A Simple Question

The Question I use about race is just the best simple test I’ve ever seen. “Given the same historical circumstances, would whites have been as damaged by slavery, and taken as long to recover?”

It isn’t just a determinant of racism (“differential attribution of worth or capacity on the basis of race or ethnicity”) it is flexible. Flip it around and you can find “reverse racism” (“given the same historical circumstances, would blacks have been better slave masters, or kinder and more honest after emancipation?”).

Of course one can add nuance. I could write an entire volume of nuances and applications. One is the detection of liars. If you lie and say “yes” but then later blame black people for their damage, we can spot you. Conversely, ONLY that damage above the statistical average is reasonable to blame on the ugly history. The rest? Just human shit.

And you can also spot unconscious racism. It is, after all, just an unfortunate side effect of tribalism, which is often a survival value, often positive and harmless. But people can WANT to believe in human equality while struggling to fit what they see in the world into that box. It CAN be a struggle, trust me. Black people often struggle to believe whites are not innately weak and evil.

Equality goes both ways. As the “Essence/Existence” argument has been going on at least three thousand years, I suspect it cannot ultimately be answered fully, such that it really boils down to faith. What were YOU taught about the spiritual nature, the essence of…