(Cursed to forever chase what we can not know)
I feel guilty writing a post this morning after posting such a poor one from last night/yesterday, but what can a blogger do? The blog must go on. I have chosen an article that CS sent as the basis for today's post. We will see where that takes us.
So much that I had learned concerning racism while growing up is now considered inadequate, or worse: iniquitous. Merely treating people with respect and as social equals, we are now informed, is just another way of ignoring your implicit distaste for others, which masks your desire to subjugate them. There is no need to register or record this unconscious merging of distaste and desires, it informs all that we do and think and can possibly know on the subject, but does so mostly without our conscious knowledge. Race is today's Victorian sex. It secretly controls all of our motivations. Just look around and you will see evidence of it everywhere. Denial is the ultimate proof of its existence, and what attaches its strange power to its willfully unwitting adherents.
So, to be clear, I am not denying the existence of racism, nor would I. I'm just not entirely sure that it functions in the manner which we are currently being told it does. I am convinced that there is some truth to the claims that racism affects each of us in ways we do not quite understand, and yet I also feel that these claims are not enough to satisfy the burden of proof that it controls our conscious minds without our knowledge. Racism exists. That much seems abundantly clear. Does it drive all social interactions? Of that, the evidence is scattered and difficult to collect in an empirical manner. We must each trust our feelings, in spite being told that is the very danger we face. Not all feelings are created equal.
But you're white!, cries the chorus, Just like the Trumps! That I refuse to acknowledge this basic social/racial fact is proof positive of my inherent moral failings. All that it takes is to interact briefly with racially informed individuals and they will point to this always conversation-aborting fact. You must be woke if you hope to avoid racial slumber.
Those who have studied the matter seem to conclude that race is a biological fiction, that the term is used mostly as one of social convenience. I do not mean that having a particular race is convenient, only that the term is used to describe people whose ancestral lineage stems from various and differing places on earth. Once you move past the arbitrary quality of skin color the science is, for the most part, settled. Race is no longer a scientific question or matter for serious biological inquiry. It simply does not exist in the way that it is being discussed in social circles. In this case, we are not encouraged to trust the science, because it also lacks the unquestioned objectivity that only the woke can provide. One must swear allegiance with, and demonstrate sufficient levels of, anti-racism to have the mob move on to seek allegiance elsewhere. Once the dialectic of racist/anti-racist has been firmly established, the conversation can then proceed.
I have some familiarity with how these type of morally oppositional dynamics are formed. Many may see the following analogy as insulting and indicative of the very problems they are describing. I hope so. That connection is vital to the point I am trying to make.
When I was a barely pubescent teenager I walked around my hometown with an evangelical Christian group and stopped random people to discuss "the sin of abortion." We were given brief huddle-style training on how to frame the questions and how to respond when anyone posited rationale over morality. The sin of killing babies was where to keep the conversation headed. Do not let the demonic forces of reason dissuade from God's righteous purpose, etc.
It did not seem to matter to the youth instructors that engaging random people in this way might cause some emotional anguish. That was the point, to find a way in that precluded any response other than guilt and shame, even if it was only just the sins of pride or apathy. Always it was pride and apathy that kept the sinful from accepting their sins. Sin blinds its victims to its curse. Once the morality of the issue had been successfully bifurcated and Satan kept at bay by His eternally loving sacrifice there was only the individual coming to Jesus left to see through to its glorious completion, usually with hands-on public and private prayer.
It is impossible to say how many souls I saved, though my guess is fewer than one.
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