The blacks and whites are adjectives made into nouns. Black and white is the most rival colors due to the history of racism. Color profiling is the
WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO REDS AND YELLOWS?
A Personal Essay
Helene Smith
copyright © by Helene Smith 2013
All Rights Reserved including digital
Email: macdonaldsward@yahoo.com
WWW.macdonaldsward.com
"White people send black people to
fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from red
people"–Gerome Ragni and James Rado (musical, Hair)
Shocking
cutting-edge news flash!–"Slaves forced to race to death in chariots of
fire at coliseum under four divisive sport colors during deadly Nike victory
riots! " The Ancient Roman Empire set the stage for color-coding
rivalry. Source of
"race," meaning vicious competition, is biblical–Psalm 19:5 "as a strong man to run a race." The
same source of scriptures proclaims heathens must be slaves (Leviticus 25:44). Man–short for human–caught in a web of
archaic history is still spinning bigoted dogma. The word "heathen"
means persuasion other than biased authoritarian deceit–later transferred to
American Indians and American Africans with their own spirituality banned and
the people targeted for slavery, as pious missionaries attempted to deprive
them of their spirituality and their culture, "in God's name."
The
De Wolf family was the largest slave owners in America. They kept human bondage going even
after the emancipation. Courageous descendant of the De Wolfs, Katrina Browne,
wrote Traces of the Trade. Guilt,
shame, and discomfort is overwhelming to empathetic people whose ancestors come
from Europe. I discovered my own
family's secrets, but in out the open at the time. Although the entire US
system supported slavery, I am stilled ashamed. A descendant,
Reason (Rezin) Bowie, was the real inventor of the Bowie knife–to help brother
Jim from cutting himself in his escapades and at the Alamo. These Bowie brothers were playing
high-stakes in the slave trade where they picked up poor, bewildered people at
mouths of rivers after the Middle-Atlantic horror of being yanked from their
homes in Africa. There are no
words to adequately define the sheer tragedy of being chained in bottom galleys of boats and transported like
cattle to the New World of criminal bondage.
Years
ago a dear friend from the Urban League of a leading US city invited me to go
with her to Ghana. Her husband, a
prominent entrepreneur and philanthropist from the city, and his family were
black-balled from a prominent country club where my husband was a member. When
this bigotry showed its ugly face, he and I took a stand and supported the
family and their sponsors. During
the brouhaha one sponsor had his car "keyed" by a club member who
objected to the proposed membership. Disparaging comments followed, such as,
"We have nothing against blacks.
We just don't want 'em in our club." Since my husband was on a golf committee we received these
bigoted letters. When it was known
that American Africans were hired as employees but not allowed to join, it
became a shock and awe news story for the entire nation.
The
same institution had also rejected Italians and Jews, not a rarity in earlier
days of the city. Tongue in cheek,
I wonder if it had something to do with the amount of protective brown pigment
in their skin. Several TV stations called to interview us. But so incensed that racist bigots
still behave with venom, we decided a better use of our energy would be to stay
the course, a strong goal to win the racist race. When the family was at last permitted to join, it was a
water-shed moment. It is illegal
for country clubs hiring people of Africa descent, but denying them membership.
After
the smoke cleared my new friend and I went to Accra, the capital of Ghana in
Africa. I was delighted to be her roommate, the only non-African on the trip. I
shall cherish this journey the rest of my life, along with her and her family's
friendship.
Our
first tour was at Castle Elmina, largest and oldest African slave
fort–Portuguese later British owned. Its holding prison held two thousand
people at times, standing room only, while waiting for incoming transatlantic
ships transferring human cargo to America and other ports for 200 years. As a well-fortified holocaustic
garrison it kept out competitive slavers.
When
we entered the dank, damp dungeon built below the church where members used to
sing The Amazing Grace, it was a
heart wrenching experience. One
dark high-ceiling room with only a small barred window for air has a brick
floor with a sunken trough running through it–the common latrine for shackled
people. Daily the governor from his high tower apartment looked down from a
balcony and chose which woman to rape, with the group of women washed with
buckets of soapy water before each episode. There are still nail scratches on
the sun-dried bricks from human despair of being imprisoned and fear of the
next incoming no-return ship.
Anyone
physically objecting to cruel,
harsh treatment was thrown into an adjacent hole in the wall, next to
the dungeon and locked behind a solid door–to slowly die without food, water or
light with their relatives and friends sadly hearing their screams until they
subsided. I wept as a chill went down my spine–still to this day as I write
about the horror. The leader of the Urban League magnanimously put her arm
around me. But her ancestors were
the ones who were tortured and tormented, while my ancestors were the
torturers. The ironies of life are
as endless as war and crime.
Everyone
knows the rest of the story of human abuse based on color. Amy Goodman of Free Speech,
Democracy Now! interviewed Craig
Steven Walder, professor at MIT, whose ancestors were slaves. His book, Ebony & Ivey, reveals how early colleges broke away from churches
to take on their own campaigns to justify injustice through biased missionary
schools teaching "slaves must obey their masters"–at the same time
boiling people of American Indian and African heritage for skeletons used in
biology labs of med schools, as they do with cat cadavers. The culprits making up their own
tyrannical laws wrote their own Emancipation Proclamation–"Providence has
bequeathed us God-given rights to take lands from the heathen"–even their
bodies.
Meanwhile–more ground-breaking news–"There's no such thing as human
race!" In 1779 German Johann
Friedrich Blumenbach–father of color segregation and race–invented a hierarchy,
classification based on color and persuasion–what fueled the racist WWII
holocaust. Rival human segregation was broken into grades of differing melanin.
Indo-Europeans started the caste system in India, as Anglo-Saxon racism took
root in the rest of the world–blacks, reds, whites and yellows. History of
so-called "whites" afraid of "so-called "darks" or
"darkies" has proven that "pure as soap" supremacists view
themselves as top dogs of the ladder of racism. There is no such thing as race, other than in horse, dog,
car, sports and political races.
Carolus
Linnaeus classified plants and animals as genus and species in1735 with no
physical profiling: American Indian, Caucasian; Negroid or Hamite; and
Mongoloid. Inhabitants of Easter Island targeted ears for bigotry–big ears and
short ears, as they annihilated one another. Biblical Ham, whose father was
Noah, was "cursed." Ham was sent in sexual shame into Ethiopian
bondage–endless, inherited stigma. Early Semitic cultures–Jewish, Christian,
and Islamic–knew "black" was code for slave, now a stereotype. Sacred imbedded myths in the psyche die
slowly. Man easily erased two rival colors–reds and yellows. So we are halfway
there. Two down, two more to go. But cutthroat aggressive black and white
remain as sticklers.
Pulitzer/Nobel
Laureate Pearl Buck chided Americans pegging Asians as cowardly, what yellow
implies. Washington, DC football mascots are named "Redskins."
Although Native American traditionalists call themselves "skins"–sans
color-coding. Racial epithets comparing people to animals is offensive.that American Trademark Law disallows
"disparage and disrepute of others" through labeling–names of sports
teams and businesses. Respect and dignity for others prevent wars, in which
Asians were pegged as "gooks" to make them appear inhuman–military
strategy for guilt-free killing.
Docile
brown is now in as skin tones become less rival through time. Nevertheless,
although the Civil War was fought without the help of foreign powers, racists
still duke it out with vigor, gnashing teeth, and foaming at the mouth–behind
closed doors with biased jabs and demeaning jokes against one another.
Bigots
are not born. Fortunately childhood is too short for scorn and contempt. Years ago I did archeological work at a
historic fort site, first British court of justice west of the Allegheny
Mountains. Here I brought my five children to dig in glorious days of sunshine.
Suddenly one of my daughters ran up to me out of breathe, "Look,
mommy. Look at all those black
people! Hesitating to look up, I
was relieved to see a tour of visiting nuns! I should have known not to be
concerned. To this day none of my
kids have shown any racial prejudice.
Historically
the following peoples were called "blacks"–American Indians, natives
of India, West Indians, Africans, Italians, Slavs (from word, slaves), Arabs,
Jews, Hispanics, Asians, and Latinos. The Irish were profiled "black"
for dark eyes and hair, with their Viking invaders called "white
foreigners" and "black foreigners," the latter meaning evil,
black-hearted intruders–black being a negative word conjuring up, blackmail,
blackball, and black mark, together with contrasting symbols of black and white
hats. And everyone knows who the
good guys are–by traditional white hats.
Years
ago a Filipino friend read a sign in a city restaurant: "Blacks on left, whites on
right." In frustration she told the manager, "Where do I sit? I'm not black or white." Transparently he replied, "If you sit in the black section,
I'll pay for your lunch."
When visiting the gravesite of W.E.B DuBois
in Africa I read how he looked forward "to the end of the color
line." Oxford Universal Dictionary associates white with fearful coward. We can call ourselves anything
we wish–but ingrained pejorative connotations of colors provoke
aggression. Cause and effect, this
hostile fixation on color leads to genocide and toxic chemical and radioactive
war contamination that kills young combatants and deforms the offspring of
soldiers, as well as women and
other citizens caught in urban war zones–all illegal under International Law.
The
University of Chicago Press 2003 stylebook suggests "African
American," not former
"black," for word usage–a watershed publication; but it still
clutches on to "white in inconsistency. The Associated Press, worldwide distributor, and other presses rely on this
guide. The public ear picks up words from influential media that not always
check on updated stylebooks.
Census Bureau's race boxes confuse
college applicants and the public in general as to which one to check. France
already eliminated race on forms. Why not think outside the box–nationality
identification, consistent across the board having no color-discrimination?
Man gives more homage
to cattle than humans. Cows are
named for their origins, such as Jersey and Holstein, neither blacks nor
whites. According to black and
white prismatics, black is devoid of color; white contains all colors of the
rainbow. No wonder racism is a hardball-game called madness!
Complexion
determines how far or near our ancestors lived from the equator. Anthropologists claim 20,000 years for
dark skin to lighten in DNA through evolution, mutations, and migration. All
human beings have similar light toned soles and palms not radiated by direct
sunrays.
Jim
Crow discriminatory laws forbade mixed ethnic marriages–Constitutional
violation against freedom of association. Now that marriage has become legal
after being denied between clans and cultures fro eons, human complexion in the
future will reflect one common, neutral tone. What, then, shall we call
ourselves? Better still, erase
race!
Prophets–Buddha,
Jesus, Muhammad, and Gandhi–had handsome dark complexions. Ironically those who
worship these most esteemed men commit violence against the very families of
these great seers–their ancestors. Lady Liberty is not called green, although
outer space aliens become "little green men." When color-coding
returns to the horse track where rival "race" originated, Lady
Liberty can hold her torch high–one nation, indivisible, with justice for all.
