Disclaimer: high thinking ahead.
I was following a Twitter conversation about race, black people and all that. People disagree, some think that race doesn’t exist and some are saying that fuck yeah it does and both are right. African-Americans and the history of US slavery created a situation where they cannot not see race. But it brings up a lot of problems.
So there’s race from a scientific point of view and race, from a social-cultural point of view. Science says race doesn’t exist, -one “race”, the human race- and science is right. Science tells us that everybody on earth comes from Africa which has a bigger genetic variation than any other place in the world (I still think it’s amazing). Basically, human race started black and mutated, following the environment and nature.
Socially and culturally, race shows that it’s obviously segregated and racially tense. I know the West economy going down doesn’t help but it is tense, from hard right wings raising up in Europe to heavy segregation in the US. or even something as “light” as asking a black president if he’s really American and to prove it with his birth certificate. And him doing it. I’m so mad at that.
BUT! I know we can live together without even bother about cultural differences. It happens here and there, at microscopic scales right, but it happens, more and more. This is to me where Nature filters things out, where people knowing stuff about other cultures, living with them and in no way afraid of them, and naturally go interracial and build solid ground for the future to be less racist. It’s happening right now, there’s no need of politics. There’s just a need of more of that. The more communities, the less it happens.
It’s a mistake wanting to stand by race or not race. Life isn’t static, it’s moving and changing. Things that are very segregated at one point of the day somewhere in the US are totally not somewhere in France at another point of the day, and vice versa.There is no standing in Life, there is moving. We need directions. For that we need a destination which is pretty clear to me: being able to live with whoever the hell you want with nobody having anything to say about it and knowing as much as you can about all the great stuff of as much culture you can absorb. The more people like that, the better right?
Communities have this paradoxical effect of making your outside you stronger and weakening your inner you. That’s why we should not think too much as communities because it automatically creates a frontal friction between cultures and the dominant one will always win, as every statistics about race issues and history, show. When the friction happens at a more atomic scale -one to one in a work environment for example- things go smoother, change happens. There’s no full rejection of the other, there’s discussion because fear isn’t there. I mean, it’s the only way it works, if you demand stuff in a Black Panther way you just get murdered. And worse, nobody gives a shit.
I know it’s hard. In my 1.5-2% black people in the game industry I feel it, it’s an internal battle that triggers so many questions and often makes me want to be part of a supportive black community, all cozy and shit. I’m condemned to have my ass between two chairs, as we say in French. But somehow I think I change things, this way. And learn so much.
So, I don’t know. I know it’s easier for me to follow an in-between line with these issues. That’s all I know, I learned how to deal with it. I know science is the most stable ground about human differences (straight line) and we are gravitating around it according to history, our beliefs and personal experiences (blue sine). It’s so dumb, somehow.
