What You Are versus What You Own

by David Sims

BEING A RACIST isn’t a bad thing. Being a liar is. If you believe that there are socially important differences between the races, which our present social policies fail properly to address, then you would be right to speak out about such things, regardless of whom you offended.

Marxists are people who believe that economic class, or wealth, is the fundamental division of mankind, the basic driver of human history. Many other people believe that the Marxists are wrong, but nobody stigmatizes Marxists simply because of this belief or because they advance it in debate.

Racists are people who believe that race is the fundamental division of mankind, the basic driver of human history. Many other people believe that the racists are wrong, and, furthermore, they stigmatize racism and racists and avoid debate on its merits.

Many of the people who stigmatize racism are Marxists. Others are simply people whose IQ is too low to permit them to ponder the question effectively, or they are people who are either too lazy or too prone toward emotional bias to do so.

But essentially it boils down to this. Let us say there are three animals and that each animal has a supper dish. Two of the animals are dogs, and one is a cat. One of the dogs has a full supper dish. The other dog and the cat have empty supper dishes.

Now let’s play the old “Sesame Street” game of “One of these things is not like the others…”

If you believe that the most unlike creature is the cat, then you are a racist for thinking that the two dogs are most similar to each other because they are both dogs. You believe that what they are is more important than what they own.

On the other hand, if you believe that the unlike animal is the dog with the full supper dish, then you are a Marxist, because you regard the poverty of the other two animals as being more important than their difference of species. You believe that what someone owns is more important than what he is.

But, no, racism isn’t wrong. It is a philosophy about life that starts from assumptions that some people prefer not to make. Some of us believe it is a philosophy that leads to understanding reality, discovering truth, and surviving a hazardous Universe.

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