When asked how do you stop racism Morgan Freeman replied "You stop calling me a black man and i will stop calling you a white man." It is that simple.
We are currently living in a time where the words 'racist' and 'racism' have been weaponised, it is a tragedy and one wonders how and why this has happened and where it will lead. What is fuelling this constant dishonest divisive narrative that all white people are racist, a statement that a few decades ago would itself have been clearly racist.
Every single one of us regardless of race, religion, colour, age, gender etc, is prejudiced, so conversely every single one of us experiences to greater or lesser degrees forms of discrimination on a regular basis. How did racism become regarded as the most evil prejudice, and why whenever society makes progress does the definition of racism expand in order to discover more white racists. Who benefits from that, what does it achieve?
Thomas Sowell said back in 2012 "Racism is not dead, but it is on life support — kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as “racists.” Now in 2021 the idea of racism is no longer on life support it has experienced a complete resurrection, it has risen, some people make a good living choosing to see it everywhere and as a result, sadly, it is stronger than ever. History shows that forever categorising people together and labelling entire groups as good or evil...righteous or sinful is a questionable course of action.
Witchcraft was not made a capital offence in Britain until 1563 although it was deemed heresy and was denounced as such by Pope Innocent VIII in 1484. From 1484 until around 1750 some 200,000 witches were tortured, burnt or hanged in Western Europe.
Most supposed witches were usually old women, and invariably poor. Any who were unfortunate enough to be ‘crone-like’, snaggle-toothed, sunken cheeked and having a hairy lip were assumed to possess the ‘Evil Eye’! If they also had a cat this was taken a proof, as witches always had a ‘familiar’, the cat being the most common. Many unfortunate women were condemned on this sort of evidence and hanged after undergoing appalling torture.
Depressingly throughout human history, (just like in the school playground where kids are singled out and bullied), groups of people who share some sort of connection, race, looks, age, nationality, religion have been singled out, hounded abused enslaved and killed on the whims of the powerful directing the actions of the mob.
One of the main ways racism is promoted is by looking back at Slavery, not a rounded and full history of slavery but a laser focus on The Transatlantic Slave Trade where African slaves were transported to Europe and America. (Conveniently ignoring though the African Tribes who profited by selling slaves captured from rival villages to be transported on slave ships) This in turn allows commentators to condemn all white people as being responsible for slavery. The idea that people today bear some responsibility for the actions of a tiny minority of powerful Europeans 200-400 years ago is absurd. The notion that centuries ago white people were privileged is equally ridiculous. The vast majority of the crew forced to work on slave ships were little more than slaves themselves.
Throughout history the powerful have enslaved the weak. The Roman Empire, The Egyptian Empire, The Ottoman Empire, The British Empire it is a depressing theme, one section of a society grows strong, another section of society suffers.
Then of course we have to remember the appalling way children were treated during the industrial revolution. It is worth noting that the British Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. The campaign against child labour culminated in two important pieces of legislation – the Factory Act (1833) and the Mines Act (1842). The Factory Act prohibited the employment of children younger than nine years of age and limited the hours that children between nine and 13 could work.
Children in mines, factories, working as chimney sweeps, were seen as nothing but slave labour.
https://spartacus-educational.com/Child_Labour.htm
https://spartacus-educational.com/IRtime.htm
https://www.chimneysolutions.com/blog/child-chimney-sweeps/
So how relevant is skin colour when we talk about human rights abuses, how different would things be if we were all the same colour? Sadly today an estimated 40.3 million people – more than three times the figure during the transatlantic slave trade – are living in some form of modern slavery, according to the latest figures. Was skin colour ever a motivating factor when it comes to slavery?
It is hard to keep up with how rapidly the definition of racism is updated and re-interpreted. Only a few decades ago it was fairly simple a racist was someone who chose to hate another person on the basis of nothing more than (and something as irrelevant as) skin colour. The current dictionary definition of racist is :- prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized. Which does make the latest crude attempt to divide us, Critical Race Theory and its implication that all white people are racist and white people themselves cannot be victims of racism...seem to be an expression of an idea which is born out of a racist belief?
Key tenets of Critical Race Theory
racism is not an aberration, but rather an essential part of how Western societies operate;
racism is often invisible, perpetrated not by individuals but by a system with inbuilt biases that discriminate against people of colour (POC);
race is a social construct, not a biological one, and can thus be dismantled as a tool of oppression;
calling out instances of racism, no matter how small (microaggressions), is a key strategy in exposing and defeating it;
the dominant ideology of liberalism — which favours individual rights above all else — falsely positions itself as both neutral and natural when in fact it upholds a system that privileges a white elite;
stories of lived experience from POC are a valid and powerful tool for challenging that system;
race is not the only thing that determines identity. Gender, sexuality, abledness and so on all contribute (the thesis of intersectionality);
anti-racialism — the myth of colourblindness, which denies the legitimacy of lived experience of racism — is the enemy of anti-racism;
incremental change is doomed to fail because advances for minorities are only granted when they are in the interests of the dominant group (whites), and are withdrawn when they are not.
The divisive ideology of CRT is slowing creeping into society and into schools this should trouble all fair minded rational people in society. The notion that one incredibly varied race of people are inherently bad and another massively varied race of people are inherently good should have no place in the education system. We should not be teaching our children to hate each other. Recent history shows us that.
https://spartacus-educational.com/Jewish_Children.htm
We have now reached a stage with racism, where for a white person to disagree with a black person can be termed hateful & racist. Any negative observation can be deemed racist CRT also talks of micro aggressions two examples given are staring at someone but also avoiding eye contact!? Both of these actions can be interpreted as subtle displays of racism. How do these views seek to unite anyone?
At the same time as this onslaught is going on media companies are falling over themselves to give people a platform to tell us all how oppressive, ignorant and flawed white people are... the attacks are relentless and to voice any objection is again proof of racism.
https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/yes-all-white-people-are-racist-eefa97cc5605
If these ideas are given credibility then the mob decides who is or isn't a racist. A persons thoughts and intentions become irrelevant, how they are perceived by others is all that matters. This continued weaponisation of the words racism and racist has the potential to make life intolerable for white children in school. If a white boy is beaten up by three pupils of a different race how would a teacher deal with that situation if all three pupils said the white boy had been racist towards them? If a white girl is asked out by a non white pupil could she be called racist if she refused? If we carry on down that road then it soon gets quite frightening. The threat of racism could be used for all manner of coercion, this is not scare-mongering these should be realistic concerns. The Labour leader ignorantly commented in the house of commons recently that refusing to take the knee is racist.
Added to all this we also have Systemic Racism to combat, an idea that society itself is racist. Look around...if society is systematically racist then it is pretty incompetent in that regard. Within politics, sport, entertainment... in all very visible areas of society there is an absolute wealth of diversity. At some point we have to ask the question what is it the people who shout loudest and most aggressively about racism actually want, because right now it does not feel like it is equality.. and on that point in a society that is and always has been incredibly unfair, where people range from the homeless to the obscenely wealthy and privileged, faced with such an enormous range of parameters, how would we know that all specific groups within that society are being treated equally?
When asked how do you stop racism Morgan Freeman replied "You stop calling me a black man and i will stop calling you a white man."
It should be that simple but according to CRT that sentiment is racist.
The Caging of George James eBook : Wright, Gary: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store
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