Race and Religion in America’s Current Political Landscape
This blog post was brought on by another blog site where I am an occasional contributor. The issue there had to do with attitudes toward so-called “inter-racial” relationships. If you’d like to review that before continuing, it’s posted here.
The views on race in general in this country have a distinctly religious flavor, in my experience and observation. Many relate it back to the ancient Biblical tale of the Tower of Babel, when, according to the story, God separated the people into different classifications by changing their tongues so that they could not understand each other’s words. Today, people assume that this included a separation between “races”. Therefore, they see integration as being contrary to “God’s will”. And they’ve developed myths surrounding that perspective in order to support it.
Many who view the issue that way seem unable to explain it as I have just done. And they refuse to accept that the concept of free will combined with the natural, “God-given” ability to reason can be used to successfully re-unite the people back into one people. One people with varying skin shades, cultures, physical characteristics.
In short, the issue is ignorance. And that is difficult to overcome when the people in it’s grasp are satisfied to be as they are. As my Teacher, Master David M. Berry, puts it, “They don’t know THAT they don’t know, and they don’t WANT to know.”
WASHINGTON - OCTOBER 28: U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks marking the enactment of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in the East Room of the White House October 28, 2009 in Washington, DC. Obama earlier signed the $681 billion U.S. defense budget bill which included a provision that makes it a federal hate crime to assault people based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. Matthew Shepard was tortured and murdered in 1998 in Wyoming. Witnesses say he was targeted for being gay. Also in 1998, three white men in Texas chained James Byrd, a black man, to a pickup truck and dragged him to his death. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The only way to overcome such ignorance is through education. But what method of education will work? Clearly the systemic education being used by the schools and the civil rights groups and other organizations is not working; the backlash from having a black President is ample evidence of that.
I suggest, as Master Berry teaches, that the best way to teach is by being the example. Know your truth, and live your truth, until you BECOME your truth. And do so in a way that others will see it and wonder how you can be so content within yourself and within your relationships.
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