Have you ever noticed how a bigot will spew out an utterly hateful remark about another human being without knowing that what just came out of that mouth was insulting, demeaning and abhorrent?  Sure you have.  Every bigot and hateful person believes he, or she, is in her right.  And why does he believe that he is in his right?  Because some other bigot, probably his preacher, his mother and his father taught him to be a bigot.  A child learns early-on from her surroundings how to view the world.  If mom says that such and such a person isn’t to be trusted, or to be considered, or to be cared about, or to even be spoken to, that child begins to develop a sense of separation about that “other” person.  If in our youth a strange kid is singled out for his otherness, we will naturally tend to want to be with the majority, where there is acceptance and less ridicule.  I know that this is an extremely simplified look at how a bigot is born, but it’s for effect.  Bigoted people make more bigoted people.

So, what I am wondering is this; how do we break the cycle?  How do we help people gain a deeper meaning about the lives of human beings who are different?  More importantly, how do we re-program ourselves to think more about the inter-personal connectedness that exists among us, despite our most stubborn attempts to believe otherwise? I’m talking about the fool in Martin Luther King Jr’s sermon that I referred to in my last blog, but I am also talking about eliminating from our consciousness a fictional barrier that we have purchased wholesale.  What fictional barrier am I speaking about? I am referring to the myth about our racial differences.  Why does this myth continue to stand despite modern assertions by scientists (with very good, objective, data-driven, tested evidence, I might add) that humans are essentially the same no matter what color our skin?  It says something about the overpowering nature of bad information, or more accurately, about our infinitely stubborn nature and undying unwillingness to accept new ideas and throw out dated ones.

Racial differences don’t exist.  The only true difference among us is our geographic place of origin, the language from that place, and the value system that we picked up because we were born in that place.  Each place has its own traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation.  Good or bad, different or similar, our traditions are nothing more than a particular way of looking at the world that developed in a particular place. Most of us uphold the traditions we were born into because it’s what we know. We have ethnic differences.  We have cultural differences.  We have language differences.  We don’t have racial differences.

Centuries ago there was another race of humans, the neanderthals.  If I am not mistaken, they died off, leaving only the home sapiens as the only race of humans left on earth.  So why all this hatred based on race?  And why does it continue, particularly in the Deep South, despite the progress made by Civil Rights?  I ask this question because as a Latino living in the Deep South I am deeply concerned by the commentary I read and hear coming out of my neighbors’ mouths about Latinos and other minorities.  It sounds eerily familiar to words thrown out when Jim Crow laws existed.  Not too long ago, African Americans were considered inferior by their white North American counterparts.  Then the Civil Rights movement succeeded in passing laws that leveled the playing field (at least, that was the attempt).  Many a success story for and by minorities has occurred since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Yet, inequitable policies continue to exist, more people end up in poverty than end up in the middle class ranks, healthcare and education gets better for those in high income tax brackets, and hatred and “racism” continue at such a widespread level that sometimes it’s hard to see that there ever was a movement to end it all.

So how do we go about the business of handling this ongoing hatred and fear of the other that usually turns up in “racist” behavior?  I believe that we start by owning up to it.  All of us.  My fellow blogger, El Rafa, wrote in his latest blog about an experience in which a Latina asked him if he was offended because she believed he was black.  This interaction existed precisely because of an ongoing “racism” tradition that even people of color have adopted.  Like the child in school who doesn’t want to end up on the side that receives the brunt of ridicule by the majority, we don’t want to (if we can help it) admit our kinship to the “other.”  Maybe it’s time that we stepped toward the kid who was ridiculed at school.  If a great many of us did it together, then wouldn’t the bigots who insulted and heckled become the minority?  The presidential elections proved that this can happen.  Let’s see what we can do at the local level.  Maybe, just maybe, we might live to see the ideals of this country’s constitution become real in our communities.

Tags: 1964, bigotry, civil rights, hatred, hispanic, latinola, latinos, lucas diaz, martin luther king, mlk jr, new orleans, puentes, puentes director, racism

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Puentes Director. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.