People seem to forget that the entire of the twenty-first century, all follows on from the fallout of the Sep 11 attacks in the United States in 2001. The need to fund two wars based upon the premise of lies, meant that the US Government borrowed money from the general public by issuing Treasury Bonds which were then sold to financial institutions, who then saw it fit to sell cheap unregulated housing loans which then caused the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.
On the back of trying to find any kind of hope in the midst of the worst economic downturn of that generation, the people of the United States voted in Barack Obama as the first black president; which then gave rise to the TEA Party and then Obama's one misstep in making fun of Donald Trump in the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner.
That act of provocation became the single hinge point which led to Trump deciding to run for the Presidency and finding compliant token sycophants who know that they are being used on a contractual basis in return for their fealty.
Trump was not the first white president but he was the first explicitly white president in direct opposition to a black president. Trump's rhetoric almost from the get go of announcing his candidacy has always been firmly grounded in race; which included one of his very first press conferences containing the assertion that "some Mexicans are rapists, some are good people"; as well as trying to blame China for any and all of the United States' woes.
Trump was also not the first explicitly racist President but he was the first in a while; which seems to indicate that racism was always bubbling away under the surface. The very existence of the United States as a nation was predicated on punitive taxation measures which were designed by the Lord North Government to bring the 13 Colonies to heel, over the issue of slavery; to the point where slaves were considered to be "three fifths of a person" within the bounds of the Constitution and because this issue was never properly resolved, arguably even with the Civil War, the existence of Trump is a symptom rather than a root cause of the current wave of racism. What he has done is given permission on the world stage, for various kinds of explicitly white nationalist causes to flourish in other countries.
The big through line here, is that racism which is closely linked to nationalism, is about demarcating lines to divide those people who are 'Not Us' from 'Us'. The anarchists who would like to smash the patriarchy almost hint at the root of the thing that they are fighting against. The 'patriarchy' defines its terms by the 'pateras', that is the big question of 'who is our father?' and 'who is our father's children?'. If we are children of a common father, then the people over there who are not, are 'Not Us'.
In fact many nations explicitly have their national stories defined either by some founding fathers, or by some mythos which defines the nation itself as the 'Fatherland' or the 'Motherland'. Within the context of empire, the 'Mother Country' is often the one which decided to go off on its path of conquest; the irony here is that after having arrived and convinced local populations that they should be like the Mother Country, it is the children of the shadow of Empire who are often the most resentful and explicitly racist if those peoples then show up in the Mother Country.
To wit: In Australia there is quite an explicit undercurrent of overt racism who resents people from India and the sub-continent arriving here. Usually the excuse is that these people refuse to 'assimilate'; when in actual fact it is the children of Indian migrants who are out on the sporting fields playing cricket of an afternoon. I find it somewhat ridiculous to accuse people of not assimilating when they are better at actually living out your culture than you are.
At the vanguard of this movement are organisations like Advance, which as far as I can tell is a front company of some kind and largely funded by former Liberal Party operatives. If it was set up in opposition to GetUp as an astroturf group, then it has expanded beyond its original remit.
Racism at its core, is the incredibly lazy form of othering based upon the outward appearance of people. It exists to create the "Not Us" through nothing more than looking at people from the outside and then deciding that they do not fit the imagined ideal of what "Us" should look like. To that end, depending on what the "Us" actually is, people can be scaled as being not enough of "Us". At various stages, Jewish people, Chinese people, and Eastern European people have either been determined to be enough or not enough of us depending on circumstance and the current political climate. Of course this assumes that we view the world through a white lens. In some parts of Africa the lens is differently coloured and reversed.
Speaking as someone who lives in Western Sydney, where there are people who look different to me all over the place, I really do not understand either the point or the effort required to enforce racism. I also work in a firm in which everyone else can speak Chinese and I can not; which means that there are many conversations which occur which I have no idea what is being said; and that's totally fine. Even doing a simple count of the number of nations where people from my local church came from, I count 17.
"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus"
- Galatians 3:28
I am assuming that most people who read this are not people of faith and that is fine. This part is not directed at you. This part is directed at the people who supposedly believe in "Judeo-Christian values" but then immediately start spewing nonsense, which demonstrates that they really do not understand the "values" which they like to cosplay in. The Old Testament contains many many commands in Torah to look after the vulnerable, widows, orphans, and aliens. The New Testament, which was written entirely underneath the rule of the Roman Empire, very much is about opening up the The Way to people who are not the same as "Us". Explicitly, the Roman Empire which was the biggest superpower of the day, stood as the overarching enemy; which meant that issues such as race dissolved in the face of the common foe. Of course, Christianity itself stands in stark opposition to racism; by virtue of the fact that it declares that there is one race, the human race, and we are all sinners in need of salvation.
Private corporations are different in that the members and owners of the corporation, have an interest because they chose to buy into the organisation through the purchase of shares. The nation state which owns itself, doesn't really have that kind of subscriber model; nor does it make sense to define who is "Us" and "Not Us" by those same terms. Being born into a family at a particular place and time is entirely a lottery. Literally nobody chooses where they are born. Nobody chooses who their family are. The nation state is different in that people who are not automatically citizens by accident of birth, can choose to join another national project (subject to rules of course). The nation state, especially when it is made up of people of various kinds of races, both internally and externally, is completely agnostic and apathetic to the notion of race entirely unless otherwise and/or explicitly stated.
Yes, I understand that the nation state exists because there are things like language and religion which mean that people have been sorted, but the nation state itself in essence is just a very big collective purchasing and organisation tool; which is one of the biggest pieces of community and commonwealth there is.
I do not know how you can look at other people and come to the conclusion that they are not worthy of dignity. I do not know how you can look at other people and come to the conclusion that they are not worthy of decency. I do not know how you can look at other people and come to the conclusion that they are not worthy of being considered your confederate.
In short, while I understand why racism exists, I think that the people who want to engage in it, do so because they are cruel knaves who refuse accept the notion that someone who looks different to them, can ever be included as "Us".
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