Because the Socratic method of discussion hasn't been bettered in thousands of years I'll adapt it in putting forth a scenario and let you draw your own conclusions through questioning - yourself or others and researching the answers.
This is a story about power. Who has it and who has not. And it is factual.
Around two thousand B.C. and a branch of a central Asian tribe enters the northern passes of the Himalayas to find the rich plains of what is now called India/Pakistan. Another branch travels west to settle in Persia and other lands to the west.
They called themselves the "Arya" = folk or people. The language of these people was Sanskrit. And if you look at the origins of the word you'll see it was also used to mean "noble".
This branch of the Arya, a nomadic tribe who came from the cool temperate north Asia were light skinned invaders. They conquered the indigenous people and they settled in the plains of Northern India.
The conquered people - with darker skins as they were born in the tropics - had their cities taken over and most were forced to flee to the south of the Indian subcontinent.
Throughout the following millennia, successive waves of invaders appeared in this area from the North, except for the English who appeared from the sea. In all cases, these conquerors were light skinned.
Have a look today at any Indian marriage website and ask yourself why almost every Indian man seems to want a bride who is "light skinned" or "fair".
Do you see whether in such cases there could be a connection between skin colour and power?
Examine history and you'll find that in the majority of cases those people who have not experienced conquerors who came to stay do not associate power with their conquerors' attributes - whether it be their skin colour or langauage or culture.
Whereas, on the other hand, in every case where successive generations of the conquered are kept powerless, they have been taught consciously or unconsciously by their conquerors that their external attributes display their inferiority.
So being human, they desperately seek to join the other side or, if unsuccessful, they practise self-hatred or rebel against their powerlessness.
Then ask yourself why someone born in such a situation who is called a "black c***" may see that as the same as being told "Your life is meaningless, you are a powerless nullity."
Whereas the same words would be laughable, or quite trivial if directed at someone who has been born in a place where his/her skin colour is a not symbol of such powerlessness.
So to the question of race - which is more of an idea that travels and mutates through the centuries depending upon who has the power to make the decisions.
You may well ask if the Aryans (mentioned above) were central Asian then what about Hitler and his silly Nordic Aryanism that was used to mass murder people who manifestly looked like him, spoke the same language, fought in WWI for Germany? Well that you can research to see how IDEAS of race from half-educated crackpots can be used as a deadly weapon for their own purposes. Even the Aryan symbol of light was turned around (literally) and made a symbol of darkness.
Also ask yourself why is it that the same words for "mother" and "father" in Sanskrit "mata" and "pita" are reflected across so many Eurpoean langauges.
Asking yourself the obvious questions and researching the web to find the answers will lead you hopefully to the fact that there are but two races on planet Earth.
The human race and the rat race.
The weilding of power allows part of the human race to win over the other part of the human race in the rat race.
Following the Golden Rule of Arts and Sciences: "He who has the gold makes the rules" the name of the game must be "Power and How to Retain It".
Now this is the last post that I will make on the subject as I don't intend to brainwash people but to encourage them to research and draw their own conclusions.
But for my part, I will own only to being a member of human race.
----------------------------------------------------- So what do you think of these words rest from astronaut Rusty Schweikart after orbiting the Earth in Apollo 9?
"Up there you go around every hour and a half, time after time after time. You wake up usually in the mornings.
And just the way that the track of your orbits go, you wake up over the Mideast, over North Africa.
As you eat breakfast you look out the window as you're going past and there's the Mediterranean area, and Greece, and Rome, and North Africa, and the Sinai, the whole area.
And you realise in one glance that what you're seeing is what was the whole history of man for years- the cradle of civilisation. And you think of all the history you can imagine looking at that scene.
And you go around down across North Africa and out over the Indian Ocean, and look up at that great subcontinent of Indian pointed down toward you as you go past it. And Ceylon off to the side. Burma, Southeast Asia, out over the Phillipines and up across the monstrous Pacific Ocean, vast body of water - you've never realised how big that is before.
And you finally come up across the coast of California and look for those friendly things: Los Angeles and Phoenix and on across El Paso and there's Houston, there's home, and you look and sure enough there's the Astrodome. And you identify with that, you know - it's an attachment.
And down across New Orleans and then looking down to the south and there's the whole peninsula of Florida laid out.
And all the hunderds of hours you spert flying across that route, down in the atmosphere, all that is friendly again.
And you go out across the Atlantic Ocean and back across Africa.
And that identity - that you identify with Houston,and then you identify with Los Angeles and Phoenix and New Orleans and everything.
And the next thing you recognise in yourself is that you are identifying with North Africa.
You look forward to that, you anticipate it. And there it is.
That whole process begins to shift what it is you identify with. When you go around it in an hour and a half you begin to recognise your identity is with the whole being. And that makes a change.
You look down there and you can't imagine how many borders and boundaries you crossed again and again and again.
And you don't even see them. At the wake up scene - the Mideast - you know there are hunderds of people killing each other over some imaginary line that you can't see.
From where you see it, the thing is a whole, and it's so beautiful.
And you wish you could take one from each side in hand and say, "Look at it from this perspective. Look at that, What's important?"
And so a little later on, your friend, the person next to you, goes to the moon.
And now he looks back and sees the Earth not as something big where he can see the beautiful details, but he sees the Earth as a small thing out there.
And now that contrast between the bright blue and white Christmas tree ornament and that black sky, that infinite universe, really comes through.
The size of it, the significance of it- it becomes both things, it becomes so small and so fragile, and such a precious little spot in the universe that you can block it out with your thumb, and you realise that on that small spot is everything that means anything to you.
All the history and music, and poetry and art and war and death and birth, and love, tears, joy, games, all of it is on that little spot out there that you can cover with your thumb."
(Sir) Lunchalot - well fed but not complacent member of the human race
