Friday, June 27, 2014

Race: The Crisis of Crayons

If the world has to be black and white then I prefer to be grey.  Why is my color more important that my character? Why is it that being a proud part of a race means more than being human. This is a sad social reality that divides and categorizes everything. This excuse for a country has split us into colors like a broken box of crayons. Sadly, according to society I am the undesirable, worn down, and almost crumbled black crayon placed on the margins of the box. We all have been thrown in a broken box and expected to add color to canvas of this world, and I would like to add color to the canvas of the world but the problem is that my color keeps the box closed to me as some other crayon makes stereotypical strokes on my behalf.

This is the problem with race, we see colors which are diverse; but racism dilutes the depth and importance of certain colors. Believe it or not race makes no biological sense. The average person on the street thinks that race consists of differences in physical appearance, in particular things like eye color, eye shape, skin tone, hair type, and aspects of body stature. They also think that from looking at a person's physical appearance, in the way I just described, that they can find out or know more subtle things about them such as their potential intelligence or their likeliness to be aggressive, to commit crime, predisposition towards disease. These assumptions are simply not true when we look at biology. The truth is we are running our lives off of 19th century science that has no genetic backing.
Race has some serious ill effects; but because it is bad science and a dangerous illusion, one can choose to live out the truth. That truth is that there is NO such thing as race. Yes that means we cant be categorized be skin color like a broken box of crayons.

The beauty of crayons is that when one uses them you have access to all colors and none are preferred over the other. In other words, we all have something to add to the canvas of life.

Im not Black, African American, Negro or anything that points directly to my skin color. I am human, and thats about it. I dont have a need to move black people forward; I am  just concerned about moving humanity forward. Im not worried about which shade my fellow crayons are; im just happy to be a crayon.

What's at stake when one chooses to live only as a crayon? Is there a lost of culture? Is there a diluting of history? Will there be a loss of identity? No, the only thing you lose is the unchallenged lack of unity. Its addition by subtraction, when you subtract the false notion of race you add so much more beauty to human existence.

Race is a lie that I will no longer live in. As long we let race exist racism will exist. Lets break the box and just be crayons.

1 comment:

  1. Wow I really understand where you coming from. I go to a school where they define people by their color not by their character, because of my skin they say that I'll act up in classes and won't really be nothing in life, but I have some teachers there that jude me by my character not my skin color. They said I will be a somebody in life. And this blog really speak to me.

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