On Race and Critical Race Theory

Cartoon by Clay Bennett, 5 June 2021

The word race as biological term applied to all lifeforms comes from the 19th century, where it was used for what is now usually called a subspecies, though “race” is still a valid term.  That is the sense in which I am about to use it now.

The modern Human Homo sapiens sapiens race began flourishing just 195 thousand years ago. 

Out of the two known races (H. sapiens sapiens & H. sapiens idaltu) of the Homo sapiens species, it is the only one remaining.  There have been nine other known species (H. neanderthalensis, H. denisova, H. habilis, H. naledi, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, H. floresiensis, H. luzonensis) of the 2.8 million year old genus Homo, each of which has only one race identified in it, except for Homo erectus, of which nine races have been identified. 

Of these twenty races of Homo, or Human, known to have walked the Earth in the past 2.8 million years, only ours remains.

So, when Edward James Olmos as his alter-ego Admiral Bill Adama of the Battlestar Galactica (BS-75) said in an appearance with his crew at the UN that there is only one race, the human race (and so say we all, or at least we should), he was literally as well as rhetorically accurate.

All other uses of the term “race”, such as that which the white supremacist-dominated General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, along with its Governor of the same ilk, is trying to enshrine in stone as an Eleventh Commandment, are nothing more than racist social constructs.

I am a Terran, a citizen of Earth.  The whole world is my home and all its people, human and nonhuman, organic and synthetic, are my brothers, sisters, and cousins.  Like our more distant cousins on other planets across space and throughout time, we are all children of the Universe.

The absurdity of all forms of human religion

The Universe is 13.8 billion years old and 213 duovigintillion cubic kilometers in volume.  The relative dust speck called Earth is but 4.2 billion years old and its dominant race, Homo sapiens sapiens, is but 200,000 years old.  Keep those key facts in mind.

“Man is an animal,” wrote anthropologist Clifford Geertz, “suspended in a web of significance he himself has spun”.

On Planet Terra (Earth) of the Solar Planetary System in Orion’s Spur of the Milky Way Galaxy in the Local Galaxy Group of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster in the Laniakea Supercluster of the Universe, during the Subatlantic Chron of the Meghalayan Age of the Holocene Epoch of the Quartenary Period in the Cenozoic Era of the Phanerozoic Eon of the Current Supereon in Galactic Year (GY) 20, Jews believe that Adonai speaks Hebrew, Muslims that Allah speaks Arabic, American evangelicals that Almighty God speaks Elizabethan English, Roman Catholics that Dominus Dei speaks Latin, Eastern Orthodox that Kyrios speaks Greek, Hindus that Brahman speaks Sanskrit, Zoroastrians that Ormazd speaks Avestan, Buddhists that Adibuddha speaks Pali, Shintoists that Amaterasu speaks Japanese, religious Daoists that Tai Di speaks Mandarin Chinese, and Sikhs that Vahiguru speaks Punjabi. 

Each of these groups, and each subgroup and splinter and cult and sect within each of them, believes they are the Chosen People from which will come the Anointed One to assert their rightful dominion over all Creation for all Eternity. 

That belief is absurd.  In fact, all “belief” is absurd.

To believe is to define.  To define is to limit.  To limit is to control.  To control is to corrupt.

Belief is not humble; it is aggressive.  Belief is not a sign of submission; it is an assertion of domination.  Belief makes itself superior to that in which it claims to believe by controlling it through the very act of belief.  Thus, belief is blasphemy.  Belief is vanity.  Belief is futility.  Belief is the very antithesis of faith.  At the opposite end, disbelief affirms belief by that very negation, which is another attempt at control.

To have faith, one must surrender control.  To surrender control, one must abandon limitation.  To abandon limitation, one must give up definition.  To give up definition, one must let go of belief.  To have faith, one must neither believe nor disbelieve; one must unbelieve.