The Return Of Racism

For 14 years I wrote a weekly newspaper for The Hill and Holler Review. The following is a reprint of a column I wrote a year or two ago, but it is relevent today.

The Return Of Racism
Acts of racism have been much in the news lately. Crosses have been burned, nooses hung in trees and swastikas carved into doors to instill fear into minority Peoples.
One might have thought those dark days were behind us, but it seems they have only been lying in wait like the monster who lives in the closet.
Also this week, Dog the Bounty Hunter made news because of a private (he thought) phone call he made to his son in which he used the N word (and others) to convey his disapproval of his son's current girlfriend. Since his private opinions go against today's "group think" philosophies, he has pretty much flushed his television series down the toilet.
What is happening here?
Native Peoples valued and still value individualism. Everyone is given respect, or at least allowed to live, even though they might think and act in different ways. As long as one didn't violate clan laws and taboos, he was considered an important member of the group.
With these rights come responsibility. What is best for all is usually the underlying thought of indigenous Peoples.
Europeans have a different concept of "Individualism." The core belief that man has dominion over everything has allowed him to flourish no matter the cost to others as well as Mother Earth.
While tribal societies operate on a clan system and consensus thinking, white society allows the few to govern the many. This has allowed the destruction of whole tribes of man and much of Mother Earth in the name of greed. Today, most of the wealth is concentrated in a small segment of white society.
Yet when the whites first came here, they found just the opposite. Chiefs lived in the same kind of homes that the rest of the People lived in. In the event of hard times, food and other resources were shared by all. Everyone had a voice in the decision making.
But European greed couldn't allow that kind of thinking to continue.
The belief that one must "conform" to "popular ideology" in thought, word and deed is crucial to the success of today's society. The philosophy of indoctrination, not education has helped lead us to this time in history.
Have you ever wondered why so many of our children go through school and can't read past the third grade level, or write a decent paragraph, or count change? But they all know that smoking causes cancer, abortion is wrong and Muslims are "evil"......
This is indoctrination - a far cry from the reading, writing and arithmetic that used to be taught in public schools.
And now we are witnessing the results of that forced thinking. Maybe mankind should be more evolved, but we aren't. Whenever you forcibly mix people of different cultures together and try to pretend that this is the "Great Melting Pot," all cultures are devalued. Only those at the top benefit.
Now, as times get hard again and the fear of not having enough grows, so to will the ugliness and violence which has it's roots deep in that fear.
And I'm afraid that no amount of 'forced thinking" is going to stop it this time.

"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd."
----Bertrand Russell