Racist or ‘Culturist’?
For most of my life I’ve been inundated with information about (and almost entirely against) racism. I lived in an area of Florida that was at one time during my life the most segregated city in the US, but I still knew people from many different races and backgrounds through school and sports.
Knowing people from almost every background, traveling the world, and still receiving a litany of anti-racism information (from schools, media, church, and individuals) would always get me to thinking and worrying about racism and prejudice.
I’ve thought about racism for many, many years and I am now at the point where I am wondering some things. I wonder if racism is really the issue. I wonder if “whites” are really “the most racist people.”
Where I am today, I feel like racism is a secondary to culturism. (I know culturism/culturist aren’t really accepted English words, but I don’t know the better word if there is one, and I feel like there should be a word set that means what these obviously would mean.)
I feel that all people-groups have shown that they are at times xenophobic — even when dealing with a foreigner of the same race. I have also seen people-groups come to accept members of another race based on their ability to assimilate the culture and cultural norms of the now accepting people-group.
These two generalized observations, among others, are what brought me to the thought that perhaps the tensions aren’t really about race to begin with, but only as a second to xenophobia or culturism.
Examples include people-groups of one race that are hostile or prejudiced against a people-group of the same race.
EX#1: North Eastern US whites prejudiced against South Eastern US whites.
EX#2: Middle class whites prejudiced agaisnt rural, lower class whites. aka — “poor white trash.”
EX#3: Urban and Suburban African Americans angry with African Americans who have assimilated into the primarily white, middle and upper class cultural norms.
EX#4: General white population (among others) prejudiced against white polygamists (a decidedly religious and cultural issue.)
The alternate set of examples include people who are of different races, but the same culture, who accept each other with ease.
EX#1: The “non-white” who is fully accepted by middle/upper class whites after successfully and almost entirely assimilating into their culture.
EX#2: The many concquered peoples who had assimilated into Roman culture after a few generations of Roman occupation.
There easily many more examples of both of these major observations throughout the world and through time.
Unfortunately, racism does step in after culturism and greases the wheels of prejudice, mainly due to the ease and quickness of determining that there might be a difference in cultures in someone of another race. Still, I think that it is culturism that is the root cause of these things.
One of my other questions was whether whites were the only “racist” people-groups in the world. After observing and interacting with peoples from all over the world I feel like it is pretty easy to say that the answer is no. In fact, I also feel fairly comfortable saying that it seems like many cultures are, to some extent, xenophobic, and perhaps concurrently racist to an extent.
This observation, whether correct or not, causes me to wonder if there might be some innate characteristic of people to be somewhat ‘culture-centric.’
I suppose I should weigh out what that would mean to people in terms of different personal philosophies, because contradicting personal philosophies usually bring about some measure of ire, but I am really tired and I have my busiest day of the week ahead of me.
Anyway, I feel good about these thoughts for the most part. I think that they are probably part of the truth about what is going on with people when they are feeling anything along the spectrum from hate to discomfort to immediate comfort and attaraction when meeting someone and sizing them up. It also fits in nicely with my philosophy of realizing that people are all people (and thus inherently very similar) and may act in ways that make me delighted/happy/uncomfortable/upset because of many factors… some of which may be cultural and none of which are ever racial.
Posted by David under Observations |