Is Racism a Pigment of the Imagination?

What is a racist anyway? Are we using this negative term correctly? Can it truly even exist? Let’s examine the meaning of the suffix –ist and the word race.

What is the meaning of the suffix –IST? According to Answer.com, the suffix –ist means;

1. One that performs a specified action: lobbyist.

2. One that produces, makes, operates, plays, or is connected with a specified thing: novelist.

3. A specialist in a specified art, science, or skill: biologist.

4. An adherent or advocate of a specified doctrine, theory, or school of thought: anarchist.

5. One that is characterized by a specified trait or quality: romanticist.

[Middle English -iste, from Old French, from Latin -istēs, -ista, from Greek -istēs, agent n. suff.]

None of these contain anything to indicate a negative association such as we give to words like racist

With definition one, a racist is one who performs a race; number two is a person who produces a race; number three is someone who specializes in a race; number four is one who adheres or advocates a doctrine, theory, or school of thought about a race. Are all doctrines, theories, or schools of thought about a race negative? Are there not any positive doctrines, theories, or schools of thought about race? How about the idea proposed by the Baha’i teachings that “there is only one race… the human race.” With definition number five a racist is one who is characterized by a specified trait or quality of race. Go back and look at number four. There is only one RACE the human race, so to use the negative meaning of the word RACIST, a racist is one who hates him or herself. People, wake up as a poster I once read says, “Racism is a Pigment of the Imagination”.

What about the term “RACE”? According to the Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, American Edition:

“1. Race-each of the major divisions of humankind having distinct physical characteristics…”

How valid are these divisions? Are the physical differences between a Chinese and a European “racial” or regional? If we are going to divide people by skin colour or by eye shape or by hair then why not blood type? That would not be any better. There are light skinned blacks and dark skinned blacks; there are dark skinned whites and light skinned whites; there are light skinned Hispanics and dark skinned Hispanics . In every “Racial” group you will find type “A” blood, type “O” blood, type “B” blood etc., etc, etc. There is only one race, the HUMAN RACE.

Check out: Race; The Power of an Illusion at http://www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_00-home.htm

So, again I guess a racist is a person who hates himself.