I loved the comment by this guy on the site Modern Republican:
"First, I DO admire Maher, for the most part. I don’t always agree with him, but he’s able to point out, in a humorous, sometimes crude, way some of the realities of our experience that we tend to suppress. I wish I had an HBO subscription, but alas, I don’t watch much TV, so I have to watch the occasional clip on the Internet.
Here is the blunt fact that no one ever wants to admit: We are ALL racists. You, me, everyone that comments here. It’s genetically and evolutionarily built into our genes. It’s the fear of the “other”, those that are different than us, that helped perpetuate the species when we lived in tribes. It caused us to band together in like minded groups, while making enemies of those that were different than us. It kept us safe and alive, able to pass on our genes to the next generation. So now, when we look at someone who looks suspiciously different than us, it is a natural, albeit irrational reaction to have an automatic negative attitude towards that person – before we start thinking. It’s instinctual, like automatically loving your child from birth, despite the screaming, whining, vomiting and pooping. And back then, it was one reason why our tribe succeeded and others didn’t.
You don’t see too many Neanderthals around anymore, do you?
But now we are civilized. We have learned a considerable amount since those days, and the need to be afraid of the bogeyman hiding in the bushes is not necessary. We have laws that govern us, and police protection, and the best thing of all, a developed reasoning ability to differentiate between what can harm us and what can’t. So we can consciously suppress our natural inclination to hate those “others”. It’s not hard. It takes constant vigilance, but it’s easy to train the mind to do so. And once trained, from birth, it becomes almost natural. However, if you raise a child to hate others, you’ve created a lifelong bigot.
Unfortunately, for some people it’s easier to revert to natural tendencies rather than think about living equally with our fellow man. And we have societal structures that still encourage it. Politics, for example, always seeks to make us fear those of different political persuasions, so that bolsters our natural aversion to those different than us.
You won’t agree with me on this, but much of religion (not all) tends to do the same thing. We band together in different churches, while claiming we are theologically right and all those other churches are wrong. Witness the pastor in Houston who claims that Mormons (and Romney) are simply a big cult, when in fact (laughably so) Christianity is just as much of a cult as Mormonism – it’s just bigger. So we sit in our churches on Sunday, smug in the knowledge that we know God’s mind, and everyone else doesn’t, thereby creating a nice little tribe that is encouraged to think negatively about our fellow humans. It’s doubtful that Jesus (had he really existed) would have approved.
Which brings me back to Maher. Yes, there is still racism in America. Blacks are racists towards whites, and vice versa. And yellows and reds get the shaft from everyone else. It’s there, and it needs to be acknowledged on a daily basis. We must always be individually, and societally vigilant that we don’t let out genes and our instincts rules our heads.
Ok, off my high horse. I’ll leave the podium for others.
But don’t forget: We are all members of one race – the human race. DNA proves that. It’s downright silly in this day and age , with a global environment, to keep thinking of ourselves as blacks, whites or any other race."
Politics from the eyes of an ebony mom
