I thought I would add some words to this previous post that might provoke some thought.
Today, one of the stories in my newsfeed was about a Congressman in Wyoming who tweeted a racist meme after the first black Sheriff was elected. In his alleged tweet, he asked the same question used in a satirical line from the movie Blazing Saddles. The famous line, “Where the white women at?”
The Congressman apologized in true style. “It” was a stupid thing I did. A moment of indiscretion. And one of my favorites, “ I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”That’s really a good one since the only intelligent thing my bones do well besides hold up my frame, is predict changes in the weather. 😊
The central puzzlement for me is this; to suggest that one does not have a single racist bone doesn’t help me understand why a person without racist bones say and do racist things. Perhaps, it’s not the bones that at are issue here. 😳
Let me suggest that long before bones started racist behavior, the brain was being programmed to be racist. The brain, being very clever ( after all it is the brain 😉), most likely did not want to own the blame for racism, so it transferred its racist duties to the bones. The idea that bones might be or not might be racist is quite challenging for me. But here is a thought.
It is not what goes into a man that defiles him, it is what comes out. I don’t think the previous statement was specifically referring to urine or excrement. Rather, I believe the author intended to remind us that our words and actions reveal who we are. Who we are then, is the sum of all the thing’s we’ve learned, what we have chosen to retain, and how we consciously or subconsciously use our cognition to weaponize our words and actions for and against others.
You see, only what’s inside of us can come out. I don’t think racist bones control our words and actions. No brow beating will change the Congressman. He will have to seek an epiphany.
S. M.Brooks, PhD