Welcome to the final installment of the “lovely” special editions. The past two months I have been studying and researching in preparation for posts that will be published in September and October. In the middle of this, I have come across a lot of discussion about racial identity, racial politics, and racelessness. The discussions I have come across have been twofold.
Part 1 – Is race a social construct? If it is a social construct then why can’t we just exist without it? Can racism be eliminated anytime soon? Part 2 – is it even important to be connected through race when we still have ethnicity/culture which is not a social construct? By the way, this discussion has been mostly about the white-black dichotomy in the United States. Racism exists everywhere but since I Iive in the United States, I can only view everything through the lens of an American citizen.
I want to be clear – this racial identity/racial politics/racelessness discussion is a very big topic with a multitude of layers. So many layers! My intention is actually not to go in depth on this topic in this post. I’m sorry this just felt like a gotcha moment! I’m not trying to be tease. Instead, I felt like since this is the Quotables theme month we could use this time to input some quotes by famous writers and philosophers. I want to include some of their quotes on life/humanity and then circle back to this at a later time with more in-depth discussion (maybe).
My plan is to not leave anyone completely hanging so I will answer the questions above.
These are my answers: Yes, race is a social construct. The concept of race COULD be dismantled but it won’t be right now because too many people benefit from our divisions. The racial divisions in this country are manufactured. The government (this is not a Republican vs Democrat issue…they are both complicit). The government and the media made a deal with each other a long time ago to come together in this against the citizens. Racism exists because the government decided it was going to exist. It didn’t HAVE to exist. It did not always exist. I realize some of you may be confused right now. Ethnicity is real. It is not the same thing as race. WE all still have culture. Culture and ethnicity can exist without the concept of race. People get these two concepts confused all the time in the United States. I go into this deeper in my book Just A Unicorn. (Order a copy today on Amazon. The book is under the name Lisa R. Cox). Well, racism was manufactured and continues to this day because the government would rather people of different ethnicities fight each other than question them about where our money goes. Yes, their hands are constantly in all of our pockets but it’s a sleight of hand trick. They are good magicians. We focus on fighting each other while they empty our pockets. We don’t even know it’s happening because we have all been brainwashed for so long we don’t know anything differently. Just remember: follow the money!
As a note: I promise this won’t turn into a political blog. I have no intentions of going political with this website. This is the most you will get out of me on the topic of race unless there is a special news story that I want to tackle.
Until next time…same bat time…same bat channel.
Mindful Impressions 