Rachael Dolezal: not a matter of black and white
I don’t believe in any organised religion. I’ve read a lot on what various religions have done historically and it is apparent a significant preoccupation, not to say function, of them all is their political influence. For many countries and many times, they were just another form of tyranny. I’m not that bothered whether you agree or not. If you want to believe something else about the motivation of those in charge of religions, go ahead, but if you want to convince me otherwise, I will want significant proof.
I don’t want to convert anyone to my way of thinking. Whatever turns you on. I’d ask that you don’t call me an atheist because I don’t define myself by my lack of belief in an organised religion. Nor in in my lack of interest in train spotting come to that.
Live and let live. If you don’t do me harm or reduce the opportunities in life of me and mine, I don’t think I have a right to impose my wishes on you. But I only go so far. I am irritated that a religion has the right to put lords in the upper house without reference to anyone outside their closed shop, or that religions can have rules and regs that limit acceptance of people of a race, sexual orientation or indeed biological sex which, if it was a company, would get it fined. Just to rub their privileges in, they have various tax concessions.
When it comes to picking gender, I’m surprised to find my attitude quite modern. I am, according to those on forums and other social media platforms, woke, or at least wokeish. If someone feels they want to be seen as a female, then so be it. It’s not up to me to dictate their wishes. If they feel they are of different gender to that which they were born, go for it. I want no say in the matter. I’m woke granddad, although not so much after lunch when I’m in my recliner.
Yet we have Rachel Dolezal, attacked and pilloried around the world for something I feel is more or less the same. She is the woman who felt she was culturally black despite her recent ancestors being Caucasian. It would appear the woke generation went for her throat, and with some energy. She became an untouchable, but not unattackable.
A number of scientific papers have stated there is no scientific definition of race. It would seem it is largely cultural. There are a few tribes and one or two nationalities where DNA can put the odds of the person being from that area and tribe at quite a high level, but for the vast majority of the population, i.e. us, our DNA does not define our race. For example, look at Celts. A number of people in Scotland, Wales, Ireland and the West Country of England call themselves Celts and believe they differ from the hoi polloi in the rest of the UK. We others are Anglo Saxons or Normans. Not Celts. But the Scottish Celts are of a different racial make-up than the Welsh. The former has a lot of Viking blood in them, due to the rape, and possibly pillage (whatever that is), of what was the boat people of the time.
Further, the Celts made up the English before a subsequent invasion of boat people, the Anglo Saxons. Yet it wasn’t a mass intrusion. A low number of AS came over. More than the later Norman version, but hardly enough to ‘push the natives into Wales, Scotland and the West country’, which is what I was taught many years ago. There’s limited support for that belief. In other words, it was largely a cultural change, not a replacement of occupants. The locals didn’t suddenly call themselves something else; if they called themselves a nationality/race at all.
There are any number of mixed-race people who call themselves Black. Obama is one. He has a Caucasian mother. The same goes for Lewis Hamilton. I have an unevidenced certainty they must be happy I feel they have an unrestricted choice of what they call themselves; it has nothing to do with me. I’m told, but really can’t be bothered to find if it’s correct, because it don’t matter to me, that Halle Berry, the first Black Oscar winner, is of mixed parentage: Caucasian and African-American. These three had the option of calling themselves either Black or white. For me, Chinese is in the mix if they wished. Whatever they went with, they would have my complete support. If they’d decided not to call themselves any particular race, I’d have gone with that as well. After all, some people don’t wish to be identified by a gender.
So why the problem with Rachel? The criticism of no Black in her immediate ancestry is negated by us all being Black – Out of Africa and all that. Let’s not complicate matters with Neaderthals.
If we are free to call ourselves whatever gender we want, despite there being a clear scientifically provable difference between men and women, then why not pick your own race, especially as there is no scientific definition of what race means?
I’m not suggesting there is no such thing as race as there’s a word, and it has a definition in dictionaries, it just has no scientific basis. Most people seem to feel they know what they mean by a race. Mind you, there was a scientist who, after years of dedicated scientific research, decided there was no such thing as a fish, so what do I know?
