We Are All People of Color Part III
       Last week I asked the question :Why does anyone need "race" as a personal identity anyway? What kind of person thinks that the color of their skin is more important than what they are accomplishing (if anything) towards ending racism and working towards world peace? How does the "Us v. Them" mentality make anyone a better person or contribute to the ending of racism? Why do some people insist that everyone else has to give up their racism, but will not give up their own?
       I understand the concept of "white privilege," but that wording creates a dangerous division between people who should be united, and an unnecessary misconception about the real difference between those with economic power and those without. Men of color often have "Male Privilege" over women, and in religious cultures those that wield economic privilege can dictate what the masses believe.
       Most lighter skinned people who are offered "white privilege" do not want it or ask for it, it is imposed upon them by a racist system controlled by those 1%ers who wield economic power for the twofold purpose of 1. creating that racial division, 2. exploiting in other ways the very same lighter skinned brothers and sisters who are ostensibly "privileged."
       What all that does is hide the fact that the exploitation is economic, not racial. I don't think the 1%ers who control the economy even believe in racism themselves, they just like to encourage racial identity to keep the masses divided. Hasn't anyone noticed that in most of the rest of the world (i.e. not Europe or North America) the political dictators and economic 1%ers are not "white" but colored? There are no genetic markers to determine either the exploited or the exploiters, people of any color can be be both.
       No matter what color your skin is, you can practice these exercises to really work towards that post-racial society that we all are hoping to achieve someday.

• 1. Try not thinking in terms of black, white, yellow, red, brown or whatever, as discrete digits that put people in racial categories. Instead, observe people around you and try to guess what shades their skin is on an arbitrary black to white scale with 100 values.
• 2. If you do not know the persons you are observing, try to guess what their cultural characteristics are: i.e. language, political affiliation, religion, country of origin, level of education, etc. Notice that you will begin to rely on the clothes they wear and the way they speak rather than the shade of their skin tone. You can even do this with people whom you perceive as having the exact shade of melanin as yourself.
• 3. Now try it on yourself. Think about your own cultural and sub-cultural characteristic and think about how you came to learn them.
• 3a. Did you learn them of your own free will?
• 3b. Did you accept them from a racist of whom you have chosen a racial category?
• 3c. Or did you learn them from someone who claims to be a spokesman for your own racial category and who also tells you how to think and act to be true to your racial identity?
• 3d. If either 3b or 3c, ask yourself who gains by this? Your own existential freedom or the political power of the self-styled "racial spokespersons?"

       Anything that can be learned can also be unlearned. I have devised the above psychological exercises based on both existentialist and pragmatist philosophy and psychology. In future blog posts I will go into more detail about personal and social constructs, and one of my favorite philosopher - psychologists, Dr. George A. Kelly (1905 - 1966).
       But separate from our personal and social constructs, there are problems in our political economic system. Racial identity only makes them more insidious by masking them.
       So tomorrow I want to discuss how we are all economically exploited through private property.
       My website