I never really thought much about skin colour until recently. To me, a person is either a decent human being or they are not. Skin colour doesn’t have anything to do with that.
Apparently I am racist for thinking that way.
I also used to think that my kids’ skin colour (they’re biracial, both of them) didn’t matter either.
My daughter has much darker skin than my son. She looks Arabic; he looks Irish, maybe.
My daughter regularly used to be placed in the front of her primary school’s kapa haka group, even though her background has no Maori in it at all. Her brown hair, beautiful dark skin and brown eyes got her there.
I suppose she was dark enough for the job of Pseudo-Maori. She didn’t know what was going on as she was too tiny to understand. She was just proud to be in the front, where everyone could see her awesome dance moves.
My kids don’t think about race either when it comes to making friends. Why would they? Like me, they figure a person is either decent or they’re not.
Apparently my kids are racist for thinking that way too now.
We’ve all learned, since the whole Black Lives Matter thing exploded a few weeks ago, that we’re meant to judge people based on their skin colour.
Starting with white people.
Thing is, I’m not sure who “white people” are exactly, or even if I fit that demographic. Because – let’s be honest – “white people” are a mongrel mish-mash of a group, with all sorts mixed in. If you think of yourself as “white”, I suggest you do one of those DNA tests, and you’ll see what I’m saying is true.
In my case, although my skin is pale my ancestry is a real mess, with everything from sub-Saharan African through to a full quarter of Romany thrown in for good measure, and a fair chunk of stuff that traces back to the Indian sub-continent. There’s Scots and Irish as well.
As for my family themselves, in recent generations my grandmother lived in a tiny caravan in the south of England and owned nothing, and my great-grandfather dug coal his whole life up near the Scottish border.
Think they were “privileged”? You haven’t read your history.
So should I feel privileged because I have paler skin than my daughter? Or should I feel victimised, because of my ancestry? Should I ask for reparations from the British government for some of my ancestors who were booted from their land in the Scottish Clearances? Or should I pay reparations to Maori for taking their land, even though my family weren’t even in New Zealand at the time?
This is puzzling stuff, and once you get started you can’t end it. Who blames who for their grievances? Who pays for what? Who are the winners and who are the losers?
Once we start judging people by the colour of their skin, hatred of people based on superficial characteristics never ends. Should we bring back the “brown paper bag test”, and offer reparations to those who “fail” it? Is that what it all boils down to – shades of skin tone against a crumpled bag?
That’s where we’re headed. This is an evil, evil path.
Do we dare even mention white slavery by Maori, or do we gloss over that horror? Do we pretend Captain Cook was nothing but evil? Do we pretend he wasn’t killed and his body cooked in Hawaii? Which facts fit the narrative and which don’t? Do we mention the Barbary Pirates and the white slave trade? Do we talk about slavery still in existence in Africa and Asia? Do we mention the Uighur Muslims in China?
Do we talk about horrible acts done by horrible people – or do we build on the lie that only white people are horrible, and all other people are good and innocent and without fault or flaw?
History is uncomfortable sometimes. It is through history that we hope to understand ourselves. When we pull history down, we are saying we are too weak to handle the truth, too weak to try to understand reality. We prefer the lie. We prefer fairytales. Sanitised bullshit.
I’m sick of the bullshit. I’m sick of this toxic, virus-ridden lie that is identity politics. I’m sick of the racism and I’m sick of the violence. I’m sick of the attacks against police and I’m sick of the corrupt police who need to be held accountable. I’m sick of the attacks on Christianity and I’m sick of people being convinced to kneel for the supposed stain of being white, and I’m sick of the attacks on our culture and our flawed, majestic, painful, glorious history.
We are human. We are all human. That is the truth. That’s all.
This horror needs to stop.
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