“Racism” is invisible. It is a thought crime.
If someone were to be accused of theft, or murder, or rape, or arson, or any other actually prosecutable violation of the law, then there is a process in place for examining evidence, and making a reasonable effort at establishing, as well as the facts will allow, relative guilt or innocence. And in America, when we are unable to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt, then the person is acquitted and effectively declared innocent. There is no stain on their criminal record.
But if I were to accuse you, at this moment, of thinking about pink flamingoes, how could you refute me? And if I hired on a gang of people to support me in that accusation, how could you defend yourself? Simply stating your innocence? That you were not thinking that? No, of course not. You can’t prove what you were thinking.
ONLY THROUGH ACTIONS CAN WE BEGIN TO EVALUATE THE MOTIVATIONS AND THOUGHTS OF OTHERS. If someone can be shown to have committed a murder, then obviously at some point the THOUGHT of murder crossed their mind. And in establishing degrees of guilt–1st degree, 2nd degree, etc. which you know from the many crime shows you’ve watched–we are roughly estimating how much and how long this person thought of murder.
And if it was carelessness, we don’t necessarily call it murder: we call it manslaughter, or negligent homicide.
But racism, as the accusation is used today, is a crime without consequences. There are no segregated movie theaters. There are no “we don’t hire blacks” signs. No separate drinking fountains (although they seem to be making a come-back).
As I have said, even the use of words, of a racial epithet in public, is most likely sufficient to make national news.
So how do you construct a crime without evidence? How do you accuse someone of thinking something they most likely are NOT thinking? You concoct a cloud of meaningless words, which cannot be validated or examined in any careful way. You speak of “systems”. You speak of “privilege”, and apply it even to the illiterate children of coal miners.
And obviously, again, the WHY is important. Why concoct crimes, in pursuit of agendas rooted in lies and which benefit no one but those leading the Inquisition?
And obviously, again, the motives are as old as human history. They are greed, self importance, the need to express emotional dysfunction through hatred, the need for tribal membership combined with the observation that shared hate builds communities, and of course the lust for power and control and dominance and never having to say you are sorry.
History comes in waves. The waves are all water. They are all composed of human emotions that flow naturally from our biologies, personal histories, and the cultural history of humankind. The exact mix varies continually, but the primary colors don’t really change.
We are born for happiness. Our biology is quite equal to making us live as contented animals, and spiritual aspirants on this planet. But we fall very, very easily out of balance, and once balance is lost, then the water sloshes back and forth for a very long time.
It is possible there was global peace 15,000 years ago. We don’t know. There is no real record of that time.
Doris Lessing, in the most important book in what she considered her most important accomplishment–the Canopus in Argos series–wrote in Shikasta of a favored planet, that lived in harmony, and which at some point was shaken out of harmony some thousands of years ago, and which continues to try and return to both the ways of life that were lost, and the knowledge that was lost.
Critical Race Theory is a viral bad idea. It is a disease of very old origin. It is painted and polished hatred. It is a creed of dominance, envy, bad luck (in the energy it puts out), and at root laziness.
They do not make a list of existing problems they seek to fix. Just as the crime is invisible, so too will be their results, outside of ruining the lives of mostly good people to no purpose.