Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Race & Racism


Most of us were taught to associate race with skin color. As result, a lot of people still believe that there are about 4 to 5 different races today. This racial concept has been rooted in most of our cultures and has given birth to prejudice, bigotry, and all the elements of racism. Prior to reading these series of essays, I had heard or seen the term human race, but never paid attention to its true meaning. When I was about 11 years old, my late grandfather tried to explain it to me, but I could not understand his approach because it was too political. He grew up a catholic and served in the church throughout his life. As a young man, he wanted to become a priest, but for some unknown reasons, he became an educator, got married, and started a family. During that time, most if not all of catholic priests in Haiti were either an old white man from France, Canada, or Belgium. He said to me, no one is better than you, respect and treat everyone as you would want them to respect and treat you no matter who they are and what they look like, always try to finish what you start, and try to excel in all that you do, but keep in mind there are those who will always try to use their skin color and power to oppress you. Do not let that hinder you, he added! Now I know what he was trying to imply. We are all equal in terms of race because there is only one (the human race). The exploitation of the term race by many people especially those of European countries or descents to justify their behaviors and acts of prejudice should stop. There is no such thing as a superior, an in between, or an inferior race. The world is simply painted with different shades of colors that make it what it is today. Obviously and understandably, racism or its conceptual beliefs or practices are so culturally embedded it is and will probably be hard to teach the next generations otherwise. My hope is the original mitochondrial Eve DNA research of 1987 by Rebecca L. Cann, Mark Stoneking and Allen C. Wilson and the book “Out of Africa’s Eden” by Stephen Oppenheimer will be read and will begin to make sense to people of various ethnic backgrounds for them to understand how we all got here. In addition, different type of skin pigmentations will scientifically be known as simply climatic changes and adaptations as we migrated around world from Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago.

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