Date: Saturday, September 15, 2001 2:45 PM
From: George Winkel
Subject: "Race" is only smoke-gremlins
"Race" is only smoke-gremlins
On the "Racial Myths" message board, http://members3.boardhost .com/racial_myths/ someone posted these pictures of the smoke-clouds rising from the tragically doomed, late, NYC WTC towers. Either through image-doctoring, or natural coincidence (assuming the latter), these spooky faces were suggested as visible in the appalling smoke.
It's easy to "see" funny faces like these in smoke – in clouds. Another example is "the man in the Moon." I remember, for me it was hard to see him when I was small.
Simply the suggestion: "See this face" will help you to "see" a "face" in clouds which you had not noticed. Suggestion is the essence of hypnosis. We are experiencing a light hypnosis, actually, seeing these spooks. What other "faces," "images" can little suggestions conjure in our minds with this smoke? (Auto-suggestion – you can do it by yourself!)
The same thing happens in our minds when we think we see "race." As children we all learned – were educated – to recognize the physiognomic cues of "race." When we finally understood; when we finally put the suggested clues together, we accepted an hypnotic "race-line" in our minds. It enabled us thereafter to see people in "different" categories, and we began separating everyone into "us" and "them." For me this "training" was cursory 1950's second or third-grade public school education. "Social Studies" taught me "three world races." I remember my big sister, at some point, had argued the ridiculous proposition that I was "white." The school teacher helped me finally understand what she had meant.
"Race" awareness had a purpose for us children in Jim Crow era schools in the South. It explained that no "black" children attended the "white" schools. And it explained all those signs with the words "white" and "colored." Exactly why was not explained by our school teachers. However, it is no secret. The logic of segregation then (as now) is prevention of "race" "amalgamation," which has long been abhorred as our "dreaded destiny" in lieu of our physical separation into separate "races." These "race"-engendered apprehensions are far from vanquished today.
Schools today are much more thoroughly ingraining the hypnotic suggestion in childrens' minds that the world of mankind is "biologically" divided into four classical Linnaean "skin color" "races," plus "brown." (I.e., by more mental legerdemain, Latino "can be of any race." But don't see them as "mixed"! It's okay to "see" them as "minority," though; even as "brown-white" if their protection-restitution vis-à-vis Anglo prejudice is invoked.)
No one can deny that our schools are thoroughly hypnotizing children now at the youngest possible age to "see" "race," purporting thereby to train them to "fight racism."
One reason, I believe, the notions of "race-mixing," "hybridity," "miscegenation," etc., have long been abhorred – considered "the last taboo" (arguably more "taboo" than homosexuality!?) – is that the tranquil, hypnotic "race" illusion is threatened by mere thoughts of this. Thinking about "race" "mixing" (mingling into multiracial clouds of that particular illusion) can cause our ability to "see" "race" to dissolve like smoke!
Danger! From that nightmare (at least), you might awake!
George Winkel