I am a racist and so are you

Helen Razer says that I am a racist and so are you.

Her conclusion is that:

Helen Razer is a horrid racist who selfishly fails to understand the pain of indigenous Australia.

…

I am white and I am Australian and I am a racist. The only way out of this shunless truth is to acknowledge it.

I agree. I am a white Australian who has benefited from the genocide of the Australian Aborigines and their continuing exploitation. I was brought up and educated to see them as sub-humans and not deserving of respect.

Yet, as I was an outsider because of my stutter, I had friends who were Aborigines during primary school. We were outcasts together.

Racism is something that is taught. It is an instrument of control. It separates people based on spurious categories.

We forget now, but white people used to discriminate against other white people.

In her book, “The History of White People, Nell Painter traces the evolution of whiteness as a concept passing from the Greeks to the Germans to the Nordic to the rich English to all English to include Irish and Germans to all Europeans and to those of 'mixed race'. She argues that whiteness is constructed to serve a political purpose. The enlargement is to co-opt former outsiders to become part of the system.

Malcolm X once said that:

You cannot have Capitalism without Racism.