JUST SO YOU KNOW THAT I KNOW

In a previous post, I wrote, “there’s never been such a thing as “systemic racism” in America … “ I wrote this assuming that the context in which I was writing would be understood. This was an unwarranted assumption. So, to prevent my being misunderstood and/or misrepresented I've edited my previous post to make it clear that I do believe racism in general has always existed in America. Racism expressed by one race towards another has always existed to some degree everywhere on earth throughout history, America not excepted. But, I do not believe and totally reject the false and vicious claim that racism has been and is “systemic” in America because white people specifically have always been, are, and always will be racist, simply by virtue of their being white. This is the false and vicious narrative being pushed today, which is in itself, racist to the extreme and a narrative that deserves to be universally condemned and rejected.

The most egregious example of racism in America, has of course been slavery (1) in terms of slavery’s existence here as an institution for 87 years; from the beginning of our Independence as a sovereign nation in 1776 until the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1873, and (2) in terms of the varied governmental and social racial abuses that occurred here in the aftermath of slavery. (It should be noted that slavery was injected into North America by the British Empire long before America became a sovereign nation; injected along with the challenge to our country of how to undo what the British had done here).

To be clear, I know that racism has existed and does exist in America just as it has existed and does exist in every nation of the world. But, I fundamentally and adamantly reject the assertion or accusation that identifies “systemic racism” as something inherent in white Americans, passed along like a genetic disease from white people to their white offspring; that being guilty of racism is inevitable and inescapable for people of one specific color, but impossible for people of another specific color. I’m sure that the vast majority of Americans, whatever their skin color, also reject the demagoguery, divisiveness and simple lunacy that is apparent, and the potential danger that is involved, wherever such an extremely racist proposition might be embraced.