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Does racism really exist or is it a label we use to suggest to ourselves that some of the worst excesses of human behavior, however feebly, can be explained away, rather than admit to a much broader and more fundamental flaw in our nature?
For example, when the people of one color are more powerful than those of another, they exploit that advantage in everything from wage rates through to the atrocities committed by the KKK. But that exact same behavior is seen whenever one group is stronger than another, whether the separation is race, religion, economics or whatever.
Unscrupulous politicians have often played the race card to gain support. But Hitler used Jews in the same way and arguably, George Bush got elected by playing the issue of gay marriage like that. Emotive appeals are often more effective than appeals to logic and reason and it hardly seems to matter what issue is nominally the focus.
For myself, I really don't see a person's color, but then I don't care what his religious beliefs are either, nor how much money he may have in the bank. But I still have mainly white friends, most of them are in the same social-economic class as I am and can take religion or leave it. So on the face of it I'm a racist, a snob and anti-religious.
Which of course is rubbish, because we also tend to make friends with people who enjoy the same entertainment, the same sports, the same music, people who dress and behave as we do. It is not considered to be wrong to make that kind of distinction, but they are the factors which cumulatively go a long way to determining the color of our friends' skins and which side of the tracks they live.
We often see racism where none exists but we also avoid the reality that racism is a symptom of something basic in the human psyche. I don't know that being more honest with ourselves would achieve much, but until we are, we cannot begin to deal properly with that dark side of our nature.
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