RACISM - PART OF OUR DEMOCRACY

RACISM
AN INTEGRAL PART OF OUR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
It is now fashionable to blurt out a racist or sexist mind-set and then offer an apology – there is, more often than not, no attempt to make the apology even sound sincere. Like, "Yeah, I said it, but I did apologize, so get over it." Since I'm not a religious person I am not compelled to accept an apology, particularly one following an intentional insult. If I were in my street-voice I would tell the giver of such an apology where to stuff it.
Some see racism as a moral issue – a matter of moral choice. They assume one can simply choose to commit a racist act or not. They think of themselves and others as moral beings virtually incapable of committing an unconscious racist act. When a racist act is committed they see it as just a moral slip and not likely to happen again. They are often unaware of the intrinsic influence that enables the repetition of racist choices. They go on, from day to day and act to act, living within the myth that they are in control of their moral choices.
Racist individuals, on the other hand, are pure political animals. Political animals move to conserve their own interest to the exclusion of any other considerations. These beings conceal themselves in the ideologies of our institutions: Religion, Law, Politics, Education, Employment, and others. They carry out their terror while cloaked in the costumes of those who serve for the benefit of all.
Racism is an economic/political construct, not just a moral one. It is in fact a planned form of Disenfranchisement, in that it locks a particular group of citizens out of the benefits that flow from the collective wealth created by nature and all citizens. American Racism was created by those who had and still have the will and means to control economic and political power. That power enables them to skim and hoard wealth.
Some voices in this democracy misplace pure Christian values in the foundation of this country – while covering their eyes, ears and minds against the lingering groans of black men chained to trees, eyes sewn open to see their wives and daughters raped, butchered, and their flesh fed to hogs. Black people still reel from the barbarism of a time still in memory. The level of trust and respect within the black family, particularly between the man and woman, is still struggling to find stable footing. Black men, in the eyes of too many women and children, have been publicly shown to be incapable of protecting and providing for them and therefore unnecessary. When all citizens of a nation are wholesome that nation is wholesome. We are a nation so full of promises yet we are sick. Racism is an unwholesome and contagious disease and our nation could inevitably die from that growing sickness.
Adolphus A. Ward
www.adolphusward.net