Alive and Well

Racial Stereotypes

Today's proposition for discussion is whether some people think the way they do because they are degenerate or because of their race.  The stakes are high.  If people genuinely think and act a certain way because of their race--that is, if their race is a causative factor in who they are and what they think and do--then racism is legitimate in at least some some senses and cannot be condemned or rejected out of hand.  For example, if we were to observe that all women have ovaries that result in certain determinative effects, who could accuse us of sexism?  It is simply a descriptive statement of biological fact.

So, is race determinative  of people's actions, thoughts, and words? Apparently lots of people think so--so much so, that many folk get apoplectic if they find someone of a particular race not acting and thinking the way they believe their race determines them to act or think.
  Michelle Malkin describes some cases:

This made my heart ache and my blood pressure spike: Actress Tamera Mowry, who is black, wept in an interview with Oprah Winfrey over the vile bigotry she has encountered because of her marriage to Fox News reporter Adam Housley, who is white. Misogynist haters called Mowry a sellout and a “white man’s whore.” International news outlets labeled the Internet epithets she endured “horrific” and “shocking.”  Horrific? Yes. Shocking? Not at all. What Mowry experienced is just a small taste of what the intolerance mob dishes out against people “of color” who love, think and live the “wrong” way.

Probably one of the worst instances is the opprobrium and hatred of Clarence Thomas--a US Supreme Court Justice and man of colour--who just happens to be married to a lady of pale colour.  Apparently Thomas did not think and act the way is race required and determined him to think and act. 

Have you forgotten Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was excoriated by black liberals for being married to wife Virginia, who happens to be white? The critics weren’t anonymous trolls on the Internet. They worked for major media outlets and institutions of higher learning. USA Today columnist Barbara Reynolds slammed Thomas and his wife for their colorblind union: “It may sound bigoted; well, this is a bigoted world and why can’t black people be allowed a little Archie Bunker mentality? … Here’s a man who’s going to decide crucial issues for the country and he has already said no to blacks; he has already said if he can’t paint himself white he’ll think white and marry a white woman.”

Howard University’s Afro-American Studies Chair Russell Adams accused Thomas of racism against all blacks for falling in love with someone outside his race. “His marrying a white woman is a sign of his rejection of the black community,” Adams told The Washington Post. “Great justices have had community roots that served as a basis for understanding the Constitution. Clarence’s lack of a sense of community makes his nomination troubling.”

California state Senate Democrat Diane Watson taunted former University of California regent Ward Connerly after a public hearing, spitting: “He’s married a white woman. He wants to be white. He wants a colorless society. He has no ethnic pride. He doesn’t want to be black.”

Are these kind of condemnations heaped upon those entering mixed race marriages a result of degeneracy of heart and mind, or are they, themselves, the product of the condemners' race?  Merely to ask the question is sufficient to find the answer.  Such views are not the product of one's race, but reflect a bigoted, degeneracy of heart--a rebellious denial that all men are created in God's image, equally so.  Such views are evil, wicked, sinful.  Such views, opinions, and actions are truly racist. 

Racism is alive and well on planet earth.  And it is always the product of a degenerative heart.  Sin, after all, is no respecter of  race.