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LadyEllen -> RE: There isn't such a thing as 'races' in humanity. (8/7/2007 3:31:59 PM)
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OK then, Rule has mentioned my name and though I have so far succeeded in staying away from this thread – because its become incendiary, a little pointless and in places rather silly (from what I’ve read of it anyway), I’ll throw in my thoughts.
Firstly, the word “race” – what does it mean? Well, not a lot really except as a social convention to delineate between various types of appearance to be found in the population of the world in general. On top of that though, the problem with the subject is the application of generalisations in terms of character traits and behaviours ascribed to groups sharing a certain appearance – stereotypes. Every “race” does it to other “races” – all that’s required is for a group of type 1 to be able to identify those of type 2 and have some reason – and we being human its competitive often – to ascribe negative traits and behaviours to type 2 such that theyre not quite as good as type 1 and can thus be defined and treated with less respect. Natural behaviour unfortunately – we saw it in Rwanda, and to be honest whilst we cant tell the difference between one type and the other in Rwanda, they certainly could.
The same thing occurs even within what we might a single “race” – I’ll take “whites” since I’m most familiar with that type. There is the obvious American phenomenon of dividing “Hispanics” off as a type – sorry but theyre mostly Spanish, which makes them white as far as the rest of the world is concerned. And even beyond that, we identify even within the most closely defined type, lets say light hair and blue eyes, those due respect and those due none, based on their appearance.
So, whilst scientifically perhaps there is no such thing as race, it seems clear that it exists nevertheless, due to us observing recognisable types around us and grouping them together – nothing wrong with that, its natural for us to do so. Where it is wrong is where we also buy into the stereotyping of those types propagated by our culture – for its pretty obvious that theyre observably incorrect views by way of exceptions to them. And the worst thing is, even those spouting them and propagating them know that they are incorrect, yet continue to do so – because I presume, it bolsters their own sense of superiority to look down on others based purely on their appearance as belonging to another type. Believing that one is further up the pecking order than others is a fairly natural animal thing – we wouldn’t compete otherwise, even with our own type, and wanting to belong to a group which is defined by who is excluded also seems typical of our animal natures – exclusion according to appearance – “like” and “not like” is a basic means of identity and so exclusion.
The overall view I take on all this is similar to my views on much of what constitutes our animal nature. For like it or not, we are animals – but, we are also special animals able to override our natures by way of our experience and reason. If in this case we choose to follow the idea of stereotypes and exclusion and prejudice, we are being animals, whilst if we allow our experience of other types to affect our views and actions inasmuch as they overcome our animal nature, we become human – that special animal which has access to the divine in which All is One and it is realised that appearance is not What Is.
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