Kid goes to the library and asks for a book about frogs. Librarian takes him to medical section and hands him a book about frog dissection. Kid opens it and throws up saying…”that’s more than I ever wanted to know about frogs”.
Read on for more than you ever wanted to know about racism and the N word.
Social, biological and scientific definitions of race are confusing. If you are a member of the species homo sapiens, you belong to the human race. Until the Martians land, that’s your only choice (LGBTWXYZ not withstanding).
It’s the social definition of race that’s been the basis for much debate and conflict. Racial profiling used “white” to designate the predominant European social group with scientific sounding terms like “negroid” to differentiate among other groups within society using skin color as the criteria regardless of national origin.
Below is a picture from my kindergarten days …a magnet school honoring Golda Meir…prime minister of Israel and former resident…on the south side of Milwaukee, a predominately Polish neighborhood.
That’s me top row second from left. My best buddy was Mickey, middle row fourth from left. Then there was Maria (my first girlfriend), far right bottom row. I’m sure some of you could start assigning ethnicity to some of these kids. I just remember their personalities like the little gangster to my right who was always in trouble.
Ethnicity, then is a label based on cultural factors such as nationality no matter how long you’ve lived outside that nation and have been in America. Race has become a label primarily for skin color.
It really gets confusing when race is confused with ethnicity. What if a “negroid” race person was born and raised in a “Nordic” country like Sweden? If I seem confused about the terminology, remember that I was exposed to a major war where “yellow peril” was one of our major national enemies. How Japan became a yellow ethnicity still confuses me.
Let’s get back to that race definition. “Negroid” refers to dark skin color but that term was apparently too difficult for some (primarily Democrats) to pronounce so it was shortened to “nigger” which, I believe, is what they mean by the N word. Further deterioration of the ability to enunciate properly is evident in today’s Rap “music artists” who pronounce it “niggah”.
Democrats continue to add confusion to the issue of race and ethnicity.
They compound the problem by initiating preferences in school admissions and job hiring based on skin color…which, technically, makes them racists? Or ethnicists? Or just stupid?
My favorite pilot and roommate (my second tour in Vietnam) claimed to be Irish, further confusing me about the difference between race and ethnicity.
I trusted him with my life to get us off and back on an aircraft carrier (sometimes in the middle of the night) while I ran the electronics in the back (think Goose in the movie Top Gun). I couldn’t say that for some of the non-Irish pilots and managed to avoid flying with them.
If I confuse race with ethnicity, it may go back to my grandfather sending me to the local bar two blocks from our house for his tobacco and beer.
Yes, that is a product from the American Tobacco Company distributed by a Jewish company in a Polish Neighborhood who celebrated Golda Meir as one of them. Confusing, ain’t it?
Funny story about the beer…Grandpa would smear lard on the inside lip of the beer bucket so there would be more beer and less foam. Evidence that he wasn’t dumb…maybe racist? Who knows…I wasn’t as cognizant of brand names as I am today and just remember I got a taste of the beer.
I guess, given what I now know about how politicians use the race card, my school picture at that young age would have been entirely different…
…forfeiting my seat (excuse the pun) on the Supreme Court!
fns
3.18.2021