FreThink

It’s a natural instinct to recognize those most similar to yourself and consider those too different to be outsiders, in a sense. There’s sexism because we are aware of the differences between the sexes (straights get mad at gays because gays mess up the visual clues we all rely on to define to ourselves “the opposite sex”). There’s racism (or racial awareness) because we are aware of the differences between the colors humans come in. Actually racism is based on more than just color as there are distinguishable physical differences between the races as well that act as indicators of ethnicity.

We notice other races because nature equipped us to. It’s what we do with that awareness that determines if we are acting as racists in the conventional sense. Every culture produces racial awareness, the knowledge of the difference between them and us. But not everyone in every culture is a racist. The closer-knit the community, the more that community feels threatened by those outside that community, the easier it is for racial intolerance, sexual intolerance, etc., to exist. The more integrated and pluralistic the community (be it a church or a country) the more resistant to intolerance it becomes. Us becomes a broader concept.

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It’s not what we think about people of color, men, women, gays or anything else that makes us intolerant, bigoted, racists. It’s how we act on those thoughts. It’s how we express our perceptions of the differences between us.

Do we focus more on the differences or on the commonalities?

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