JOURNEY TO THE “GENTILES” : OVERCOMING MY “BIAS”

Sunday, April 26, 2009

JOURNEY TO THE “GENTILES” : OVERCOMING MY “BIAS”
AGAINST “WHITE” PEOPLE

I am “biased” against “white” people. I, fundamentally, endemically distrust them, and, when given an option, I will avoid them. This “bias” is not unique to me, whether openly expressed or not. Many African Americans have this “bias”. It is, doubtless, epigenetic. Just as many whites’ bias against blacks is epigenetic.

Epigenetics is defined thusly:

In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of inherited changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence, hence the name epi- (Greek: επί- over, above) -genetics. These changes may remain through cell divisions for the remainder of the cell's life and may also last for multiple generations. However, there is no change in the underlying DNA sequence of the organism;[1] instead, non-genetic factors cause the organism's genes to behave (or "express themselves") differently.[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics

The epigenetic effect/causation “bias” factor is explained below:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/05/27/racial-bias-weakens-our-ability-to-feel-someone-else%e2%80%99s-pain/#more-1730

http://groups.anthropology.northwestern.edu/lhbr/kuzawa_web_files/pdfs/Kuzawa%20and%20Sweet%20AJHB%20early%20view.pdf

My bias, curiously, does not extend to individual “whites,” whom I know, personally or professionally. It only applies to “whites” generically, corporately, whom I know only historically or anecdotally or not at all.

This bias is the residue, the detritus, of a survival mechanism inculcated in me, from birth, by my family and my society, to protect me from harm by “whites,” and yet embolden me to compete against “whites” and others, effectively. This immunity system, early warning system, was both negative and positive.

Many things have now changed. I, too, must change, if I am to remain viable, relevant and valuable in this current age. This is not to suggest that I must change who I am or what I am. Rather, it requires a reconfiguration of my predilections, from skin color or ethnic type, to a meritocracy based on individual worth.

In a word, I must learn to dispense with “color-coding.” Yesterday’s crutch has become today’s encumbrance.

Mine is a work in progress. Hence, mine is a “journey to the ‘Gentiles.’” It is a journey to overcome biases engrained in me, since birth. These preemptive, defensive mechanisms are part of the African American sociological immunity system which aided my development, at one time, amid the miasma of “white” racism.

My biases are not offensive; they do not intentionally hurt anyone. Instead, they reflexively, autonomically protect me. They are preventative and preemptive. “A prudent man forseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.” Proverbs 22:3. They are also transformative and creative, when inverted, rooted in self-reliance and self-love. “Deliver thyself, O Zion, that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon.” Zech. 2:7.

“Gentile,” of course, is a biblical term, which means “non-Jew” or heathen. Its first use appears in Genesis 10:5: “By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their lands; everyone after his own tongue, and after their families, in their nations.”

“Gentiles” devolve ancestrally from Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah, Genesis 10:1-2, Noah’s other two sons being, Ham and Shem.

Japheth, in turn, is popularly known as the progenitor of “white” people. “Gentiles,” being descendents of Japheth, are also “white” people. Thus, my “Journey to the ‘Gentiles’” is my wary, life-long and individual journey toward reconciliation with American “white” people, the kidnappers, transformers and oppressors of my people:

“For thus saith the Lord of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye. For, behold, I will shake mine hand upon them, and they shall be a spoil to their servants: and ye shall know the Lord of Hosts hath sent me.” Zech.2:8-9.

I put the word “white” in parentheses to denote its peculiarity. It is, after all, a racial construct, a geopolitical phenotype, created by those “whites” who profited by dividing one person, from another one nation from another, to facilitate the exploitation of all, in all things.

In America, it goes back to the English colony of Virginia, whose burgesses at Jamestown used this tool to divide and to separate European indentured servants from African indentured servants, politically, economically and sexually, so as to fortify and to fructify the ruling class’ control over all.

In the wake of “Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion,” 1675-1676, in Virginia, an unsuccessful, multi-racial uprising of indentured servants, against the colonial ruling class, racial distinction privileges, became especially pronounced. Put directly, “whiteness” an amorphous intellectual construct was legally and culturally adopted, as a “divide and conquer” strategy to preclude the social, political and economic amalgamation of black indentured servants with white indentured servants from again occurring.

Naturally, “blackness” is “whiteness’” antithesis. As such “blackness”--and by extension, black people-- ineluctably defaulted to the negation of that which was either “legal” or “cultural” or “privileged,” inhering in “whiteness.” See, http://www.opednews.com/articles/Why-We-Need-Black-White-Un-by-Perry-Stein-090219-171.html.

Thus, “racism,” as we know it, became the pervasive and ubiquitous upshot, culminating in chattel slavery, which denied all Africans--free or slave-- not only “citizenship,” but personhood itself, as declared by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case:

Dred Scott v. Sandford,[1] 60 U.S. (How. 19) 393 (1857), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court that ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants[2]—whether or not they were slaves—were not legal persons and could never be citizens of the United States. It also held that the United States Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in federal territories. The Court also ruled that because slaves were not citizens, they could not sue in court. Lastly, the Court ruled that slaves—as chattel or private property—could not be taken away from their owners without due process. The Supreme Court's decision was written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford

When the United States of America won its independence from Great Britain, its ensuing Constitution codified what the southern colonies had already reified. Thus, blacks became 3/5’s of a person for political apportionment purposes. They were taxed as imports at $10.00 per head, and no legal sanctuary could lawfully be accorded to them by any so-called “free state,” should they escape bondage in a slave state. Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prigg_v._Pennsylvania

Chief Justice Taney, who dissented, over a minor implication, in the Prigg case--but not its critical holding--, was the principal author of the Dred Scott case, 15 years later. The Prigg decision involved an escaped slave from Maryland, Margret Morgan, who resided for 5 years in Pennsylvania, before being captured by a slave catcher, named Prigg. Prigg was indicted and convicted under a Pennsylvania statute, which forbade the seizure or arrest of any “negro or mulatto,” except in compliance with that state’s elaborate statututory provisions. A jury found that Prigg and his confederates had violated the statute. Yet, Prigg and company, were ultimately acquitted when the U.S. Supreme Court reversed their convictions by declaring the Pennsylvania statute to be unconstitutional.

What is ironic and significant about Roger Taney’s dissent is that it foreshadowed the facts of Dred Scott. See Prigg, Page 41 U. S. 628

The right of the master, therefore, to seize his fugitive slave is the law of each State, and no State has the power to abrogate or alter it. And why may not a State protect a right of property acknowledged by its own paramount law? Besides, the laws of the different States in all other cases constantly protect the citizens of other States in their rights of property when it is found within their respective territories, and no one doubts their power to do so. And, in the absence of any express prohibition, I perceive no reason for establishing by implication a different rule in this instance where, by the national compact, this right of property is recognized as an existing right in every State of the Union.

I do not speak of slaves whom their masters voluntarily take into a non-slaveholding State. That case is not before us. I speak of the case provided for in the Constitution -- that is to say, the case of a fugitive who has escaped from the service of his owner and who has taken refuge and is found in another State. (emphasis added)

Dred Scott’s suit, of course, was based upon the fact his master had “voluntarily take[n]” him “into a non-slaveholding State.” Thus, Prigg’s premonition presented itself in Dred Scott, before Taney.

The prophesy of Job 3:25 was fulfilled in Taney’s presentiment about the Missouri slave: “For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.”

Earlier, former President Thomas Jefferson, that iconic Virginian who wrote the “Declaration of Independence,” http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html, and who consummated the Louisiana Purchase http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761564763/Louisiana_Purchase.html, from which Missouri was created, stated http://www.monticello.org/reports/quotes/memorial.html:

"For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever . . . ."
-- Notes on the State of Virginia

"The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. . . ."
-- Notes on the State of Virginia

"Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them."
-- The Autobiography

Arguably, Jefferson, was the “King of the Gentiles,” so great has been his impact on the face of America: from The Declaration of Independence to the Louisiana Purchase. But, even he, like Abraham Lincoln, who became President 50 years after him, could not apprehend that there were no “indelible lines of distinction” between “the two races,” when both are “equally free;” that they “can live in the same government,” because “Nature, habit and opinion” are all extremely adaptive.

Lincoln, long revered as “The Great Emancipator,” echoes Thomas Jefferson’s view that blacks and whites cannot live as “equals.”

While debating Stephen Douglas in 1858, Lincoln doubted that states had the power to declare negroes voting citizens, and "if the state of Illinois had that power, I should be opposed to the exercise of it." He added:
I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. [Emphasis added.]

Lincoln frankly expressed his solidarity with what he perceived as the racism of society at large. Speaking of the slaves at Peoria in 1854, he said:

Free them all, and keep them among us as underlings? Is it quite certain that this betters their condition? I think I would not hold one in slavery, at any rate; yet the point is not clear enough for me to denounce people upon. What next? Free them, and make them politically and socially, our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this ; and if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment, is not the sole question, if indeed, it is any part of it. A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded. We can not, then, make them equals. [Emphasis added.] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22750


So, both iconic Presidents, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson, agreed with each other’s white supremacist views. Both also erred in their condign roles as American prophets, of black “equality.” Ensuing historical events and occurrences, continue to demonstrate, since Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, Virginia, to Ulysees S. Grant on April 9, 1865, that blacks will be free and equal.

Thus, in our lifetimes, in our very lives, the Biblical prophesy of African descendents’ “equality” is being fulfilled:

2 Corinthians 8:13-15 (New King James Version):
13 For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened; 14 but by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may supply their lack, that their abundance also may supply your lack—that there may be equality. 15 As it is written, “He who gathered much had nothing left over, and he who gathered little had no lack.”

African Americans, and, by extension, and necessary inclusion, Americans generally, are a “brand plucked out of the fire.” Zech.3:2. Formerly “clothed with filthy garments,” Zech.3:3, our filthy garments have been taken away, and our “iniquity has passed” Zech. 3:4 from us. Even moreso, a “mitre,” Zech.3:5, has been set upon our head, and we have been clothed with a change of raiment.

The redemptive suffering and righteous forbearance of my formerly enslaved people have, now, blessed not only me and my nation, but, indeed, the whole world as they become, in innumerable fields, avatars, exemplars and paragons of the spirit of Jesus Christ, who now harvest, in love, the mysterious power of his promise. Mark 4.

The Apostle Paul undertook a similar journey:
Romans 11:13For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I magnify mine office:
Galatians 2:8(For he that wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles:)

My journey to the Gentiles, then, is not unprecedented. Neither shall it be unrequited.

Isaiah 42:1-9 states: “Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect in whom my soul delighted; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law. .. I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles; to open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house… Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth, I tell you of them.”

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