Helene Smith © Copyright
2013
(for author's bio, photo and
published works)
THE FALSEFACE BEHIND RACE
–Why It Is Dangerous To
Color-Code People
"White’
people send ‘black people’ to fight ‘yellow people’ to protect the country they
stole from ‘red people.’ “
–Gerome
Ragni/James Rado, from Broadway musical, "Hair"
Every time you call a human being a color, you
are profiling humanity. Children are born into a life of confusion. It is especially frustrating for the
unbiased to grasp the reality of color-coded people–very narrowing for open
minds from which babies get their first view. As a mother of five children, I decided to research how and
why adults take something completely unnecessary, like the hierarchy of race,
and let it control and out rule their lives. As a result, bigotry never dug its
ugly claws into the minds of my kids. One day my four year-old twin daughters
came running up to me when I was doing archaeological work at a historic site.
They exclaimed, "Look, mommy.
Look at all those black people." What I saw was a group of nuns.
Racism is the grit from which youth-killing,
filthy wars erupt. For me it was shock and awe to discover race colors did not
exist before German-born Johann Friedrick Blumenbach, “father of race,”
concocted his rival color-coding hierarchy in 1779. From his deceptive illusion
he believed so-called "whites" were pure and "most handsome, the
nearest to God" in appearance, especially at the Caucasian Mountains at
the Black Sea. Anthropologists say the Hebrew Holocaust was fueled in Nazi
Germany by Blumenbach's influence–as religious race wars race on like blazing
saddles. A master race within the
same nation is exposed as fake–one man's fatal invention.
Previously Carolus Linnaeus classified animals
and human beings as species, stocks, groups or peoples. Blumenbach's bogus
color divisions of humanity consisted of Europeans deemed highest power, whom
he coined 1. white, Caucasian; 2. black, Negroid or Hamite; 3. red, American
("Indians"); and 4. yellow, Mongoloid, with a later brown Malaysian
rung added to the ladder of segregation.
The word Hamite is derived from Noah's
mythological sons–Japeth, representing Europe, Shem Asia, and Ham Africa, what
originally was called Nigeria, for the most part. This archaic fable includes the curse of Ham–son of Noah
"a black man"–and why he was banished from his homeland due to a sexual violation, what persists in
provoking racism against Africa today.
It is assumed that the word Niger River, stems from Latin, aithlops, "burnt-face," a word for Africa or Negroid
since the time of Homer.
From the Judeo-Christian Bible the word "race"
is emphasized as racetrack competition–eventually human division for Anglo conquest–divide
and conquer. Return race to the horse track where it started during the Roman
Empire in 27 CE, East and West, when slaves were forced to their deaths in
chariot races held at "bread and circus" coliseums. In the Byzantine
Hippodrome the vicious Nike (victory) riots broke out under four rival colors,
what spawned later color-coding behavior.
This pattern of vicious
competition was carried over to racial violence today–like shouting, jeering
sports teams fired-up, but with more hatred and enmity against the opposition
than in tearing down goalposts.
The word race originally meant slashing with a razor, derived
from Latin. Prisoners were killed
until emperors and warlords took advantage of them for free labor and
entertainment, a system eventually fixated on dark complexion targeted for
bondage–even though there is a saying about attraction–"tall, dark, and
handsome." Indigenous Americans on man-devised reservations–the last of
their sacred lands now controlled by a historically corrupt non-elected Bureau
of Indian Affairs in the Department of the Interior–were the first US slaves not used to a strange,
unnatural culture where many took their own lives. Africans captured for
bondage dragged to foreign lands became the next victims, who also suffered
from despair and grief for centuries up to the present, based on
pigment–melanin that protects against sun rays.
Alienating race has caused frothing rage and
eventually a plethora of subdivisions, completely out of control. These new
categories are also fabricated, as multiple new divisions make identity even
more perplexing to students filling out race boxes on college application forms
confused as to which box to check–white, black (most rival categories), with a
conglomeration of nationalities inconsistent
with one another. Why not think
out of the box? And what happened
to the red and yellow so-called races?
United we stand, not separated we stand–one
nation indivisible. Years ago France eliminated discordant color-coding on race
boxes for census reports. The US
conducted its first population census in 1790 by separating people of bondage
from the free–later dividing people into colors in racist paranoia. You cannot
be prosecuted for not filling in Pandora's Box of trouble that fuels chilling
religio-racist wars of power against non-"white" victims. We are all people.
Novelist Pulitzer/Nobel Laureate Pearl Buck
chided Americans for calling Asians yellow. Racism stokes wars, as seen in WWII
and the Vietnam War. Soldiers were
trained to call "yellow" people "japs" or
"gooks"–to falsely justify savage killing of foes. Harry Truman
started the false rumor that nuclear bombs, specifically produced to make Japan
surrender, saved American ives–the world's worst nuclear disaster that sent
radioactive fallout across Earth, including the US, with an untold amount of
deaths from cancer and other diseases.
In a WWII speech this president denounced the Japanese as "dirty
Japs," making it easy for him to order barbaric atomic bombs dropped on
"yellow people"–even though that nation was ready to surrender,
confirmed by top US and Britain military officials, including General Dwight D.
Eisenhower. Already 200,000 people
had died in Japan from carpet-bomb firestorms, added to 180,000 more deaths
from nuclear missile attack, without warning, that killed mostly
civilians. Today Japanese
authorities insist their nation be nuclear free ever since the Fukushima
tragedy when an earthquake caused a tsunami and blew up a nuclear complex, as
they also protest US military bases posioning their land with leaking
toxicants.
The world has long degraded people referred to
a black, red, and yellow. A Filipino friend was confused in a segregated
restaurant in Pittsburgh years ago.
She read a sign saying, "Black on the left; white on the
right." She told the manager. “Where do I sit? I’m neither black nor white.” Transparently he said, "I'll pay for your lunch if you
sit in the “black” section.
The book of Leviticus 25:44 states bondsmen and bondsmaids should be taken
from the heathen as slaves–unbelievers of the Jewish cultural. Later this
bigotry was transferred to American "Indians" and American Africans
"non believerss." Racial religious bias also has its taproot hooked
into biblical times when Paul of Tarsus in Asia Minor (Turkey) demanded that
slaves obey their masters.
We
no longer peg indigenous people “red” except for Washington D.C.’s football
mascots, even though this divisive, degrading epithet violates label laws.
First Americans still resent and are insulted by lack of respect–human beings
lowered to the rank of animals. Bayley Lopez of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation said, "Economic racism is akin to
bribery." Federal corporate funds pay impoverished "redskin" nations
to store leaking nuclear waste–following atomic bomb testing
"proving" grounds, toxic industrial power plants, uranium mines, and
chemical weapon depots built on or next to reservations. Years ago these
contaminated sights were marked in red as "Danger Zones" in atlases
on last sacred lands of traditionalist indigenous people targeted for
extermination. Here the first US biological warfare became genocide when hospital blankets were given to
First Americans as "gifts."
The largest US dumping grounds began in WWII
at Hanford, Washington reservation representing numerous First American
nations. Here long build-up of
nuclear toxicants leak and threaten catastrophe to the lives and health of
people and animals, also in Oregon and along the Columbia River–birth defects
and diseases.
Why are war-torn genetic deformities in
children not an issue on the daily news–even though International Law, Geneva
Protocol, and other rules against intoxicants make these youth-killers
illicit? Battlefields of slaughter
persist with color-coding, racist religionism fanning the flames of war. Airborne
chemical and radioactive emissions blown across the world grotesquely deform
and abort with miscarriages–with women afraid of pregnancy. In war, combat parents and those
trapped in crossfire in illegal modern war zones get the brunt of these lethal
agents.
There is no glory in racist wars. Aggression
is gory violence chasing violence.
You can run but it will find you–in the air, in the seas, in the
land–buried in virulent waste. Misguided testosterone energizing hatred is the
fuel, the force behind the force that blows up our planet–our only sustenance.
Why do men in Congress out number nurturing women who are more interested in
education and health for their children than in blowing youths up in combat? War munitions are the bane of the
world–lock, stock and barrel controlling power and greed.
It was John Newton, a former slave captain who
transported humans in chains during the middle passage also known as Maafa, the
great triangular trade disaster at the point of a gun. Lyrics to the hymn The
Amazing Grace was published in 1779
(same year race was invented), by evangelist minister John Newton an ex-slave
ship captain. The melody haunted him–the sound of exhausted galley slaves
imprisoned as they sang in their own language while plying oars within
sweat-filled bottoms of boats.
Some people of African descent say they are
not from Africa. But residents of
this continent captured for export like bails of cotton first came from Africa
and were then taken to America, Portugal and other European countries as well
as West Indian Caribbean ports. At
the most powerful Elmina Castle Fortress at Accra, Africa during the height of
the slave trade, thousands were chained down in deep dungeons before being
forced onto ships of commerce. During the interim, the governor who lived at
the castle periodically raped the women in its high tower before they were
sent on their way during the Mid-Atlantic slave trade. When slavery was at last
being phased out, especially by the British, slavers–to prevent them from being
caught in the act–would force helpless, miserable people into the waves or in
kegs like human cargo to the depths of the sea in fettered iron, with the sick
and weak also disposed of like refuse from a ship. But many escaping cruelty of their shipmasters went
willingly to their death, their last jump to freedom.
"Whites" believed people in bondage
had no souls. Yet these experts in
agriculture of raising cotton, rice, and Indigo, were captured for their
expertise in farming–disgraceful disparity of racism by the top of the made-up
hierarchy judging who had souls and who did not–false pandering to the lowest
instincts of man. These African men and women forced into free labor increased
profits with infants born into the gruesome system, all laboring to the advantage of their masters. During the
holocaust of the Mid-Atlantic slave trade toddlers and their grandparents were
left behind to fend for themselves in an economy of abject poverty.
Yeas ago William Ernest Henley wrote Invictus:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods my be
For my unconquerable soul . . . .
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul
Chained in bondage the young and the strong
were loaded into boats of human export, as baptizers threw buckets of water
over them, with an interpreter demanding, "Now you're Christians and must
obey us as God tells you to."
During America's 1861-65 Civil War 700,000
lives could have been saved if Congress would have prohibited slavery as
England's Parliament did between 1807 and 1838. In vain Senator Aaron Burr spoke passionately before
Congress to ban "black" bondage in America in the 1700s, prior to
running for president. Although he inherited a few slaves, he taught them to
read and write and then freed them. In 1600 a myth was started–“one drop of
black blood” makes an African. Yet this quantitative device pertained not to
other blood! Fe, fi, fo, fum, not
even to the blood of an Englishman.
Race and religion continue to fuel the three
original Semitic persuasions–Hebrew (through Isaac) Christian (through David, Matthew 1:16-17) and Muslim (through Ishmael)– all stemming
from Abraham and Jesus, according to tradition. Due to rival color chaos, Earth
(capitalized for respect) and its peoples have died from excruciating slaughter
and torture–"business as usual" when it comes to religious, color
wars. It should make one red or
blue in the face from the very history of race still ignored.
African Americans have always resisted and
revolted from slavery. Two modern-day philosophers summed up this evil behavior
that continues to this day, in spite of a war that involved slavery followed by
American Africans emancipated, at least on paper. Daniel O'Connell wrote, "American side of the
color-line elevates whites–no matter how wretched–over blacks." David
Walker described "white people" as "unjust, unmerciful,
avaricious, and blood thirsty" –what so-called "red" and "yellow"
people, as well as "brown," also found out. Although Jim Crow laws
are no longer legal, they still taint an American culture that is uncivilized
regarding the injustice of war. Here are a few human reminders.
In 1995 Coroner Cyril Wecht from Pittsburgh
confirmed that five "white thugs"–known for viciously taunting
so-called minorities–committed police brutality through suffocation. These cops
stopped a Syracuse New York American African businessman, Jonny Gammage, who
had borrowed a Jaguar belonging to his cousin, an NFL player. Gammage was
accused of braking along an unfamilar winding road.
The victim tried to call for help, but his
cell phone was knocked out of his hand.
In a struggle the cops jumped the driver, handcuffed him, and beat him
with their clubs, a metal flashlight, and a leather blackjack. Five bullies
held him down and exerted extreme pressure on his head and neck. He died
unarmed. After five charges of
homicide and two mistrials the militants were released. The ringleader went back to work and
received a promotion at his precinct known for demeaning African Americans
unmercifully.
This tragedy was committed with no one around
to hear blatant, flagrant barbarity as ruthless, out-of-control men bludgeoned
their victim. An innocent young man died that night on a dark road–"guilty"
for driving while "black."
Lurking underneath this crime is a corrupt police system that holds
one's job dependant upon a monthly quota of arrests, stops, and summons. When
"white" officers are bigoted against dark complexioned American
Africans and Hispanics (Spanish, America Indian, Mexican heritage), innocent
people become targets and are incarcerated unjustly, with the US having more
prisons than schools.
In 2013 after eons of similar murders, a
self-appointed "white" neighborhood guard stalked and fatally shot an
American African teenager, Trayvon Martin who was unarmed in Sanford, Florida.
While returning to his father's house from a nearby store on a dark night–he
died, "guilty for walking while "black."
Another high school student, Kendrick Johnson,
an American African from Valdosta, Georgia, was mysteriously found dead in a
rolled up wrestling mat–reported accidental. When his parents had his body exhumed his organs were
missing and replaced with crumpled newspapers. His head revealed trauma from a
deathblow. There was blood
nearby. A cut and spliced security
video, with missing frames, revealed a person behind the deceased who was
running across the school gym floor. The "white" racist volcano still
erupts in America, what triggers backlash revenge–why color-coding, that
provokes murders and youth-killing wars, needs to be exposed as the world's
deadliest deceit.
Why is a white lie small and a black lie big?
Today race is stereotyped, as was Little Black Sambo who caused a restaurant chain to close. The real question is why was Little
Black Sambo in a children's book
characterized as black. Little Lord Fauntleroy was not titled "Little White Lord Fauntleroy" and was pictured wearing clothes, with Sambo
practically naked! One picture is
worth a thousand words.
Racist venom against American Africans and
subsequently Africa itself was used falsely to justify prohibition from
voting–residents from a beautiful continent smeared as being stupid or simple
through crude graphics. Famous
athletes labeled “black,” such as basketball player Michael Jordan, have been
banned from “white” clubs, just as early restaurant signs read, "No
Indians or Dogs Allowed," as country clubs used to post "Gentiles
Only." Other clubs banned
Italians and other people of dark complexion. It was also unpopular for
Italians and the Irish, often called black, to fraternize outside the clan.
Sadly identification via term “blacks”
disfranchises darker complexioned people from human rights, their original
culture and the continent of Africa itself. First Americans and American
Africans have had their inherited names erased and replaced by rival
colors. Should the term, human
race, be obliterated.
"Black" is historical code for slave–a negative word that
conjures up black list, black
market, blackmail, blackheart, black mark, and black farcical humor that is
derisive. Calling human beings
"blacks" even sounds bad.
Historically, many different nationalities were "blackened" to
demean people.
When people of dark complexion apply for
membership at private clubs and are blackballed, even though African Americans
are hired to work at these organizations,
the excuse goes something like this, "We're not against blacks. We just don't want them in our
club." Even the celebrated
singer, Marian Anderson, had to enter Carnegie Music Hall when she was a guest
entertainer–through a back door since she was African American nationality.
(Race also means nationality.) Wilcox County in Georgia had segregated proms as
late as 2013. The students now see themselves as Americans, a consistent term
across the board.
If we would use our own national or
continental origins as identification when necessary, there would be no violent
racism. How can anyone hate an entire continent of Africa! You can call yourself anything you
want. But when a person color-codes others with derogatory words, there will
always be trouble. All
colors are beautiful in the eye of the beholder, but racial colors have picked
up loathsome connotations. So what is the beef? Cattle are not pegged as colors. Instead they are classified as to their inherited
regions–such as Holstein, Jersey, Hereford, and Angus. Dogs and cats are identified
by pedigrees or breeds such as Labrador Retriever and Poodle–all
capitalized. But human beings are
color-coded for hierarchical classification, what provokes wars.
It may take a white-out or a black-out to wean
man off race. Stuck in a rut with “black” and “white” rivalry is a disease of
the mind–"skin supremacism"– a malady of pale people historically
shackled to the fear of dark skin? Oxford Dictionary states “white means fearful, coward" –reason
alone for not being labeled "white."
Skin-tone results from ancestors living close
to or far from the equator. There is no scientific evidence for any race gene (Encyclopedia
Britannica). Anthropologists claim
20,000 years for pigment to become part of DNA among original people. Tanning
is temporary, unless children are born of parents having different amounts of
pigment. By the way, according to genetics, dark melanin is dominant over
so-called "white" characteristics–why all humanity will reflect one
common hue, since people are now permitted to marry whomever they love without
disparage or cast as inequality. So why not fast-forward to end all foolish
racism now?
Everyone is similar in tone on palms of hands
and soles of feet. From man's beginning these physical areas rarely saw the
sun–what started the difference in skin tones in the first place. People wore
little or no clothing with their skin all one hue. As human migration moved
away from the equator to colder regions, warm clothing became quintessential
for survival.
Skin tone graduates from light to dark in
India, a cast-off system that Indo-Europeans invented. In African people of the rainforest
have lighter complexions than those in desert regions. Other physical features
also mutate through migration. On Easter Island primitive Polynesians
discriminated regarding their ears. Short Ears eventually killed off all the
Long Ears!
Black and white reflect prismatic values, not
colors–white is made of light, as black is devoid of light. Another name for Caucasian is albinism, a
"white" person who lacks pigment. Black, white, and color rhetoric
baffles most people. Calling people "blacks" and "whites"
is in one's face!
Why do people use adverbs
“black” and “white” instead of nouns for human beings? I contacted the Associated
Press since it covers most of the
world and discovered the AP follows the University of Chicago Press stylebook.
Their word manual was updated in 2003, a watershed word moment. At that time original “black” was
changed, to “African American,” although pure “white” was still recommended in
the same handbook since Caucasians enjoy being referred to as "pure."
Many presses seldom consult new additions of their handbook guides with
employees not aware that "black" is out and African American is in.
If the Chicago Press would change the controversial
definition for the word, race to nationality it would help all minorities
socially, economically, and spiritually. Race is no genie and can be stuffed back into the bottle. Similar to brass cuspidors, now
obsolete antiques, these spittoons no longer are used since they were public
health hazards as race still is today.
In 1965 the Vatican finally admitted slavery
is "infamy"–a crime against people of Indian and African descent. In
1967 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “War is the enemy of the poor . . .
. Militant, racist, zionist
colonialism and injustice cause America its spiritual death." Years ago I visited the gravesite
memorial of W.E.B. DuBois, American African educator and founder of the NAACP
(color-coding title). I was the
only so-called "white" person to be invited to go to Ghana,
Africa, a trip sponsored by the
Urban League in Pittsburgh. This
great man looked forward to the day when skin color was no longer an issue.”
And it was James Kellner, a chairman of Turner Broadcasting System, who wrote,
"My hope is that one day we all come together and
not see color as it relates to race. Judge not people by the color their
skin."
Among the greatest prophets of the world
were Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and Gandhi, and the Dali Lamae. Confucius, once
called yellow, advised, “Don’t do to others what you don’t want others to do to
you”–a universal belief echoed by all wisdom keepers. Mother Theresa from
Macedonia and the famous hugging Amma from India, as well as Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela who endured 67 years in prison after opposing the
dreadful apartheid, all had complexions different from so-called "white
people." It is paradoxical irony that much of the world worships
dark-complexioned "gods"
while at the same time tries to prevent their descendants from having equal
human rights.
When people call extraterrestrials from
outer space "green"–whom no one has ever seen–it just confirms man's
fetish for color-coding human beings. Figuratively, Lady Liberty hangs her head
in shame as millions of combat soldiers lie in graves from the historic past,
after suffering brain injuries, amputations, and suicides from madness of
racist color-coding aggression that fuels wars. In Flanders Field the poppies
grow, between the crosses row by row–no matter what persuasion. Lady Liberty
may be copper green, but no one calls her green! The false face
called race brings nothing but trouble and sorrow.
‘We feel invincible crushing little brown, black, and yellow
people . . . All we see are little green men running across our screen . . . We
drop bombs like rain leaving scorched Earth and broken dreams . . . we just react and kill to stay alive.”
–courtesy of Jose Vasquez:
medic, nurse in Iraq; now a conscientious war objector in a new career
involving anthropology
WAKEY, SHAKEY
copyright © 2012
A new line dance with lyrics and dance. Introduce it to your favorite social
group.
Turn your right palm up. Turn your left palm up,
Shake and shout,
“We’re all the same!”
Embrace!
Embrace! There’s no such thing as race!
Do the wakey, shakey
Turn yourself around and join in all the fun,
Arms up! And celebrate the sun!
Turn your right sole up, Turn your left sole up,
Shake and shout, “We’re all the same!”
Embrace! Embrace! There’s no such thing as race!
Do the wakey, shakey
Turn yourself around and join in all the fun,
Arms up!
And celebrate the sun!
