The argument is no longer about whether your racist or not. It’s now about whether it’s ok to be racist.

Dictionary.com defines “Racist” as showing prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized.

The suffix, “ist”, if you search it, is basically defined as making the word it is added to become something in which a person adheres to, is an expert in, believes strongly in…for example, Dentist, Socialist, Racist.

Essentially a Racist, if you define it sharply, is someone who adheres to beliefs about race. If you define it based on popular culture or history or like Dictionary.com does, it’s more about prejudice, discrimination and antogonism against a person based on their “group/race” (it’s added that it’s typically against a minority or a marginalized group).

If you look into it, which many people won’t, words are starting to lose and/or change their meaning. If you think about this, it doesn’t take long to realize that this “changing” is one of the most impactful things that could happen to culture in general because when you change language, you change an agreement that has been in place for thousands of years. An agreement that we don’t need to use only actions to demonstrate what we believe, that we can develop a more peaceful way to live, a way that, like a savings account at a bank, saves and translates useful wisdom over the course of generations. Without a common language, there can be no human progress and, dare I say, no peace.

So back to “Racist”. This word has always meant to discriminate against people because of their skin color and has been reserved, primarily, to identify white skinned people who think and act badly towards black skinned people because of the difference of skin color. According the the definitions of the word and it’s make up (“race” and “ist”) it’s an appropriate definition. Someone who believes and adheres to or is an expert in “race” (and by expert – you can be an expert killer or expert liar or expert theif).

But this is not what the word “racist” is becoming or maybe has already become. The word, which has meant one thing for essentially all of verbal history since it’s birth, now is morphing (has morphed) into taking on subjective meaning of a “margenilized” group. This change is like a flash flood, literally. One minute you see a certain landscape you can rely on, the next minute it’s gone, replaced by a torrent of chaos.

It’s like the famous quote by the famous swordsman, Ingio Montoya , “You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means”. “Racist” is being co-opted and shaped to be an anti-white skinned word (which used to be racist thing to do). Now racist, according to the popular flood (which I venture is more wizard behind the curtain than actual masses) is crafted to be an exclusionary word, a word that belongs to a certain type of people. And now, it all starts to make sense.

Certain types of people, people with certain motives, fears, drives, want to own words. They want to claim words, concepts, ideas, as their own and they want to make you a theif for using them. This is so interesting to me because of all the colonization talk that’s been going around lately, colonizers, colonizers, colonizers. Colonizing words is what’s happening right in front of us today. In fact I think those people who are most loudly proclaiming that white skinned people are colonizers (in the worst way) are the same people, generally, who want to colonize words for themselves. Words like “racist”.

Who the fuck cares?

This is a good question. Why should you care? After all there has been injustice, violence, hatred and every bad and negative word that exists can be used to describe our human history of behaving horribly with each other, in many cases based on views about the color or another’s skin or their tribe. There is no viable argument that injustice hasn’t taken place or that it doesn’t continue to take place.

This is not the argument.

The argument is how do we move through and continue to improve our overall human condition, our common humanity. That is the only argument. I think most people want this, but not all people. I think there are those who are hurt and want revenge and even more I think there are those who are opportunists, who seek power and control. For those that are hurt and seek revenge. As clear as it is that revenge will not move humanity forward, nor will it rescue your soul or heal your wounds, I get it, it’s a strong and human desire that must be resisted to overcome “And being hated, I will not give in to hate”. But to those opportunists who seek power and control we must be villigant and bring the light of day to them. They live in the darkness of the belief that power and control actually exist in the greatest sense. They think life can be solved ultimately and their drive to solve it might be one of the most destructive forces in the universe.

That’s what is happening to our words and our ideas. Can you imagine? Just reduce the issue down to a one on one, person to person. One person says to you, you cannot say that word. You ask, why? They say, because it is my word? You say, how can you own a word? They say, because I have the gun and the handcuffs and the jail.

Do you say the word?

Well – I wrote all of this above because I think the article below, posted today in Vermont Digger, is talking about a racist ideaology and the organization is practicing a racist ideaology. But maybe I’m wrong. Or maybe my thoughts have been colonized. I’d like to know what you think.

Here’s an excerpt:

For now, the project fits with the organization’s mission to create access and opportunities, said Rutanhira, and “to tear down the walls that have existed between the haves and the have nots, the Vermonters and the non-Vermonters, the new Vermonters and old Vermonters, the white people and the people of color.”