“Class is a construct based on levels of education; race is a construct based on levels of ignorance.”

This discussion is to develop knowledge and understanding of ethnicity over race. All are welcome to join the debate.

                                           *                        *                           *

People from Beijing do not refer to themselves as yellow people; they call themselves Chinese. Likewise people from Calcutta do not refer to themselves as brown people; they call themselves Indian.

The majority of people on Earth refer to themselves based on their ethnic background (ie. Polish, Iranian, Japanese, Brazilian etc) but a lot of 'black' people refer to themselves within the confines of race and colour only.

This is not the fault of any particular person but more the product of world history...

                   *                          *                           *

When Europeans first met Africans, centuries ago, there was no body of knowledge in the world as there is now. There was no equivalent to Wikipedia on which you could do some fact finding to prepare you for any eventuality. To see somebody whose physicality was so different to yours would be shocking and as such you would refer to each other based on what was before your eyes.

And so 'black', 'negro' and later 'nigger' came about as words to describe these different people.

As time went on it was easier to refer to these 'black' people by colour rather than by their different tribes and ethnicities which were notoriously difficult to pronounce or remember, that is, if bothered to be learned in the first place.

As large numbers of these 'black' people were to become slaves or colonialised citizens in their countries of origin, the need for their ethnicities to be remembered became lesser and lesser, until such point that even they began to forget that they had histories and illustrious ethnic backgrounds and began to assimilate with the easier idea of being ‘black’.

 
Fast forward through the centuries and as the 'black' people's ethnic roots continuously eroded, adversely their European colonial cultures became more prominent. Now they were born as ‘black’ people and as such there was a new idea of 'black' culture as opposed to their individual ethnic cultures.

This new born 'black' culture was, and is, a confusing entity. Because it has no history, no language or no common belief it is actually anarchic. Inside of black culture is chaos and terror because with no common goals how can anyone decide on a common good and bad?

The desperate consumerism within 'black' culture is essentially a search for meaning within these confines.

The mass media all through this has also been guilty of propagating lazy journalism and referring to, say, youths as 'black youths' rather than either just 'youths' or differentiating 'Nigerian and Jamaican youths' (for example). This has made the labelling of 'black' people within the confines of race/colour an acceptable part of the global discourse.

Can you imagine the uproar if people from the Far East were referred to by colour rather than ethnicity? Imagine the headline ‘Yellow Youths Arrested Over Suspected Attack’. People would be shocked and embarrassed and forums would be filled with the chatter of how inappropriate this pejorative usage of colour was. However because the word (term )'black' has been in the global discourse for so long now it is second nature.

In essence this is the story of the boiling frog. Needless to say the term black is still very detrimental and derisory. To be objectified with an adjective (black) rather than be named with a noun (Barbadian, Ghanaian etc) is simply unacceptable.

The point I am trying to make here is that we all conform to what we know and what seems easy, even sometimes when we know it is not right. For the majority of my life I have thought of myself as somebody defined by my ‘blackness’. Although I was often uncomfortable mentioning the subject of race, I still did not see that it was, in fact, the very construct of race that unsettled my inner equilibrium.

However we have a chance here by showing our support and understanding of this matter to open up a new discussion in the global discourse. Black culture is very profitable but so is war culture. It does not make either of them right, especially if we consider ourselves to be real humanitarians.

Let us all be proud of our ethnic differences and celebrate our diverse histories as humans rather than as objectified colour coded humans.

I would ask everyone who makes a post to disclose, with pride, a few opening words telling us of your heritage. I, for example, am British African-Caribbean which aptly defines the journey of my ancestry to where I am today. By affirming this title to myself, I ground myself in the annals of history and like a tree with roots, am able to develop new branches. Amongst my friends there are British German Italians, French African-Caribbeans and British Iraqis, to name but a few.

I would be delighted ( as I’m sure will many others) to hear from as wide a range of people as possible so that we know this world we live in still has a route to hope and salvation through its greatest asset; us!

Average user rating