My Race Is The Human Race:
So Stop Calling Me Outta’ My Race!
“As even well intentioned folk use
the tragically incorrect phrases:
‘races,’ ‘mixed races,’ ‘two races,’
‘biracial,’ ‘interracial,’ and other similar
misconstructions, they unknowingly
perpetuate the human artificial divisions
they profess to hate.”
- Carol Taylor R.N.
Lakota/Nakota/Dakota saying: “MITAKOYE OYASIN” – “We Are All Related”
Irrespective of the millions of euro-mis-educated people’s conditioned beliefs and reductive terminology, all human beings belong to one ‘race,’ – the same human race.
NEWSFLASH: BlackFolk do not belong to another ‘race!’ – we do not have ‘our own race!’ – we’ve gotta stop denying that we belong to the human race by claiming ‘our own race!’
The usual retorts when I raise this issue, “Oh, that’s just semantics!” or, “there are more important issues!” or, “you know what I mean!” – don’t hold water.
Language shapes behavior; behavior can be brutal, like: burning crosses, colortargeting – beating/killing Black males (by other Black males and by cops of any color who routinely get away with these murders), showing that you have low expectations of Black children, referring to people of color as “minorities,” destroying BlackFolks’ electoral votes, jailing a million Black males (and “deathRowing” them) “Myrtle Beaching” (South Carolina closing restaurants and issuing restrictive traffic rules) against Black motorcyclists, 50% unemployment rate for Black males in New York City, to mention just a few.
Against all sorts of ingrained but mistaken habit, against the unfortunate lazy practices of most of U.S.A. academia, whatever the hue, I’ve maintained a lonely but determined and continuous fight to persuade stubborn intellectuals and even committed activists to pay attention to and finally acknowledge linguistically the paleontological, anthropological, historical, DNA-researched and supported evidence that not only is there just one human race to which we all belong, but that it began in Africa and it began Black.
Moreover, a dismal tendency, by professionals and other procrustean folk, especially those who host talk shows, those who are called journalists, writers, preachers, politicians and yes, professors, to ‘pooh-pooh’ efforts to change their bad habits of euphemistically referring to Black people, other people of color and whites as “different races,” would be laughable if its effects – perpetuating artificial barriers amongst human beings – were not so catastrophic.
Certainly it is catastrophic (and outrageous) to continually mislead and miseducate millions of our children by teaching them that there is more than one ‘race’ on earth, and by inference, depending upon what “Third World” country we’re warring on, that some of those ‘races’ are inferior.
Repercussions from this retrograde widespread practice, taken to their chilling, unnatural conclusion, are actual wars. Consider the color of most of the countries on which the
Thus the issue, then, is color – not ‘race!’ (If you mean Black, say Black!) For people to continue to use phrases like, “out of her/his race,” “different races,” “groups of races,” “biracial,” “transracial,” “multiracial” and so many other in-yer-face mind-boggling inaccuracies, is to at the very least, perpetuate the gross ignorance in this world, which behavior, it must be seen, leads to oppression and war.
Those of us not lazy, not afraid and with a conscience, for all of our sakes, urgently need to change language calling folk outta’ the human race!
ONE RACE – MANY COLORS!
Finally, if you want to know how many people have been bitten and infected by untreated racism/colorism, check out who’s using colorBigot talk:
“Races” indeed!
To paraphrase luminary W.E.B. DuBois: “The problem of the twenty-first century is the problem humans have with color.”
(Dr. Spencer Wells, Geneticist says: “We’re all African!” (“The Journey of Man”)
E-mail:www.racismtest.com
Carol Taylor R.N.
First Black
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