AN EDITORIAL
Anti-Black racism is engraved in most cultures around the world, but its systematic origins have been around since the inception of the United States. Recent related actions went under the radar because of the economic lynching of Kyrie Irving and Kawnye West, exposed the strategic and racist plans to remove the black community from the city of Los Angeles. “Gentrification 2.0”
The U.S. Census Bureau’s Definition of White:
- A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as “White” or report entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Arab, Moroccan, or Caucasian. <https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html>
Surprised? Why the separation and discernment of some racial profiles and the lack of in others? Why not eliminate all racial categories? The word race, with it’s many meanings emerged in the 17th century. What most definitions have in common is an attempt to categorize peoples primarily by their physical differences. At no point, from the first attempts at classifying human populations in the 17th and 18th centuries to the present day, have scientists agreed on the number of races of humankind, the features to be used in the identification of races, or the meaning of race itself.
Thus, race has never in the history of its use had a precise meaning!
The racist comments, and the plans, to get rid of the Blacks in the LA community by Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martínez, Council members Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, and labor leader Ron Herrera—all self-identified Latino progressives—recently hit the national news. Although some might have been surprised to hear four prominent Latinos express anti-Black sentiments, this attitude exists widely among many other members of this ethnic group. Non-Americans arrive here and earn their identity as Americans by expressing anti-Black prejudice. So says David R. Roediger, author of “Working Towards Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs.”
Roediger’s writing indicates that children are taught that however they turn out on the social scale, Blacks are despised more—more than Irish, Italians, and Polish, and many other communities who earned their identity as Americans by expressing such anti-Black prejudice.
Discriminatory and racist plans that jockey for power and economic advantages from other marginalized communities towards Blacks will continue to grow as the minority population grows. These communities might want to examine themselves and reconsider the idea that only one community-of-color can succeed at a time.
The sentiment is to “be anything” but black. Black people are the worst. Sciences says, there are no genes that can identify distinct groups that accord with the conventional race categories. In fact, DNA analyses have proved that all humans have much more in common, genetically, than they have differences. The genetic difference between any two humans is less than 1 percent. Moreover, geographically widely separated populations vary from one another in only about 6 to 8 percent of their genes. Because of the overlapping of traits that bear no relationship to one another (such as skin color and hair texture) and the inability of scientists to cluster peoples into discrete racial packages, modern researchers have concluded that the concept of race has no biological validity. The many meanings of “race”. Britannica
The community would do better to work together in mutuality as opposed to the alternative. American communities are all divided and looking out for themselves. But how is that working for us?
