race-denying ideologues who use stock phrases like "we still haven't overcome lingering racism". Denying race differences is like denying age, health, or gender differences. You're being asked to "overcome" what the eyes and senses behold. The very word "racism" is too vague to even be of use in educated conversation, because nobody can attach a definition that doesn't have many exceptions.
I regret having no solution to offer. Racism is like the weather. Everyone -- or at least the liberal media -- never stop talking about it, but no-one does anything about it. Why? Because it's a part of human nature.
No comments:
Post a Comment