“Race is the child of Racism” is an organization of the adjectival word that makes sense to me. I wish it was as easy as reframing language and making definitional sources classify “race”, when used as an adjective, an archaic definition of the word, but that is probably naive and unrealistic. Nonetheless, I feel really conflicted when questionnaires and other forms ask about “race”. I don’t see a long term benefit in constantly tracking this unscientific, anti-social grouping of human beings. When will we be able to dismantle this absurd notion that humans should be qualitatively grouped? The only purpose I see to this is to perpetuate systems that do NOT treat all people as entitled to equal opportunity for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

I acknowledge that these “rights” are the ideals of the governing documents for the USA not necessarily those of any other country, but those are ideals I want my country to live up to. Maybe instead of ideals we should focus on values. What are your core values? What are the core values of your family, your neighborhood, your society, your country, your culture? What values do you hope your ancestors many generations from now live by?

I have read a number of books and listened to discussion on the topics of Anti-bias, Anti-racist behavior. It seems until we (U.S. Americans) dismantle the racist systems, social constructs and institutions we have created and amended (without really fixing them) over the last 400 years it will be necessary to “track race” to ensure we are constructing and supporting systems that do NOT benefit one group of people and harm another. But justifying the tracking of this artificial categorization of “race” could also be a slippery slope, no?

If we do the necessary and sometimes difficult work of identifying our values I suspect all those who believe in “the American ideals” would have lists that are very similar if not identical. One of my core values is kindness. Not niceness, kindness. Because I enjoy the humor that can be derived from linguistics (puns, plays on words, using homonyms, etc.) I often fall into rabbit holes of conventional verbal definitions versus the common uses thereof and translations between languages. This spins my thinking onto a myriad of distracted tangents but since humans communicate ideas primarily through the use of words we often must find a way to agree on verbal definitions.

As of this writing, I heartily recommend the Podcast "Scene on Radio” season 4 - The Land That Never Has Been Yet, for a gritty, blunt, fact-based review of American “democracy”. For actionable ideas and conversational language to help us teach our children anti-bias, anti-racist behaviors I strongly recommend the Podcast “First Name Basis” especially episodes 3:26 through the current episodes of season 4. (We need these kind of resources for high-school-aged children as well). If the world would identify you as White (like they do me); even if your belief-system and values don’t align at all to the actions of our White ancestors and therefore you don’t identify as White although you know you have White privilege (like me), then I challenge you to educate yourself and have hard conversations with your families and villages. The following books have been useful to me, How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X Kendi, White Fragility, Dr. Robin DiAngelo, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, Emmanuel Acho, but there are numerous others to choose from.

What matters is to DO THE WORK. White privilege, justified by lies and perpetuated through conquest consciousness, and attempts at global domination have caused most of the social unrest and problems our American culture currently suffers. It’s the job of we Americans who have benefitted from this privilege to fix the problems. This is NOT the job of those who have suffered from power-over oppression, enslavement, genocide and the other atrocities committed in the “name of enlightenment entitlement” or the perspective of “we can so we will”. With that said, I don’t know the words to adequately express my humble admiration of ALL who have persevered and in spite of these atrocities and are continuing to strive to make the American ideals reality. I appreciate you, I respect you, I support you and I’m so grateful you are my fellow Americans. We are ALL humans and when enough of us work together for the benefit of all humanKIND we will succeed.