It’s rather interesting that for a supposedly non-racial society, every time anyone complains about anything, this government raises the issue of race. No matter what the problem is, this ‘non-racial’ government makes a point of bringing in racial identity either as an excuse for why the problem exists, or uses the race of the complainer as a way of attacking the critic.
It’s all rather perverse and adolescent, and I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of folks of all racial groups wanting to scream at the government to get over it, grow up, shut up and just fix things. That diatribe aside, I thought a look at this dumb concept of ‘race’ might be somewhat fun, and lead us into interesting territory. How humans operate because of this arbitrary pigment stuff has made for some interesting history..
First stop takes us back to the good ole days of 1948, and what happened in the US when a slightly darkish skinned reporter decided to go cruising around the Deep South, as a ‘black man’, and report on what he saw. It’s a lengthy multiple part series, and makes for fascinating reading, as its a glimpse back in time to a period before the coming storm of the Civil Rights movement. Settle in and read all the parts of I Was A Negro In The South.
Then it can be useful to do a sidestep into the psychology of this whole idea of difference and racial assumptions – whether its “clever Chinese”, “stupid blacks” or even “women drivers” – all of these are part of the basics of racism. Start off towards understanding a more adult reality via The Historical Roots of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’.
PBS have a useful online presentation looking at this race thing, and if you still have leftover mental stuff from the present or previous regimes floating in your head, then go do some flushing at Race – The Power of an Illusion.
To get an idea of one of the ways in which we all are a little different — and this is a site that Professor Higgins and other linguists would’ve wet themselves to have access to — go browse through, and download examples of the sometimes bizarre sounds of humans talking at the Speech Accent Archive.
If you were one of those regular folks who got an education in the traditional sense, then you probably never read one of the classic and cool reading books on race and racism, Go Tell It On The Mountain, by James Baldwin. Locally we have some weird idea that Cry the Beloved Country is the be-all and end-all of things, (sorry to pop that bubble). Read the reviews at Amazon.
Read some study notes on Go Tell It On The Mountain. Hopefully that might spur some of you into shoplifting a copy at your favourite bookshop and discovering something quite amazing. (Just kidding about the shoplifting part, really.)
While we’re dipping into distant race history, you might want to do some reading about a much maligned movement that began in the 1960s and was instantly targeted by the various intelligence services and the media for massive disinformation plots. Start off at a brief history of The Black Panther Party. Then jump to one of the Official Party Sites. And read about what the FBI was doing to the Panthers with its vicious secret program known as COINTEL.
If you’ve never heard of COINTEL, or don’t really understand what happened when the US government decided to turn all its powers onto slandering, disrupting and eventually killing in order to stop protest, then go read about a part of the 1960s that hasn’t made it into your history books, at The Sabotage of Political Dissent.
Gear change and dive back into a fascinating lengthy page looking at a wide range of the fictions created around race. (Did you know that the word ‘Hottentot’ means ‘stutterers’ – and comes from the Dutch colonists?) Read this article out of the Suppressed History Archive – Racism History and Lies.
Then not so much fun reading, but an awful lot of info for those plebs who desperately want to try and point out how bad things are everywhere else (although our 40% unemployment rate puts South Africa firmly in the global toilet as far as national prestige goes) – for a bunch of factoid articles on Canada, try The History of Racism in Canada.
Naturally you can’t look at racism without looking at some of its support structures – like science and religion. Something to add to your offline library of articles, is this long but very interesting look at society, science and technology — called Racist Society, Racist Science.
Here’s a Christian viewpoint, tiptoing gently through the morass, without actually getting too deep into the subject but still skirting the central issue of Christianity and Racism.
To get a vague idea of the mindset of folks way back when, read this modern paper dealing with Christianity Versus Islam: A 19th Century Debate.
Alternatively, if you’re really weird, go and see what names people have been choosing for their babies through the years. (I have to ask – what is this ‘John’ fetish by the way?) You can search from the 1890’s onwards. Go to Top Ten Baby Names.
Or if you have a fetish for strangely gloomy, but interesting photographs of the UK that the Tourist Board wouldn’t use, go and look at the pictures taken of UK Nights
Another gear change. What do you do if you’re a student and an artist, and really really like buying things? Correct – you make an online (and offline) diary of every single thing you buy, day after day – complete with invoices. And then call it it art, as the list of your daily coffee purchases increase. Take a look at Obsessive Consumption.
Then, if you’re a big data junkie, and have a decent PDF reader on your PC, then here’s a killer website for you. It’s
a website featuring PDF versions of about 175 front pages of newspapers, from 27 countries on a daily basis. Gotta love it. It’s fast and shows you exactly what the citizens of your country of choice are looking at. Go to Today’s Front Pages.
Until the next time, if people called John don’t get me.