We are all born sweet and innocent with an average heart size and free from racism. We lose the sweetness and the innocence as we grow up, and as a matter of course. But to lose compassion, and become racists with shrunken hearts, is to become stupid adults as well. There is nothing near as stupid as to think we are great with great thinking facilities, because we have such a wonderful skin tone. What is even more stupid, is to suppose that others must denounce self, society, culture, religion, country and resources, let alone whole civilizations, due to our having great complexion. When this great thinking is cause of great suffering for a great number of people, this particular and distinctly adult stupidity must be prevented, at best eradicated. For if it were not for the non-racists, who redeem humanity by doing the homework of being simple normal human beings, we would have all perished because of great looks.
We learn to make the wrong connections when we are children, and an adult whom we love and trust gives us our first lesson in racism, and sets us on a path of becoming people who are full of passion, devoid of compassion, and inhuman in fashion.
It usually takes place on one of those foggy days when adults come up with their shadiest thoughts:
Adult: You know this cute little funny boy you love to play with? We’d rather you don’t.
Child: But why?
Adult: Well! They are different.
Child: How different?
Adult: They eat differently. Everything about them is different.
Child: I just want to play, that’s all I want.
Adult: You know my friend’s little boy the one you hate to play with?
The one who does not like to share his toys? I understand his parents got him the moon for a toy. We think you should play with him.
Child (thinks): How stupid adults can be!
Only he has digested that although people are people and food is food, who plays with who is related to who eats what, and all is somehow connected to colour.
The child is now a boy and is ready for his second lesson in racism. It usually takes place on one of those rainy days, when adults think: how inconvenient that the rainbow must have that many colours, and they come up with their blurriest thoughts:
Adult: You know this nice, neat, well-behaved friend of yours? The one you play football with? The one you go swimming and camping with?
The one you tell all our family secrets to? The one you love to do chatting and boasting with? We’d rather you don’t.
Boy: What are you saying? He is my best friend.
Adult: Well! They are different.
Boy: What do you mean by different?
Adult: They pray differently. Everything about them is different.
Boy: Easy. Praying is the last thing on my mind. I don’t want to do any praying with them or with you for this matter, if you’d allow it. All I want is to be friends with him.
Adult: You know my friend’s little boy the big bully? The one you hate to be friends with? The one who thinks his father, grandfather and himself are all super men? The one who likes to call the shots when you are at his place? You could always play winners and losers, and could always switch to playing super and sub men, when you’re too fed up with the bullying. We honestly think you should be friends with him.
Boy (thinks): How stupid adults can be!
Only he realizes that although people are people and praying is praying, who is friend with who is related to who prays where, and all is somehow connected to colour.
The boy is now a teenager and is ready for his third lesson in racism. It usually takes place on one of those moonless nights, when adults forget where they have last left their hearts, and come up with stones covered with slushy snow:
Adult: You know this lovely fantastic girl you are going out with? The one you think is your first and last love? The one who makes you cry with laughter and laugh while you’re crying? We’d rather you don’t. Besides what would people think about mixing with mixed people?
Teenager: It happens to be non-of your bloody business! As long as the colours match, she could be Technicolor or even psychedelic for all I care.
Adult: You know my friend’s super boring girl with the super bank account and the super family connections you super don’t like? We like them and they like us. It is only you two who don’t seem to click. We think you should give it a try. What would you lose apart from your sanity, self-esteem and weekly allowance?
Teenager: How utterly stupid adults can be?
We tell them we want to play with the whole world; they tell us we’d rather you don’t. We tell them we want to be friends with the whole world; they tell us we’d rather you don’t. We tell them we want to be in love with the whole world; they tell us we’d rather you don’t. What are these adults? They are obsolete! They are dinosaurs! They are the lost generation!
They sure are. Only by the time he is eighteen, he has graduated and an adult and as stupid as adults can be.
There are some runaways who are never impressed with adult sultry talk that neither connects nor makes sense, or who were given a triple vaccine against racism, stupidity and superiority, early on. We find them in the being punished sectors of society for being the only non-racists in town.
Because when racism is the norm in society, only the mentally challenged think that skin colour is irrelevant to anything, including to coloured rice. The normal rest think that happiness, friendship and love depends on good complexion. So do good books, good music, good jokes and goodness itself.
When the norm in society is to cheer hatred, celebrate loss of compassion, and invent a God who loves some and hates the rest, it is abnormal to indiscriminately love any tree or bird in sight. To follow the norm and be normal, you have to check the colour of the tree first, and then decide if it deserves your compassion for being old, wise and strong; or if you must uproot it, because it had been planted by a Palestinian for example. Or if you decide to go bird hunting, you must first sort out the bird’s population into the white birds, the black birds, the red birds, the brown birds, the yellow birds and the mixed coloured birds. Then you must separate the ones you and God love from the ones you want to persecute or shoot.
In case it is people you want to sort out during a hunting season or under a threat of an endless war, to follow the norm, follow same procedure as with birds. If you have made long life friendships through having lived or worked in foreign lands, revoke your irrevocable knowledge of your friends and of their lands and tell them: I am sorry, but I’ve just realised that God does not love all, after all. We’ll just have to hate each other until this war is over. If it is as endless as they say it is, we’ll resume all relations in another lifetime, if God changes his mind that is. Meanwhile, let’s tear each other apart in good faith, and let’s be civilized about the whole thing. Let’s all hate each other. May God Bless Some! Amen!
When normal thinking dictates that while some people deserve to be killed; others if killed by mistake then it is really “worth it“, a pilot has to be out of his mind to refuse to drop bombs on families like his own in Iraq, Afghanistan or in Palestine. To follow the norm and be normal, he must drop precision bombs at exactly the time when these families are either having dinner, or celebrating a wedding, or simply walking on the streets, when they should be sitting at home, to welcome the house demolition foot soldiers.
When if you’re normal, you lie; a politician, a journalist, a writer, an artist or an academic who dares to speak the truth will have to be either nuts or bananas or both. Let alone a historian who refuses to repackage history and would rather sell ice cream. Because when what you do with people’s misery is feed on it, who but a banana split personality would say something as abnormal as: all human beings are human beings, and when a great majority live in misery, it is unjust and inhuman?
When if you’re humane you’re insane, only the runaways leave the comfort of their homes and go wherever human suffering takes them, from Vietnam to Palestine, and only the runaways think that inhumanity is something to protest against.
So, while the racists are busy being normal; self alienating, self adulating, self congratulating and self boring with what great complexion they have, and what great things they can and must do with their skin, to save humanity and civilization; the runaways are making all the right connections. They figure what connects orange injustice with burgundy injustice is injustice, and what connects royal blue poverty with baby blue poverty is poverty. In the same manner, what connects yellow people, red people, white people, brown people, black people and pink people is people, and what connects an ivory or a mahogany coloured racist is racism. They figure colour being the disconnecting factor, what connects people is their humanity and what disconnects them is their racism.
While the racists are busy getting disconnected; the runaways are working hard for a better and a more humane world, and would only give up hope, if parrots they keep in their offices, start showing signs of human comprehension of what has been repeated for centuries, before humans ever do.
Racism is abnormal. That it has become the affliction of choice and the norm is doubly abnormal. For any human to choose to be inhuman over being human is abnormal. To find it easier to live with one’s inhumanity than with one’s humanity is abnormal. For the inhumanity to become the norm is abnormal. To cheer this abnormality is abnormal. For the abnormal to call the normal abnormal is abnormal. For all this to become normality is definitely abnormal.
The only thing that is potentially normal and funny is adult stupidity. It gets ridiculously funny when a racist accuses a non-racist of being a racist against racism. Only having a right to be a racist is like having a right to be stupid. One can be either, but not as per right but as per predicament. That a great majority of people are either part of, or consent to this, or any abnormal normality, does not make it right. Erich Fromm, wrote in 1954 in “Dissent”, in “The Psychology of Normalcy”, (ZNET/ quotes):
“What is so deceptive about the state of mind of the members of a society is the “consensual validation” of their concepts. It is naively assumed that the fact the majority of people share certain ideas or feelings proves the validity of these ideas and feelings. Nothing is further from the truth. Consensual validation as such has no bearing whatsoever on reason or mental health. Just as there is a “FOLIE A DEUX” there is a “FOLIE A MILLIONS”. The fact that millions of people share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make them sane.”
So, why do we resist being normal human beings? Maybe for the same reason we resist simple walking when the norm is to fly or to sink. To be simple normal human beings becomes increasingly difficult and a challenge, when an abnormality becomes the normality. Who dares to be human when the norm is to be inhuman? Who dares to be normal when the norm is to be abnormal? Otherwise, we do not have to have suffered racism; injustice, poverty, war or death to understand what each is like. For unless we have lost all imagination, it is easy to imagine what thirst is like. Unless we have lost all compassion, it is easy not to wish thirst on anybody. Unless we have lost vision, it is easy to know what to do about thirst. Unless we have lost our humanity, it is easy to imagine what does it mean to be human. To find it is easier to be inhuman is the saddest and the most abnormal normality. Instead of losing our humanity and becoming either unfettered psychopaths, or riddled with guilt shattered people for having betrayed our humanity, what we must lose is our acquired racism. Then maybe, we would become born again people with normal hearts and normal levels of compassion, and would maybe, regain some of the sweetness and innocence we were born with and long for.