RACISM

I once had racist behaviors described to me as existing on a spectrum. I do not like this as it implies that everyone is at least somewhat racist. However, I think the point that racism takes on many different forms both pronounced and quite is correct. I think some people, if not all people, are racially awkward: they do not know what to say or act around people of a different race. If race divides us, can it bring us together? Can we learn to apperiacte our differences?

Race, I find is a very interesting issue. Within the topic of race we very quickly find ourselves dealing with the issue of culture. What is it? Who has it? Is it defind by what it is (I mean what elements it contains) or what it is different than (I mean what elements it does not have as compared to those cultures that have them)? We approach the topic of how to create culture for those that had their destroyed. Is their culture one of collective suffering? For these many peoples is it possible for them create a new culture of their own, in what form will these cultures turn out to be? Will they try to re-developed their lost cultures and languages or will they develop a new culture? If a new culture, will this culture create itself with elements of both the lost culture and those who's culture destroyed their culture.

Proably both in relation to elements. I mean a culture is proably best described as the thread that ties people together that is distinct from other threads belong to other peoples. However, a person or people are unable to see their own culture as they are within their own cultural fabric. I suppose the test to determine if a culture has been destroyed is when those that once belonged to a culture no longer see themselves as apart from the culture that assimilated them. However, this may not occur; instead, those that were attempted to be assimilated may act in the same fashion as those that assimilated them, but stay seperate from them in relation to the culture of collective suffering that the people went through when they were being assimilated. In short, they act like their aggressors but identify themselves with each other as the victim (i.e., concious collective as 'victim').