Ten Questions about "Racism"

It's ironic that for virtually every common house pet and barn animal we have two names - one for the adults and one for the children, to distinguish between them. We have "cat" and "kitten," "dog" and "puppy," "horse" and "pony," for example. We know that the difference between an adult and a child is pretty important.

But when it comes to "racism," however, we insist that it is quite unnecessary to have any words at all to distinguish the full grown ones from the little bitty ones. "They're all the same!" But, are racists really born with the keys to their pickup trucks and ropes for nooses, or do they acquire these artifacts over time? Don't we need descriptive words to distinguish between those who have "the keys" and those who don't? Are all racist really the same, from the ones in kindergarten to the ones in large corporation?

If we have the term "full blown AIDS" why don't we have the term "full blown racist" to distinguish the sickest cases from the no-so-sick? At what stage in its progression is "racism" most contagious? Wouldn't it at least be useful to distinguish between "racists" based on their symptomatic behavior? Or based on the severity of the progression of their symptomatic behavior?

Do we utterly lack this descriptive ability because we intellectually really don't believe that there is any difference between someone who prefers to marry a person of their own color and someone who chooses to kill people because they are of a different color? Are these behaviors really "all the same thing"? Does everyone who marries based on color also kill based on color?

I really hate the phrase "call a spade a spade," but I think it's worth noting that even in a deck of cards their are TWELVE spades, each with a different value. Even "calling a spade a spade" is more complex than it appears, because we have to distinguish between the "Ace of Spades" and the "four of spades" for example.

I'm not proposing that we identify 12 different kinds of "racists," but I don't think differentiating between "mild," "moderate" and "severe" cases would tax our minds inordinately. It WOULD require us to understand "racists" a little bit better, but that might be a good thing.

Wikipedia says,

"Psychiatry is a branch of medicine dealing with the prevention, assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of the mind and mental illness. Its primary goal is the relief of mental suffering associated with symptoms of disorder and improvement of mental well-being. This may be based in hospitals or in the community and patients may be voluntary or involuntary. Psychiatry adopts a medical approach but may take into account biological, psychological, and social/cultural perspectives." Wikipedia:Psychiatry

It's sounds like if anyone should be interested in "racism" it's psychiatrists. perhaps we assume that "racism" is merely a political stance, like "communism." And so we want to reject that stance forcefully by utterly refusing to understand it. We want to fight it, like we would a virulent disease.

But we forget that the first step in fighting a disease is to understand the internal mechanisms that allow the disease to take over the human body. We need an intimate understanding of a disease to fight a disease.

Part of fighting AIDS is recognizing that it can be broken down into two categories depending on the stage of it's development. (I'm not expert, but) it seems to me that we've realized that there are symptomatic AIDS patients and A-symptomatic AIDS patients. Are their also "symptomatic racists" and "a-symtomatic racists?" Can we be absolutely sure that we are fighting racism as effectively as we can when we don't even know how to identify the stages of its development?

I propose that the word "racism" is not a tool in the fight but rather is a barrier to further understanding. It says too much and means too little.

Is there such a thing as an a-symptomatic "racist" and, if so, what is the definition? What are the symptoms of a "symptomatic" racist? What is "late-stage" "racism," and what distinguishes it from the earlier stages?

When each of us has as much common knowledge about the stages of "racism" as we do about the stages of AIDS, then we will have come a long way further toward effectively fighting the disease. But if we don't even have names for the stages of racism, it's a pretty sure bet that we simply don't understand it well enough to describe it even in the most rudimentary way.

Like a cow or a bird, "racism" has essential internal organs. A veterinarian cannot treat a cow without understanding the functioning of the cow's internal organs. We have no commonly accepted words for ANY of the internal organs of "racism." And so it is as much a mystery to us as the internal organs of the human body are to people who have never seen a diagram that shows where their kidneys are and where their large aorta is.

The only reason we know where the kidneys and large aorta are is because we have humans among us sufficiently curious and determined to learn the workings of them human body that they have dissected humans and developed powerful instruments to see, identify name and understand our tiniest constituent parts and their interaction with one-another. They engage in this science often for the purpose of curing disease, and challenge of curing tests their scientific understanding.

Unfortunately, we have virtually no one in our society sufficiently interested in "racism" to bother to study and define its parts for the purpose of developing a cure. And so those who claim to fight and hate racism are just as irrational as those who practice racism on a daily basis, except in a different way.

ALL of us have faulty ideation - those who hate racism and those who practice it. "Racists" generalize about groups of people based on color and anti-racists generalize about "racists." Although our focus is different, we are all equally blind to that which we claim to focus upon.