Problems with Our Separations

                Recently, I have found a new perspective on racism. While I still hold that not every aspect of what we call “racist” is inherently evil (as I discussed in a previous blog), I do think I have better understanding of our problems. In fact, it doesn’t stop with race, but anything that we use to distinguish, and isolate each other.

                As I said before, motive is probably the most important aspect. However, even when hatred is not intended, sore feelings can come up. In fact, sometimes we don’t even know why we are offended. We have packed so much into this “racist pool” that we are confused about what it is we are fighting.

                I still hold that we need to fix what we consider evil in “racist” actions, but we also need to fix how we view each other. The thing that is neutral is “racism” is the distinguishing of a person. The evil lies in the hatred, isolation, or taking away the humanity of a person. These are three different parts that occasionally overlap.

                I’ve already talked about the hatred aspect here: http://ndmoharo.blogspot.jp/2012/12/my-problems-with-racism-and-anti-racism.html . The part that concerns me now is the humanity aspect. We use the ethnicity of a person as an excuse for an action that doesn’t belong. The stereotypes take away from a person’s accomplishments or act as a crutch for failure. People use the saying, “Asians are smart” to take away the glory that they earn when they work hard for a good grade. In contrast, it’s used as an insult when an Asian fails or simply gets a “B.”

                The same can be said for Blacks when it comes to athletics. These take away not only the person’s accomplishments, but also attacks when they “fail”. We give them a double standard that just isn’t right. Perhaps the people that suffer the most are the mixed-races. They are given more stereotypes to fulfill or fall short of. Yet that might not even be the worse part.

                Methods of separation tend to go too far in that they work to isolate a person. It is one thing to distinguish a human being as far as descriptions and accomplishments. It’s another to isolate as saying “he doesn’t belong to our society.” The most common example of this would be the phrase, “Your People.” This strikes harder to the mixed races who receives that same phrase from every side. Very few actually take a mixed-blood human as part of their culture. Even then, it’s refusing to accept that he or she is a part of more than one culture. Either way, we are sending a message that he or she is not welcomed as part of "our people," and in a society where everyone is feeling more and more left out, we do not need that.

                When we were children, skin tone and ancestry did not matter. If anything, we thought it was interesting and exotic. It was used really just to describe who we were talking about, with no hatred or stereotypes attached. Why we corrupted that, I cannot say. All I know is I wish we could regain that innocence.