Saturday, April 4, 2015

Prejudice or Racism?

Three years ago, I wrote an article on Race and Racism. I was recently watching a couple older TV series when what the characters said struck an "Ah ha!" chord within me. It seems that in the 1970s and 1980s people had enough brains to call a spade a spade and to do so accurately and correctly. It seems that intelligence to rightly call something by its proper name was lost some time after these decades. For the last 15 years, at least, every TV series and every movie flaps their gums ignorantly about "racism this" and "racism that."

Diff'rent Strokes, season 1, episode 3 (1978):
Willis: Arnold, how could you laugh after that lady fainted?
Arnold: It's easy, I just open my mouth and out it comes.
Willis: What's the matter with you? Don't you know that lady fainted when she looked at us?
Arnold: No she didn't. She fainted when she looked at you.
Willis: She fainted because we're black.
Arnold: Oh, she did? Well, it's nice to be noticed.
Willis: I guess you just don't understand that some people are prejudiced.
Did you notice that he did not say, "You just don't understand that some people are racist"? It is because he said it accurately and correctly to the truth of it. He called it by its proper name.
Willis: That lady didn't fall on her face because she got jet lag—she got black lag.
Mr. Drummond: Now hold it, Willis. My mother is very fair about prejudice. She looks down on people of every colour.
Did you notice that he did not say, "My mother is very fair about racism"? It is because he said it accurately and correctly to the truth of it. He called it by its proper name.

Doogie Howser, M.D., season 1, episode 20 (1989):
Doogie: Vinnie, do you have any black friends?
Vinnie: Yeah, sure.
Doogie: Really? I mean, guys you hang with, not just guys you know?
Vinnie: I don't really hang with them but I know a lot of them.
Doogie: Me too. But I don't really have any black friends.
Vinnie: So?
Doogie: So I wonder why I don't. Maybe Raymond was right about us, maybe we are prejudiced.
Did you notice that he did not say, "Maybe we are racist"? It is because he said it accurately and correctly to the truth of it. He called it by its proper name.

As I stated in my previous article, racism is a misnomer. It is a misleading term. There is no such thing as race or racism because there only exists the human race. If such things as The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars or Star Trek were real, then we would have such a thing as racism because there would exist different races with which to be racist against. However, on planet Earth every single person belongs to the same race. Skin colour is not a race. Ethnicity is not a race. The correct terminology to be used is "prejudice." White people who dislike black people or black people who dislike white people are prejudicednot "racist." It is no different than a fat person not liking a skinny person or a skinny person not liking a fat person. To call it racism would entail that they dislike or hate the entire human race, regardless of colour or ethnicity, because that is the only race that exists on this planet and in this universe.

It would seem that the only people who refer to this type of prejudice as "racism" are the ignorant and unlearned. Anyone who has the slightest inkling of intelligence and knows what he/she is talking about will call it accurately and correctly what it is: prejudice. Acts 17:26 declares, "He made from one blood, every nation of mankind..." God created Adam and Eve, a single race of humans. The rest of mankind's lineage is as follows: Adam → Seth → Enosh → Kenan → Mahalalel → Jared → Enoch → Methuselah → Lamech → Noah → Shem, Ham, and Japheth. After the flood, you had a single family of mankind to replenish the Earth. The descendants of Shem are what we know to be Asians. The descendants of Ham are what we know to be Africans. The descendants of Japheth are what we know to be Europeans. Despite the differences that appeared within their skin colour, all these people do not belong to different "races." The Bible refers to the different people groups as "nations, tribes, languages, and people." Never as "race," because they all belong to a single race—the human race, mankind.
 
To those who are guilty of it, stop repeating the cycle of ignorance by calling it something that does not exist. There is no such thing as "racism." The correct terminology for this attitude/behaviour is prejudice. If you cannot address it correctly, then do not attempt to address it at all!