racism is not a point of view

For the first time, in more than 100
blog posts, I’m not using an illustrating photo.  The reason is simple; the pictures would be
too shocking, too revolting, too despicable. 
That’s what racism is and it’s much more than that.  Racism is the immediate and real
manifestation of the worst evil that exists in the world today.  Racism has kept humanity on the brink of
total destruction since man has developed the tools to totally wipe itself off
the face of the planet.

Racism is insidious.  If you aren’t infected by it, you can be sure
most of your friends, most of your family, most of your neighbors, almost everyone
else, is.  I know that from more than 69 years’
experience.   Racists are not born.  There are no racists children.  Racists are created; here’s the recipe for turning
an innocent child into a racist.  First
you must teach them to blame someone else for all of the less than pleasant
manifestations in their lives.  Then you
must give them someone else to blame for those manifestations.  If you do that really well, you will create
fear in the child and that fear must have an outlet.  The outlets of the racists range from
segregation to war to genocide and from favoritism to deprivation to hanging.

As a child, my immediate family was
made up of more than 100 people; 97 of them were racists.  It doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar or a rocket scientist
to see that the odds of me being a racist were at least 97%.  So much for the odds: I’m not a racist and I’ve
never been tempted by racism.  The primary
reason I’m not a Racists is simple; my father, and both my grandfathers weren’t.  There were no racists debates, arguments, or
fights in my family when any one of those three was present.  Think about that for a second.  The three men who weren’t racists were so
grounded in their personal Truth that racism was never a topic or even a
conversational innuendo when they were present.

Those three men, without a word or a
demonstration, inoculated me against the most invasive of all viruses – racism.  I owe them everything for that, but I’m
wondering if I’ve failed them.  I’ve been
wondering that since an acquaintance forwarded an e-mail to me last
Monday.  The message was a justification
for white racism, a dark force that cannot be justified.  I deleted the message and e-mailed:

“I’m
surprised that you would read this and even more surprised that you would
forward it to me.” 

The response was, and I quote:

“And
that, as you know my dear friend, is why people have died to protect this
country. So that we can each have a different point of view.”

That brings me back the title of this
post – Racism Is Not a Point of View. 
It isn’t.  Not by any stretch of
the imagination.  Racism poisons the mind
of those who have embraced it, and it kills those toward whom it is aimed.  We are a band of more than seven billion
people, sharing a rather small planet, in an obscure corner of the
universe.  We cannot much longer endure
the evil, the racism that threatens to destroy us all. 

We must, as individuals, look inside
ourselves, find every trace of this insidious infection and purge ourselves of
it.  Then, and only then, can we stand up
for Truth and for each other.  Then, and
only then, will “justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty
stream.” ***

 

**** Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – A
man who understood, practiced, and lived the truth that all men are created
equal.

 

The Great Dictator is a comedy film
directed by and starring Charlie Chaplin. First released in October 1940, it
was Chaplin’s first true talking picture, and more importantly was the only
major film of its period to bitterly satirize Nazism and Adolf Hitler. In the
film Chaplin plays two characters who look strikingly similar- a Jewish barber
and a dictator who looks like Adolf Hitler. Near the end of the film, after a
series of far-flung mishaps, the dictator gets replaced by his look-alike, the
barber, and is taken to the capital where he is asked to give a speech.