Henry Schulte
The author is a regular contributor to Voices. He lives in Santa Ynez.
Definitions of human race: “All of the living human inhabitants of the earth, human beings, humanity, human kind, man, mankind.”
We are all one race, and just come in different skin shades and variable face shapes. The shades are provided courtesy of the climate you originated from, hot desert or cold northern climate. I know most people know this stuff, but I want to make my point that the “racist” war is being fought the wrong way. And you can’t have it both ways.
One side of the argument says we need to change the way we teach, to dumb-down our testing, open “racial” doors so one skin color can get an advantage over another. For example, the SAT is grade-adjusted based upon your ZIP code and status. So those who really try hard, spend countless hours studying and who are determined to do well are beat out as others get a 20-point handicap before they fill in the first circle of the test.
The newest trend is to disparage, insult and attempt to undermine another skin shade because they just have too many advantages, while at the same time they’re getting all the advantages they can based purely on their skin shade. I understand the why, but like all things in nature, there is a balance. And now we have messed with that balance, and the cry of racism for every conceivable term is reversing.
I’ve written about this before, how the term “racist” has become the weapon of choice to simply shut someone down with whom they disagree. Elizabeth Warren, a perfect example of someone who wants to shut you up, has elevated the term “racist” to an entirely new level. She has introduced health racism, environmental racism, educational racism and whatever else she can tag the term to. How can we function as a nation, all part of the human race, when one side just nails your feet to the floor in an attempt squelch your own free thinking?
With the advent of blaming everything that’s wrong with America on white privilege, how come all the Democratic presidential front-runners, Bernie Sanders, Ms. Warren and Joe Biden, are white? And why don’t you hear more about that? Some of the candidates try to be self-deprecating and say they acknowledge that they’re bad because they’re white, but they’re still white, and according to the left and the media, they are bad people. So how do they fix that and move forward without the advantage of special “white” privilege? It’s kind of ironic how they’ve painted themselves into a corner, but they can still skate right on through.
Now there is no way I can profess to fully appreciate what it may be like to have darker skin. And there are certainly people who have been conditioned and raised with racist breeding. But America as a whole is a very giving and compassionate country. And over the years we’ve seen the evolution and acceptance of mixed-race marriages and gay marriage, and gays in general. When I was growing up, it was a fiercely anti-gay country. So the country has evolved. But I digress.
So who is perpetuating this racial divide? Well, for one, Trump haters use it as much as they can to say he’s a raging racist no matter what comes out of his mouth, and he’s the problem. They can twist his words more ways than a pretzel. And it works. But I don’t think they realize that they’re the ones who are actually continuing to add to this racial battle and placing themselves in a very difficult position.
Toss in the major cable news channels who clamp on to these issues and magnify them, embellish them, twist them and even lie about it. They are the real culprits in perpetuating a racist war. Shut them up and see how quickly things would quiet down. Without having the media to advance their “everyone is a racist” war, the left would quickly run out of ammunition.
So what happens when Kamala Harris and Cory Booker drop out of the race (and they will)? Democrats will be left with three white candidates. Can those three continue to leverage that everything and everyone is a racist story? Because they’re the last “white” ones standing, can they define themselves from everyone else with white privilege? Or will they begin to do the forgiveness dance and make excuses all the way to the convention? And once at the convention, will they continue to call President Trump a racist while playing the three monkeys of see, hear and speak no truth?
How are the Democrats going to play this one? Barack Obama was someone they could really get behind because it opened that door for them, a liberal “half-black” man. But even then, they continued to cry racism, regardless of the fact that he was elected by nearly 70% of the voters. And it’s ironic to note that prior to Mr. Obama, this racism stuff was background noise, but during his time in office, he was personally responsible for making it headline news, every day.
We’re always reminded that America is a melting pot. And for centuries it was. But times have truly changed. We are no longer melding as one but divided by whatever means to keep racial strife alive and then use it in a cult-like fashion.
We are one human race going round and round and floating in the middle of nowhere. Literally. We can’t go anywhere, except in a circle. So how come we’re always fighting with each other? And of all things, over different shades of skin color?
The party of tolerance better become more tolerant.
