Evidently racism and sexism has become the new moral horror of the developed world. Not that they are new phenomena, but how they are treated has become really interesting.
In my understanding, both racism and sexism are beliefs that a race or sex is inferior to another. This is obviously not from the heart of God, because He created everyone in the image of Himself. There isn't a part of God that is inferior to another part of God.
We have seen racism throughout our American history in really heartbreaking ways. The English considered the Native Americans savages and somehow subhuman. Thereby justifying occupying their land, cheating and murdering them. I'm just talking the negative side; there were many who treated them with respect and consideration. The next wave came with African slaves; slavery was justified because the Negro was subhuman. Much of the Church quoted Paul to justify slavery.
The next appearance of racism was different. It appeared through immigration, and the root cause was money. The Italians hated the Irish, then the Irish hated the black man. The Californians hated the Chinese. All this was because the most recent immigrated group would work for almost nothing, and the jobs were given to them. It became easy to vilify a race that was supposedly robbing you of a job.
I have to mention the racism that occurs during war. It's almost a necessary evil. How can a good man go out a and massacre a group of people? While this may not be the intention, a soldier learns to view the enemy as less than he. How else is he to survive? Coming home at peace time poses a problem. Now the soldier has had to view each people group as equal to himself. The race that tried to kill him could be his neighbor. I'm not saying this is right, this is just the psychology that comes with the ugliness of war.
Ok, so that's racism. I know I didn't mention examples of sexism, but this is a blog not a book. There is something else that no one wants to talk about, and because we're not talking about it, it is getting mislabeled.
Everyone is different. Every race is different. Every culture is different. And we all have brains and we make observations that we are all different. It used to be the case that we would conclude that because we didn't understand someone else, this makes them inferior. I don't think this happens as much today.
Ten years ago I used to wait tables. A certain people group were really poor tippers. I mean, they left me pocket change on seventy five dollar tabs. Because I paid tip pool, a percentage of my total sales went to hostesses, busboys and bartenders, this usually meant I was actually paying to wait on them. And they were usually the highest maintenance customers. Did I hate them? No, but I had to constantly take it to Jesus. I certainly didn't think they were inferior to myself, but had I treated them with disrespect, I could have certainly been accused of racism.
This sort of thing happens all the time. Culture clashing against culture. Misunderstanding and miscommunication. Differences. When are we going to start talking about it?
Each culture or race comes with their own set of weaknesses and sins. Noticing them is not racism, it's having a brain. When will we start talking about them?
America is a tapestry of different peoples and backgrounds. Our strength doesn't lie in our sameness, it lies in our differences. Lets stop labeling something out of fear and start talking about our issues.
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