A friend from a country far hotter than my own, sometimes asks me: “How can you consort with other species?”
— I don’t consort with…
— You live with a dog.
— But I never let her into my bed!
— Dogs carry parasites, diseases. They pick up all sorts of nasties from the ground and…
He’s right about that, of course, but my dog regularly gets de-wormed and vaccinated against a plethora of diseases and there is plenty of literature attesting to the beneficial effects dogs can have on humans’ mental as well as physical health. In fact, ever since I was a child I knew I had much less to fear from dogs than from humans. So, yes, I can live with other species (cats, dogs) but can I live with humans?
Today, all humans are members of the human race, of which there is only one, as opposed to in the very distant past, when there were Denisovars and Neanderthals and goodness knows what else. Though scientists are still uncertain as to why all the others vanished, I’m convinced that our race, the homo sapiens sapiens, exterminated them. After all, “we”, the sapiens sapiens have demonstrated certain sinister proclivities throughout history. To this very day we continue to exterminate opponents, contestants, protesters and heretics, not to mention species..
So “The Human Race” it is. To quote a Harvard University website, which in turn quotes the Scientific American, “two people of European descent may be more genetically similar to an Asian person than they are to each other”. In short, it would appear that the concept “race” (with regard to humans) is claptrap, a social construct, more often than not used for convenience, or out of old habit, or to excuse a rabid aversion to people perceived to be trespassing. To make matters very much worse, politicians are often quite happy to let us blame immigrants (“Blacks”, “Arabs”, “Latinos”…) for our misfortunes.
No, I’m not being politically correct! I’m merely being reasonably informed. So if you loathe your neighbour, do not, please, be a hypocrite and do not cower behind an ignorance for which you have no justification. Have a conversation with yourself in the mirror. Do you dislike your neighbour’s political views, and/or the way he/she dresses, and/or his/her ignorance, and/or his/her arrogance, and/or the fumes that emanate from his/her kitchen, and/or his/her car, and/or his/her dog? Fine, so do I. But have, at least, the decency to admit that is why you dislike him/her.
Do you dislike his religion? Ask yourself, then, why his religion should concern you. Do you not expect others to accept that your religion (or non-religion) is your business and yours only?
Does it annoy you that he insists on continuing to live in your neighbourhood although you have made it clear that you want him to leave because you know he hates you because your people drove his people off their farm? I put to you, then, that the problem is that his family was driven off their farm. You’ll solve no problem until you admit that injustice was done. The disadvantage of such an admission is the price of making amends. Yet, the cost is far less than perpetual mutual hatred and perpetual external condemnation.
Do you ostracise him because he is an underdog while you have the upper hand? Ah, well then I admit you can play the “race” card, because you are after all only a homo sapiens sapiens, and being rather despicable is unfortunately a widespread trait of your race… ours, that is.
Fortunately, there are other people in your neighbourhood, and mine, that are not despicable even though they belong to the same race. And for that we must be grateful.