A White Guy’s Primer
OnRacism
in
January 2002
By Marc W. Kohler
marcwkohler@aol.com
liberaltruths@blogspot.com
This Pamphlet is Dedicated to my father,
Who
taught me about stubbornness
Character, and racism
To Randall Ashe.
Who
taught me more than I could learn
About Black, White, and all between,
Brought
me to where I am today.
And to all those who Have come before me
Who have guided me to where I am
With their actions, thoughts, speeches, poems,
Ideas, suffering, determination, and guts.
Thank
You
Contents(Page numbers refer to pamphlet)
Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . 4
What Does History Say?. . . . . . . . .6
What Does Science Say?. . . . . . . . .10
What Does God Say?. . . . . . . . . . . . 12
How Did We Become Such a Racist Nation? . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . 12
What can a White Guy Do?. . . . . . . .15
What can You Do
Today?. . . . . . . . .16
Footnotes and Other Books. . . . . . 20
Introduction Over the past year, I have been fighting
racism, incompetence, and fraud in the Providence School Department. Up until now, I have not been active in this
“social/political” world. I was declared
disabled in 2000 due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Clinical Depression,
and a history of being fired from seven jobs because I objected actively to
their immoral and illegal practices.
Some would say that I am just a spoiled wealthy White Guy who has used
the “system” to his advantage. Others
might suggest that my maladies are real, and that
they have
helped me become the person that I am today.
A friend challenged me recently about this struggle saying that it was
“arrogant” for a “White” person to speak for any minority population. She said that it offended her if I said,
“African-Americans will do X…” So, in
most cases in this essay, I am repeating what was said to me by
specific people in specific places at specific times.
If I overstep my bounds, then you will have to accept my flaws, but if I
hit any bull’s-eyes, then the “misses” would have made it worth the effort.
NOTE: In this essay, I
use “Black’, “Black Americans”, and “African-American” interchangeably, but these are odd words. For instance, there is an established
population of African-African Americans who were born and raised in Africa , and have
dark skin. So, if
you bear with me, most of the words that
we all use to deal with the problems of racism are, in fact, out-moded and in
many ways corrupt. The term “Caucasian”
was invented when a sociologist stated that ALL the races of the world were
contained in seven categories before 19001. Science has since proved that his
distinctions were completely inaccurate, unscientific, and racist. Despite this, we continue to use the term
“Caucasian” as if it meant something, when it expresses nothing. For the purposes of this essay, I prefer to
use the term, European-Americans to
describe people with light skin. Of
course, this, too, is a limited term, since “light-skinned” people come from
all over the world, too. So,
granted my own confusion, I hope this adds to yours.
My suspicion is that much of what I am writing here will offend many
people. For that I am sorry. My intention is to plant the seeds to change our racism which has been
with us forever, must to come to an end, has
been supported by our selective history educations, a drag on our nation’s
ability to move ahead, been debunked by science, and obliterated by my personal
experience over these last 54 years. You
see, I am working for reconciliation,
harmony, and the end to Racism in America
The point is that what or who I am
is of little importance. The only
thing important is my message which is that prejudice, racism, and active
racism is over.
As a puppeteer, I have worked in every imaginable
environment—Catholic Schools and Churches, Temples, Synagogues, Jewish
Community Centers, Hispanic Centers, Inner City Recreation Centers, suburban
and inner city schools, and the homes of the rich, not so rich and the
poor. What struck me was that I met no
one who did not have problems with their parents, or their lovers or spouses,
their neighbors, their pasts or their
futures. In fact, everywhere I went
people worried about the same things with sometimes different names (For
example: The Rabbi, Priest, Minister who is “right”, “wrong”, “lazy”,
“careless” or “wonderful”) We are all much more alike than different, more
similar than dissimilar, and more the same then you know. It is our very similarities which make racism
pointless and counterproductive for us as individuals and as a nation. Marc Kohler,
January 2002.
What Does History Say?
If I told you that you know nothing about the history of the world for the
past two hundred years, you would most likely be insulted, but let me ask you
some questions in order to discover the areas that your education has failed
you:
1. How many people did Hitler kill in concentration camps?
a) Six million
b) Six million Jews and one
million others
c) Six million Jews and three
million others
d) Six million Jews and four
million others
The answer is D)2. Yes,
four million “others” were murdered as well.
Why do we not know this? I do not
know. My guess is that there was not one
racial, national, or ethnic category that represents these four million
people. That is, they were Christians,
blacks, socialists, democrats, republicans, nationalists, pacifists, Greeks,
Slavs, Italians, French, Spanish, Germans, Russians, women, men, children,
homosexuals, heterosexuals, educated, uneducated, and…and…and, well you get my
point—four million people. In fact, all
of these distinctions also apply to those six million who were called “Jews”
since this term was often applied to people whom the Gestapo just did not
like. So, if anyone asks, Hitler
exterminated ten million human beings.
2. How many people did the
Japanese kill during their invasion and occupation of Korea , Manchuria, and China
a) 500,000
b) One Million
c) Ten Million
d) Thirty Million
The answer is D)3 again.
“Thirty Million”—no, you did not know that. Why, most likely because to this day
historians have hid this fact, Japanese educators drop it out of history books,
and because there has been lots of reasons why we “good old Americans” have not
wanted to bring up this “problem”.
So, get the picture, millions of people died under Stalin, Moa Tse Tung,
in Cambodia
Was mass murder a new idea in 1930?
Hitler has been quoted as saying that the mass murder of
Armenians gave him his excuse for thinking he could “get away” with it,
too. This is not true. Yes, Hitler may have mentioned the Armenians,
but mass murder was intrinsic to the colonial empires of the late Nineteenth
Century on a scale that you simply will not comprehend.
2.How many people in the world died from 1860 to 1920 as a result of
colonialism, the El Nino droughts, and Europeans hatred of other men,
women, and children who were “different”, “in the way”, or “nor working fast
enough”?
a) 30 million
b) 50 million
c) 75 million
d) 65-120 million
It’s D)4 again! Now,
when were Hitler and Allen Dulles born?
1889 and 1893, respectively.
Therefore, as teenagers, they were aware of these massacres, genocides,
and horrific crimes because the atrocities were reported in the press
throughout the world. It was not only
general knowledge; it was considered “no
big deal”. Why did Theodore Roosevelt
ask what we should do about the “White Man’s Burden”? 5 First and foremost, he knew that
suffering was occurring on a scale never before seen in the world, and he
thought mistakenly that his skin color actually made the difference. The only
difference was that European and American colonial powers had the technology
for lethal force, and used it with abandon, entertainment, and genocidal
success throughout Asia, South America, Africa, North
America , and any where else in the world where they wanted
to—ultimately against their own people!
For every dollar that King Leopold spent in the Congo, he (not his nation
or national treasury since he “owned” the Congo in the same way that you own
your clothes) received back five dollars—a 500% return on investment. Oh, there were costs. The population of the Congo
What if Hitler had only paid “lip service” to his “Final Solution”, and
kept the people he wanted dead alive and well enough to contribute to the
economic and intellectual life of Germany Germany
1. Keep them alive (barely), keep
them housed (minimally), and create the illusion that they are participants in
your society even though they are prevented from owning property.
2. Stigmatize them with images,
which you know a false and misleading, that you "feed" to the public
with every form of communication possible.
3. As the sufferings of this
oppressed group continues, make drugs and alcohol readily available to
alleviate the stress and secure their image as “ne’er-do-wells”. Let prostitution flourish.
4. Figure out a way to contain the
oppressed people in limited geographic areas in order to provide you with the
maximum of control with the least investment of resources.
5. Like Hitler, you will have to use “Lethal Force”, “Extreme Prejudice”,
“Executive Action”, or whatever term you want to use for officially condoned
murder. Mix in riots, lynchings, maiming, starving, and other physical distress
just to keep the pot brewing in your favor.
Kill not only their leaders, but the man on the street as well. Use the young oppressed against the old. Pit workers against students—make sure, no
one finds out what you are doing---then, you will out-do Hitler---no, you won’t
need gas chambers when you have thousands of acres of red-lined neighborhoods
are available to you.
6. Pit Blacks (Who you hate)
against Jews (Who you hate) against homosexuals (Who you hate) against workers
(Who you hate) against Teachers (Who you hate), and then you can change your
name from Adolph Hitler to Allen Dulles.7
What Does Science Say?
Science? Yes, how does science
describe, explain, and define human existence and race?
Again, since this is a pamphlet, so this is going to go by real fast. How are human beings made? Well, the sperm from a male human fertilizes
an egg of a woman human. In fact, we
have become adept at not even requiring bodies for this process. Still, what is the "it" that
happens in this union—well, the DNA from the woman merges with the DNA from the
man to create a “new” independent creature—a fetus. This “fetus”, if circumstances allow, will
“grow” into a human being. Again, what
determines what this fetus will become?
First and primarily, DNA. Alter
the DNA, and you alter the future person.
Remove the DNA, and you have no person.
Certainly pre-natal care, nutrition, and health of the mother will
impact on the health of the child.
Now, please sit down, ‘cause this is the thing science has proven—all
humans are 99.999% exactly the same8. Only one one hundred thousandth of our DNA
determines our sex, skin color, facial structure, hair color, skeletal size,
foot size, etc.etc.etc. I
am suggesting that declaring that humans are "different" would be
like claiming differences in two houses built exactly the same way from 100,000
bricks each, and making the observation that one of the bricks (one and only
one) was different from one other brick in the other house. Even an unreasonable person could see that
what we are as human beings has nothing to do with what we see, but has
everything to do with how we are built..
Let’s look at “seeing” itself for a second. Hinduism teaches that the world is all
“Maya”, not real and only an illusion of God’s expression into our world of the
senses. These Hindus might be
right. Rub your thumb and finger
together; you think that the thumb touches the finger. Such is not the case, though. According to science, what is happening is
that the atoms in the thumb have the same electrical charge as those in your
finger. Therefore, they push away at
each other. You “feel” it only because
the electrical/nerve path from your hand to you brain “tells” you that touch is
occurring. Therefore, when you see an
object, you can see only within the limits of the light being reflected from
the object that you are looking at. So,
what is real is not, it is just an incredible arrangement of atoms and
molecules.
It sounds absurd, but we are nothing more and nothing less than beings
that convert heat and fuel into energy and electrical impulses. All of this occurs at a level that you and I
cannot see, cannot touch, and least of all, cannot judge. Who is to say that the electrical/biological
activity in one human body is better or superior to another human being? The fact is that “better”, “superior”, and
such refers to only what we can see and touch, not anywhere near what we
really, actually, and scientifically are.
Our actual selves are nothing, and they are everything. Anything else is window dressing. Skin, material goods, housing, clothes, restaurants,
sports events, grades, schools, offices, hair fashions, deodorant are all
irrelevant to who and what we are.
Why? Because if we accepted the
truth about ourselves, we would give up this insane civilization, make
apologies to millions of “primitive” people that our ancestors and we (3
million people have been murdered in the Congo
Science is unforgiving on this point: We are not our brothers’ keepers we
ARE our brothers and sisters except for 001 %!
What does God Say?
This one is easy. All religions
that I have studied teach that hatred and rage, if tolerated at all, are worthy
of God, but not of man. Judaism,
Christianity, Islam, BaHai, Mormonism, Catholicism, Zen, Hinduism, Wicca, and
many that I cannot think of teach that peace and harmony are the goals of human
life. Jesus, who was a Gnostic Jew9, said, “You
should love your neighbor”, the exact words from Leviticus (19:18). He said “Love”—not “like”, not “tolerate”,
not “understand”. The commandment is
uncompromising. I would add, “Love
first, and ask questions later”.
The White Aryan “Christian” Identity Movement represents the antithesis of
everything that is holy, and if you sit and do nothing about it, then you are
their ally, and that is why racism grows every day in America
How Did we Become Such a Racist Nation?
Here, the answer is easy—people of color stand out. The darker your skin color, the more you
stand out in America ISLAND , WE ARE ALL
HERE NOW TOGETHER, AND WE WERE BROUGHT HERE BY OUR MUTUAL PAST.
So, let’s learn some more history.
After the Civil War, the lives of freed slaves were extremely
difficult. Sharecropping was less
reliable than plantation life. If former
slaves moved, they encountered racism everywhere they went. Violence against Blacks continued just as it
had BEFORE the Civil War, or as Southerners insist, “The War Between the
States”.
Riots, lynchings, burnings, maimings, and torture, started long before the
War and have stayed with us ever since.
Just look it up. Our amnesia is
no excuse for stupidity. “These (riots)
were also acts of outright repression, usually surrounding slavery and
abolition...During this time, 70% of America’s cities holding 20,000 or more
people experienced major civil disorder.
There were 147 riots in 1835 alone...they covered the gamut of mob
activity. 35 were against abolitionists,
11 in response to imagined slave insurrections, 15 of them were race
riots: 11 against blacks, 3 to help
fugitive slaves, and one by blacks…”12
From 1870-1920, though, many Black communities rose up all across our
country. The middle class black
professional was not an exception. A
parallel universe existed. In Wilmington , North
Carolina American
Way
Then, after the Depression, the banking system was in shambles. One way to rebuild was to prevent individuals
from having too much control of any single banking enterprise. This would mean new banking laws, new banking
corporations, and a new “thriftiness” The core of this “new thriftiness” was
Redlining. Lending institutions all over
the country drew red lines around poor and/or marginal neighborhoods. At the time, these neighborhoods were poor
Irish Americans, poor Italian Americans, poor French Americans, poor Polish
Americans, poor African Americans, poor German Americans, and any other
immigrant populations. Red lining meant
that no private mortgages could be written to ANYONE on properties within these
lines. With the deft
flip of a pen, American banks commercialized thousands and thousands of
acres of land without one zoning board meeting, without one legislative act,
and without the consent or approval of the governed.13
If a private mortgage cannot be written for a property, then it can either
not be sold (vacant properties) or sold for cash (Absentee landlords). Drive around any urban community, and you can
tell exactly where these “RED LINES” were drawn. This system of the direct destruction of our
neighborhoods lasted well in to the 1970s, over forty years. Today, it still occurs, and even though it
has been outlawed, it remains the number one reason why we have segregated poor
ghettoes filled with minority and poor Americans.
What can a White Guy like me do?
To me, this is a funny question. If
the Genome Project is right, then I am 99.999% human and only .001%
“white”. So, we need to truly identify
the problem. You see, minority
individuals have no real or intrinsic problems.
We, the bums on top, create the problems for them. It is sad, but the darker your skin color,
the odds of you being in the bottom echelon of your society anywhere in the
world is high. No, people should not
have to fight for their rights. Rights
are rights, and nothing, not skin color, cranium shape, hair color, or any
other irrelevant aspect of a persons physiology should deprive a
person of their rights. Yes, through the
legal process, individuals can “lose” certain rights. Yes, they can be imprisoned. Still, seriously, I have yet to attend the
court sessions where it was declared that if you were not a “White American”,
you had lost you rights.
Therefore, if I see a person practicing racism, why can’t I stand up and
say, “HEY! THAT’S WRONG.” You see, if the person being victimized is a
person of color, a disabled American, or a person who stutters, it does not
matter. What is wrong is wrong is wrong
is wrong. That’s all there is. Prejudice and racism make our resources as a
nation less than what they would be without them. We are a “smaller” society if we stand by and
do nothing about the wrongs right in front of our eyes. So, yes, we White Guys and Gals can work
seriously for equal rights for all Americans.
In fact, if you become aware of child abuse, you are breaking the law if
you do not do something about it.
When you and I look at an person who is “not-white”, we cannot help but
fall back on all of our trained, conditioned, compulsive, knee-JERK, foolish,
short-sighted, absurd, and unscientific ways.
No matter what the courts decide, or what the police can do, or any
other law enforcement agency can do, it is up to us to change—we are
wrong. We are wrong. We have been wrong for centuries and
centuries. We are wrong when we get up
in the morning, and when we go to bed at night.
We sit back and make all-white television shows the highpoint of our
week.
What CAN You Do
Right Now?
1. Stop hating.
No, I mean it. Stop hating anyone that
you hate. Hate is, in fact, nothing more
than the inability to gain perspective and potency in your relationship with
your world and the people in it. You
hate your sister because she brought dandelions to your wedding twenty-five
years ago, but the real reason has do with your mutual and somewhat confused
relationship with your drunkard mother-beating father. All hatred is corrupt at the root. Problems are solved, even on the battlefield,
without hatred. The best fighters and
doers fight and do FOR things, not against others.
2. Realize that if you have
prejudice or racist feelings, realize that you are being used. By whom?
First, by the forces and people who are in control. Reactionary corporate forces to divert
attention from what they were doing on a national and international level
created both the violent racist movement and the violent anti-abortion. You are being used the same way that Romanian
Dictator used the “farmers” when he brought them in to club protestors. The Klan kept the Democrats and plantation
owners in power in the South. Remember
the mob (disgruntled White Democrats) burned out, and murdered the black
citizens of Wilmington , North Carolina
3. Make a friend who is of a
different color than you. That is
“friend”, not “acquaintance”, not “neighbor”, and definitely not the “I have a
Black friend” friend. Why not adopt
people who are different than you.
4. Acknowledge the theft and destruction of resources, ideas, creations,
lives, hopes, dreams, religions, values, social structures, and ways of life of
millions and millions of indigenous peoples throughout the world over the past
five hundred years. Support the idea of
turning Columbus Day into Columbus-Taino Day to honor the Taino tribe
that disappeared from the face of the earth after the arrival of the three
little ships. Support reparations and
engage those who don’t with the question: How many more millions must die
before we make things right? Look, Elvis
Presley became what he became because the record companies wanted a “back
voice” without the “black skin".
The Charleston started at the Savoy
Ballroom in Harlem .
5. Patronize local stores. Stop supporting large chains. Realize that small business, locally owned
and operated, has been and will always be the rock bed of prosperity for our
country. This way, people of every color
can pursue their dreams by owning their own businesses. Put McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and all the rest out
of business. Pay a bit more to save more
over the long term.
6. Go live or spend a lot of time
in the local “ghetto”. No, it is not so
far away either in distance or in style.
Find out first hand what it is like to live in a world complete and
totally structured against you. Realize
that the “ghetto” is not really a ghetto for one color—realize that ALL colored
people live in our poor neighborhoods, and they ALL need your help, power,
potency, and wealth. They cannot do it
on their own. Too much of the deck has
been stacked against them. This is NOT
their fault. It is our forbearers fault,
and here and now, we can start to reverse and make amends for what they have
done not to the ethnic populations but to us, and our world—think of the
thousands upon thousands of people who could have or would have contributed
directly to your life, and your happiness, and your dreams if, if ,if they had
been given one chance to do so!
7. Take a local person of color to the bank and see if you can help them
get a business loan. You will be shocked
at what you hear and see. You will
simply not believe it.
8. Give up your political views, and commit todiscovering
the truth about the history of the United States Lincoln
9. Start acting color-blind. When you meet a new person look them in the
eye. Shake their hand. Listen intently to what they have to
say. Think more about them than
yourself. Consider immediately not “What
can this person do for me”, but rather think: “What can I do for this
person.” Soon, faces will look
differently to you. Even your friends will look different. You will see pain and joy that you have never
seen before. You will, in fact, become
responsible (The ability to respond authentically to the people and the world
around you.) In this way, you will
discover the wealth that you possess in your soul, and the wealth you have in
your family and loved ones, the wealth, and potency you can bring to you
friends and community. Without adding
one penny to your bank account, you will become one of the richest people in
the world. Here is a real stretch: If your
children are grown, adopt a bright high school student who has no support, and
provide for him or her as if they were your own child. (Ghandho sggested this
to a Hindu family adopting an Islamic orphan, that they bring hp, up in a
Islamic way)
Well, I have more ideas, but I am
running out of space. I guess the idea I
want to impress upon you is that all the people who you think are different are
not different. Know that volunteerism
and your personal choices will make more of a difference than any government
program. Volunteerism is, and has always
been the source of real change for centuries—the first doctors and nurses were
volunteers! Racism is just an
uninformed, lazy way of looking at the world.
Stop racism, and you move towards spiritual wealth beyond your wildest
dreams. There are millions of people who
have been shut out of America
Footnotes and
Other Books:
1.R.I. College/RI Committee on the Humanities Project, The
Black Experience publishing details not available, approx. 1985.
2.Grun, Bernard The Timetables of History, A
Horizontal Linkage of People and Events, p. 524, Touchstone, Simon and
Schuster: 1982.
Chang, Iris, The Rape of Nanking ,
The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, Basic Books, 1997
4. Davis, Mike, The Late Victorian Holocausts; El Nino
Famines, and the Making of the Third World, Verso Books: 2001.(Must read)
5. Roosevelt, Theodore, “Burden of the White Man” reprinted
in The Life Story of Theodore Roosevelt, His Principles and Policies by
Charles Morris, The John C. Winton Co. : 1909.
6. Hochschild, Adam, King Leopold’s Ghost, Houghton
Mifflin 1999
7. Prescott Bush was convicted of acting as a Nazi
Collaborator in the 40s, and Allen Dulles recovered all of his money in
1951. John Foster Dulles and Allen
Dulles were the two most powerful men in America
8. See:
http://www.ornal.gov/hgmis/publicat/primer2001/4.html, Genome Project and
Its impact on Medicine and Society: 2001 Primer.
9. The Five Gospels, The Search for the Authentic Words
of Jesus, by Hover Funk and the Jesus Seminar, Maxwell McMillan
International: 1993 10. Glasser, William, Reality
Therapy, Harper & Row, New
York
11. Maslow, Abraham h., Towards a Psychology of Being,V.
Nostrand
12.Smead, Howard, CIVIL DISORDER, http://www.lousiville.edu/
provost/womenctr/civil.htmlRun “race
riots” or “Wilmington Riot” on the net. Best:
http://chss2.montclair.edu/schwartsl/BN/wilmington.html
13. Articles and books about “Red Lining” are plentiful.
14. Smead, Ibid.
Other
Books of Interest:
Hitler’s Willing
Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, by Daniel Joseph
Goldhagen, Vintage Books, 1997.(must read #2)
The Simple Stories in various volumes by Langston
Hughes-and any other works by Mr. Hughes.
The Denial of Death and Birth and Death of
Meaning, Ernest Becker
Love is To be Happy With by Barry N. Kaufman.
The First and Last Freedom, J.
Krishnamurti
I Have a Dream, Writings and Speeches by
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Clarence Darrow for the Defense by Irving
Stone
Writings and Speeches of Eugene V. Debs, by
E.V.Debs
The Speeches and Writings of Harry S. Truman, various
editions
Copyright
2002 Marc W. Kohler Stopracism1@aol.com
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