So as apart of that workshop I participated in I introduced my second concept. The Black and White room. It is the room where they are only two colors. Just like we pretend that race relations are only two colors in America. American Indians are somehow doing fine. Arabs are cool with everything. Asians are not being blamed for the pandemic. Latino children are not in cages as we speak. Because American racists have an interesting secret. They are not only concerned about "Black" folk. They just pretend to be because so many of us are emotionally attuned to this supposed rift between "Blacks" and "Whites". Racism burns because of the fuel of this animosity or hatred of the "Black" experience. Even as it is really simply "White" supremacy. A racist doesn't have respect for other experiences outside their own. Well, some flavors offer an exception or two.
Well, I have jumped ahead of myself. Let's take a step back. Since "Blacks and "White" form the absolute minority of the world's population, let us analyze the majority population. Of course, the classification system of race is woefully inadequate to tell us anything about the majority of this world's inhabitants. Let's say 5.5 billion people are left to be classified under the race of Asian or the "Yellow" race. Some flavors of this backwards belief system offer a fourth category of Amerind or the "Red" race. Latinos are said to be of any race. The funny thing is we know that with the recent immigration weirdness, they can't be "White". They can say they are "White" and many do. That doesn't stop them from being put in a cage.
You see this take is about group identity and the strange way it works in America. We are preoccupied with the "Black" and "White" conversation because of manipulation. It is beneficial for political control. Racists claim that "Black" people are always concerned about "Black" issues. As though "Blacks" should be concerned about something else. It is silly to suggest otherwise. But America has representation from almost every culture and nationality on the globe. And we are told constantly to forget that. So much so that there are people in my cultural meetup group who are actually Asian or Latino. . .yet only identify as being "Black". I kid you not. I have a standing invitation for folks here to join my discussion group. Of course, no trolls allowed.
But it is important for these other experiences to be given a voice and allowed to speak. I think it has been politically advantageous to keep these voices quiet. But when I introduced my concept 20 years ago to my online forum, I was able to draw out experiences of Native Hawaiians, Sikhs, Cherokee Indians, Cubans, Chinese, etc. It was an awesome conversation. But also an important one. It is "race" destroying. Through that conversation, we can realize that "Blacks" and "Whites" are not real groupings. They are made up of various cultures and ethnic groupings. And if we can get past the nonsense of race and have conversations similar to what we experience with people who are neither "Black" nor "White". We can get closer to an understanding.
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