STILL MUCH TO LEARN

excerpt from COLORS OF MY WORLD (see Aug 31, 2010)

When I left Trinidad in the fall of 1970 I realized I had much to learn.  Just being comfortable with the variety of hues of the human family did not give me the insights and sensitivities to be able to be free from the old tapes and messages in my head that I had learned as a child nor did I have any knowledge of the difference cultural conditioning would have on friendships and communications.  Each of us comes from a family and a community.  The values, interests, manners, tastes, music, and foods play a part in how we express ourselves.  The ancestral "baggage" each of us has been given which has kept us apart for all these centuries is still in the back recesses of our minds and reactions.  The same word or gesture means something different to the various cultures.  The apprehensions and expectations of treatment by others is predicated upon the unconscious training and conditioning our parents gave us.  To truly relate as a friend on a level of trust and openness we need to learn all these diverse ways of approaching life and to fully accept that the world is okay if it doesn't look or act just like I do.

I began to acquire and read books to "fill in the gaps" - books written by dark-skinned authors, books by civil rights advocates, books by and about Africa and of Native Americans. This time I took the advice of the Guardian of the Baha'i Faith, Shoghi Effendi Rabbani, and used the materials available in our society to help us learn of our world.  I started reading anthropology books, one of the most enlightening was Ashley Montague's MAN'S MOST DANGEROUS MYTH; THE FALLACY OF RACE, published in the 1940s.
( a more recent one is Stephen Gould's MISMEASUREMENT OF MAN.)

excerpts from MAN'S MOST DANGEROUS MYTH; THE FALLACY OF RACE -

"...a black skin is undoubtedly a character of adaptive value, for there is some evidence that it enables its possessor to withstand the effects of prolonged exposure to sunlight...
...white skinned peoples have a reduced distribution of pigment in their skin merely because the shift from the birthplace of their ancestors, which there is good reason to believe was Africa south of the Sahara, to the cooler regions of Europe gradually resulted in a decrease in the distribution of pigment in their skin, so that in the course of time, by means of selection of genes for low pigmentary difference, this has become considerably reduced.  The pigmentary difference is not one of kind but of degree....
...In hot, humid climates those individuals would be most favored who possessed skin sufficiently dark to prevent heat loss at too rapid a rate, and thus avoid heat exhaustion...For the white skin, less abundantly supplied with sweat galnds than the black, acts as a  good insulator against heat and cold...
...Clearly, there can be no question here of either inferiority or superiority.  Both Negro and white man have survived because they and their ancestors were possessed of character of adaptive value which, under the respective conditions of ther differing environments, enable them to survive."  pp. 95-97

"Whether responsible or not for racism, every American, as an American, must make himself responsible for the elimination of racism, for racism is inhuman, ethically wrong, and constitutionally intolerable."  p 347

"Let such a one say to himself, 'I am only one, but I am one, I cannot do everything, but I can do something.  What I can do I ought to do, and, by the grace of God, I will."  p. 359