Race Together

Starbucks tried to start a campaign called Race Together or #RaceTogether. I'm a highly critical and cynical person, but I actually think their corporate heart was in the right place. If ever there has been a time to discuss race and racism everywhere it is now. After decades of progress, we suddenly seem to be backsliding. After the fall of Apartheid in South Africa, it seemed the world had finally kissed a race discrimination based system goodbye. Hundreds of years of struggle including people as famous as Sojourner Truth to people as as inconsequential as myself was coming to an end. Or so we thought...but consider what has happened in just the last few months all over the "civilized" world.

In the USA: Ferguson, MO in 2015 has become metanymic of  the American legal system that devalues black bodies while simultaneously using them for profit through endless fines over pointless minor infractions

In France: the targeting of Jews for terrorist attacks

In Israel: Race baiting used by Bibi Netanyahu against Arab-Israeli citizens for of all things VOTING

Racism is a given phenomenon in many places in the world, but in our modern world we have not succeeded in erasing it. Indeed we have in some cases amplified even the most violent and dehumanizing consequences of racism due to our tremendous efficiency and technological capabilities.

Perhaps it is a bit racist of me to say this, but I don't think most white Americans realize the extent to which racism colors the lives of nonwhites. Most live in a bubble where issues of race are pure abstractions. If statistics are to be believed most white people in the USA don't even have a nonwhite friend...in a country where nonwhites make up about 40% of the total population...it doesn't take a sociologist to look at those numbers and realize we have some race issues. It might take a sociologist or historian to explain the totality of racism's meaning for certain groups like Native Americans or African Americans...Nonetheless, I think any effort, no matter how simplistic and naive, to move us forward must be applauded. Because what are really the alternative in the US? Moving closer and closer to an all out race war? Staying stuck in a system most of us know is deeply unjust if we are presented with the facts about it? Very few of us want that...I hope.