racism(3/3)
Let the lowest white man count for more than the highest negro
It was in 1913 that a prominent southern educator, Thomas Pearce Bailey, took it upon himself to assemble what he called the racial creed of the South. It amounted to the central tenets of the caste system. One of the tenets was “Let the lowest white man count for more than the highest negro.”
The creation of a caste system
The creation of a caste system was a process of testing the bounds of human categories and not the result of a single edict. It was a decades-long sharpening of lines whenever the colonists had a decision to make. When Africans began converting to Christianity, they posed a challenge to a religion-based hierarchy. Their efforts to claim full participation in the colonies was in direct opposition to the European hunger for the cheapest, most pliant labor to extract the most wealth from the New World.…
Caste is the bones, race the skin
Caste and race are neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive. The can and do coexist in the same culture and serve to reinforce each other. Race, in the United States, is the visible agent of the unseen force of caste. Caste is the bones, race the skin. Race is what we can see, the physical traits that have been given arbitrary meaning and become shorthand for who a person is. Caste is the powerful infrastructure that holds each group in its place.…
Birmingham epistle
Letter From Jail is a beautifully typeset rendition of Martin Luther King Jr’s epistle from Birmingham jail, with a crucial and timeless analysis of justice, oppression, love and race. It is also a stunning example of a modern day epistle in the same vein as Galatians.
Oppressed Americans are like Pharaoh's slaves
Have you watched this? Your browser does not support the video tag. I’m glad you have now. Ms. Jones is right - we should be thankful that the Black community rarely seeks revenge for their oppression. If you’re in a position of privilege, as I am, you should be afraid. But not of the Black community. The Holy Bible illustrates a story of one people, descended from Abraham, who were routinely oppressed by their neighbors.…
American racism
Dear Son, History, as you’ll learn in school, is infected with human injustice. You are right to be horrified by the fires of Auschwitz and enraged at the bombings of the Twin Towers. These are unimaginable and public evils that scar the fabric of our society for generations; eternal monuments to the brutality of humans who cast off their humanity and descend into beastly chaos. In the shadow of these tragedies, a person may overlook the numerous smaller memorials to unrighteousness which litter the graveyard of American history.…