2020-09-01

Most  Americans are racist, even those who think they are not because they believe that all races are equal or have equal rights.  Racism is an essential part of the American culture.  It is based on these beliefs:

#1. Humankind is divided into discrete races.

#2. There are only six races: White, Black,  Native, Hispanic, Asian, and Middle-Eastern.  (Some will add Jewish as a separate race, others will include them in White or Middle-Eastern).

#3. There are no degrees of mixing: each person belongs to one and only one race.

#4. A person's race is defined by ancestry and cannot be changed ever.  

#5. The children of White-and-Black couples are Black.  The children on White and Native are Native. (The children of other mixed races do not matter enough to have rules for them.)

#6. Race is one of the most important attributes of a person, maybe less than sex but more than age, marital status,  education, etc.

Science says that Belief #1 already is totally nonsense, not to mention the rest.  But even most progressive Americans believe that they are not only true, but *obvioulsy* so.  Belief #5, in particular, is for them not a matter of biology or politics, but a fact of language: it is part of the dictionary definition of "Black".  But Belief #1 already is the foundation and key element of racism.

This particularly American type of racism seems totally bizarre to outside observers.  It makes no sense -- until one realizes that, for the first 100 years of US history, the terms "Black" and "White" did not refer to skin color, biology, ancestry, national origin, or any other physical attribute.  "Black" literally meant "slave", and "White" literally meant "slave owner" (or someone who could legally be it).

Once one realizes this fact, Beliefs #1 and #3-#6 stop being stupid and make total sense.  Of course the part of humankind that was in America at the time was divided into "slaves" and "slave owners".  Of course it was impossible for someone to be "half-slave" or "a little slave".  Of course (in the spirit of the times) a slave could never become a non-slave, and a non-slave could never become a slave. (He had to be imported, and had to be somehow made slave before arriving in the country.)  Of course any children of a slave owner with a slave were slaves too.  

And, of course, the most important thing about a person was whether he was a slave or a slave owner.

The other non-White races are simply other castes that had to be kept subjugated, like the slaves; even though they were granted a few more rights.  Obviously, Natives had to be a race (because they should not have the right to land or freedom), Hispanics had to be a race (because of the situation in conquered lands like Texas and Caliornia). Asians had to be a race (to justify the their "virtual slavery" in the 19th century)...

Slavery itself was abolished in America more than 150 years ago, but the racism in American culture, as defined by Beliefs #1-#6, has survived pretty much intact.  White supremacism is not "the" racism, not a part of American Racism, but only a variation built on top of it.