Race thoughts
Posted on December 3, 2006
Filed Under Something to Think about |
gladwell.com: Defining A Racist
Between Michael Richards’ outburst in a comedy nightclub, Mel Gibson’s tirade of a few months back, and Michael Irvin’s musings about Tony Romo’s racial heritage, I’m wondering if we need a clearer definition of what it means to be a racist.
Malcolm Gladwell has started an interesting conversation on defining a racist and degrees of racism. What is sad is that we have invented this notion of race. As if there is a fundmental difference between humans with different levels of melanin to define such a classification. It does not exist, the difference is an adapation due to geographic location and relative sun exposure. The same reason my pasty white butt changes to shades of red and later a light brown when I spend a couple weeks in the Caribbean. We don’t do the same with eye colour, (and aside from some poor taste jokes) hair colour (the latter is actually a good candidate for Gladwell’s criteria), so why for skin colour?
Comments
Leave a Reply