As High As It Can Go

by Dali Abel
October/November 2002

Generally speaking, it takes between thirty to forty years for a human being to reach maturity, the zenith of life. Long years must be spent swallowing the bitter pills of life experience under the watchful eye of Doctor Time. I cannot understand why someone could believe being born into greatness by the mysterious virtue of his or her race, ethnic background, religion,lineage or whatever. Greatness can only be achieved by an individual, not inherited, and what is great about a form of greatness that can be inherited like an old piece of furniture anyway?

Greatness is the difference between the start and the arrival; the difference between what life gives you and what you make out of it. No one can be born into “greatness” because no one can arrive at the end of the run without having even started. In this order of ideas, the less life gives you at the start, the wider is your margin for greatness. Lech Walesa accomplished a miracle. How else can we call the achievement of a blue collar who ended up as head of State? I have met people from different races and ethnic backgrounds but failed to find human perfection. (Email me quickly if you ever see it strolling down the street.)

As far as I am concerned, I really have no problem at all conceding that someone is greater than I if he or she is good. I support such people with whatever I have. At the GOLDEN MIND AWARD, we are rewarding people for being great. Just show us how great you are and you will get the award.

People I felt were superior to me, I found them in all races but I never saw a race where its entire people could be considered as superior beings. That doesn’t exist, except in the mind of some strange earthlings. Dumb & Co is in fact the world’s largest multinational corporation. I volunteer there sometimes. A nation that doesn’t stand on its feet is calling for trouble and ethnocentrism finds in that a favorable ground to grow. The worst enemies of a nation are neither the whites nor any color of the human rainbow but simply its own children, those who bring shame on it.

I have personally been victim of some racial discrimination in the West a few times and judging by the kind of people who treated me as an “untermensch” I can say with certainty that those who feed their pride with their own achievements seldom scavenge on discrimination. People can be lazy and comfort driven. They love what is easy, cheap or best of all, free. Whatever we do there will be individuals who will feel or act as racially or ethnically superior to the others. It is so easy for them let their minds slip into those soft satin sheets of subjectivity and unduly enjoy that flattering feeling. Anyone, I mean really anyone, can indulge in a racist feeling. It requires no special qualifications.

Racists and ethnocentrists are here among us and they are not on the “endangered species” list. What should the “inferior” people do? Show the “superior beings” the Holy Books and the U.N Charter? Show them history books? Go on their knees and beg for humane feelings with teary eyes? Que Nenni!, as they used to say in old French. Victims and potential victims of blind segregation must be at their best; be so good that when the “superior” ones try to look down on them they won’t find them under the noose because they are up there. One cannot look down on someone who is sky high. No one could have looked down on Freud, L.S. Senghor or Kahlil Gibran. A Jew, an African and an Arab. Being at their best is the best response the supposedly inferior people can show to some inferior minds. It as eloquent as a Queen Hatchepsut’s obelisk in the Temple of Karnak. With its majestic silence and impressive height, it leaves even the ethnocentrist of the worst breed in complete awe.

Civilization is not the accidental result of the Gregorian calendar but that of a responsible attitude based on our precious asset of human values. Falling back into barbarianism is very easy but, with the destructive power we have got, getting out of that barbarianism would be nearly impossible. For the lost souls of blind discrimination and intolerance, I say this: Nothing is more deplorable than aiming and hitting right in the middle, the wrong target.

Dali Abel is a writer and artist. His website is available here.

Copyright © 2002 Dali Abel. and The Multiracial Activist. All rights reserved.