If anything, the recent death of George Floyd by the Minneapolis Police was a tipping point in America’s notorious legacy of racism and police brutality. That image of asphyxiation created disbelief and protests all over the world. We have paid so much price for allowing systemic racism to fester our institutions for so long and damage relations with each other. We can’t let this go on!
I thought recently that one solution would be to disrupt ‘race’ just as technology has been disrupting our lives relentlessly. Let me explain! If I speak of GOD here, many may cringe because of religion. I am not here for religion because there are many in this world and everyone practices it differently, but we cannot deny that we are all GOD’s creatures. He’s our supreme being!
When GOD created mankind as stated in the Bible, Genesis 1:27, He created mankind male and female. It is clear here how our creation was done by sex only and there was no mention of race whatsoever. Let’s repeat again that race was not in GOD’s plan at our creation, only our sex: male and female.
Interestingly, while poring through slavery manuals I learned something different. During the colonization and enslavement era that began in 1619, the colonizers and slave owners with their deeply internalized patterns of superiority and dominance summoned Race Science to smart-test and find differences among the many indigenous people and slaves. Science went on to perceive blacks and other non-whites as inferiors, and this became commonly accepted. Later on, social and economic interests led science to establish cultural norms and other legal rulings that legitimized racism, racial inequality, and the priviledge status of those defined as ‘white’. Whiteness or white supremacy became a norm or standard for human while non-whiteness was a deviation. All those ideologies were reinforced throughout our society (education, law, law enforcement..) and exerted institutional control on us.
Responding to those science conclusions is in my opinion one way to start solving this race issue, and I believe disruption is key because our elected officials have shown a lack of courage in tackling this issue. First, since GOD created us by sex only (male and female), why did science add race on mankind to divide us? Would GOD approve? Surely not! We must reject science in this case and revert back to GOD’s original plan. Second, science kept throwing absurdities at us we can’t just accept everything. It claimed non-whites are inferior and this is farther from the truth. Looking around this earth, there are countless of brilliant non-white minds in every discipline. Third, our institutions have picked up after science by classifying, gategorizing us by names and races such as black, white, spanish, asian, indian, african american, irish american, armenian american, and people of colors. The list keeps growing in size and confusion. The ugly truth is those categorizations create more hierarchies or objectifications, and they should be dropped!
Folks, science can be good at times but in this case by bringing race to separate mankind it ended up with a ‘double sword’ division. That’s why we suffer so much racism, despair, pain, anguish, hurt, trauma, and distress.
If you are brave enough, start by disrupting race everywhere today and replace it with human race. Should you encounter documents or forms asking about your race, kindly decline to answer or reply with ‘human race’. This should serve as the beginning of disruption!
This is a defining moment for us and we can’t miss this tremendous opportunity to have important and difficult conversations or make drastic changes if we are to move ahead. The world is watching!