07-10-2018, 07:17 PM
(07-10-2018, 06:34 PM)Dill Wrote: but as an observer I have seen no indication that their membership feels that more terms means more racism, more obstacles. Like Racism PLUS institutional racism.
So it's not really "larger" but "more specific"--that is what is at stake in using these terms.
I see what you are getting at there with more specific, but I still maintain it does more to further separate and divide. I think at this point we need to be striving more towards coming together and seeing each other as equal humans....without labels.
The best example I can think of from an anecdotal standpoint comes from the genocide in Rwanda with the Hutus and the Tutsis...two tribes that made up the bulk of the Rwandan population. The Tutsis were the tribe that was on the receiving end of the genocide. If you were a Tutsi, you were targeted. All forms of ID at the time indicated tribal affiliation. In other words, when people were asked to show their papers, if it said they were Tutsi, they were killed.
When I visited Rwanda, many people told me how they were ashamed of what had happened, and were sad that the world still mainly saw Rwanda through the lens of the genocide....even though they had been working hard for many years to put it behind them. I asked them what types of measures were undertaken to do so. They said the first thing that happened after the genocide was that IDs no longer indicated tribal affiliations. And People no longer referred to themselves or others as Hutus or Tutsis. The were simply Rwandans. In fact it was now frowned upon to the point of raising suspicion if you referred to yourself by tribe, or asked someone else what tribe they were from. They said that simple step had gone a long way to bridging the divide between the people.
To me, that first step they took is similar to what were need to begin healing. Stop labeling each other by race, and just call each other Americans...or even better humans.
