I taught a class called Racism and Prejudice for the Renaissance Program (continuing education for Seniors at Sac Stare) this fall.

I taught a history of racism and prejudice in the United States.

And what I got in feedback was distressing.

“I wasn’t taught that in school” was the common comment. “Really, I didn’t know that”.

We were brought up to believe that Western Civilization and WASP culture was superior. We believe in a hierarchy of races, our census asks what race we are, poverty statistics, shopping trends are analyzed by race.

And race is a fiction.

That’s right a fiction. The human genome project proved that all human beings are 99% the same biologically. There are some variances, skin color for example, but it has nothing to do with FACT that we all created equal in a real sense. When you get a blood transfusion, and it is from a different “race” than you, nothing happens…That’s right, if there were separate races, blood exchange would be fatal….it isn’t. And that we knew BEFORE the human genome was mapped!

It is culture and up bringing that makes us “different” from one another.

And culture has been dramatically made subservient to “race” in public policy. And culture is what we are all about. Yet skin color is still the racist standard.

A culture is ingrained into us (usually more than one) from birth. Without a culture people suffer generational gaps of acculturation that can be devastating.

We see that with some Native Americans even today, caught between cultures, with behaviors that are self destructive. We see that with African Americans, who were once victims of the most savage slave system in human history, who still suffer from culture shock, cultural discrimination; etc.

And a person’s worth has been tied to the color of their skin, or the accent that have, or the religion they practice, in spite of the United States being the most diverse place on the planet.

And it is education that is lacking.

First of all cultures are really not taught in High School, save one, WASP culture.

When I first went to Stanford, Western Civilization was REQUIRED of all Freshmen. We were taught Plato, Socrates, the Humanists, the Renaissance etc. Nowhere were there classes on Asian Cultures, African Cultures and for sure, no Native American studies.

A political party, the WASP Republican Party, in California has historically DEMANDED that the only culture that is taught must be Western Civilization culture period. No other was allowed.

I took an African History class my Sophomore year, the first it was offered at Stanford.

In 1970 two Native American undergrads started the movement to rename the mascot from Indian to something else. They were also the ONLY Native American undergrads!

The University did the right thing and lost the Indian mascot. Millions of dollars of alumni giving were lost for a time by disgruntled alums who like me, had been brainwashed that Western Civ was superior. Finally, this has turned, and Stanford has one of the highest rate of endowment giving on earth.

Stanford has embarked on a program to diversify its student body and its curriculum…in 1965.

It is 2019 and indeed, it has that diverse curriculum and is the 5th most diverse college in America.

And still that is not enough.

Stanford only has about 8,000 undergrads…

Our colleges have embraced and developed curriculum that stresses cultural diversity.

The K-12 system has been blocked, at present, by Republicans who refuse to give up their Anglo Saxon is superior bent. And racists continue to attack Universities as “political correctness bastions”; when what they REALLY are attacking is the cultural diversity the colleges are trying to embrace.

And that racism and prejudice is killing us. Literally killing people, just like it did in Nazi Germany, same thing.

African Americans are still relegated to a life of poverty, of segregated housing, even in Sacramento, the most liberal place in the United States. White flight goes on everyday.

And in Elk Grove, a Muslim girl is assaulted because she is….well….Muslim.

And in 2019, almost half a century since most colleges created a curriculum that gave a multi-cultural view to American’s past, which is exactly what it is, we have racism and prejudice based on a purposely created anti-diversity campaign by white supremacy.

And there is no such thing as white supremacy remember, because the hierarchy of race is a made up thing, by guess who, to subjugate other human beings.

Even in 1965, we were shall we say mildly perplexed by claims of superiority of Western Civ., when 55,000,00 were killed in WWII, 6.5 million Jews exterminated. WWI, that killed a generation of young men in all of Europe and led to WWII. The KKK that at the time dominated the South with a wave of fascism that was embraced legally by the United States, who purported to be “the shining city” and the last best home of mankind.

Some white supremacy….the most evil and murderous culture on earth is superior?

That supremacy was a lie. And our professors knew it. White supremacy is a fiction, based on a belief in a hierarchy of races that simply is a fiction. And the superiority of western culture has some big time historical flaws; genocide for example.

Fact is, the Wester Civ Culture fiction has some fatal flaws, mostly developed by its racism and prejudice.

Finally, most Americans revel in the multi-cultural culture we live in. We all love our favorite Chinese Restaurant, we all love our movies that depict different cultures, we even have the First Amendment to the Constitution that forbids the establishment of a religion; inviting many religions (central to a culture) to exist protected by law. Many countries do not have that protection of freedom of religion.

And right wing evangelicals attack the First Amendment every damned day!

Yet still we stumble on, debating a diversity and inclusion curriculum for our kids, when we now know, through biological research, that we all are 99% the same biologically.

We are not the same culturally, and once we get that straight, we will do what we do anyway, celebrate the wonderful diversity of the human experience.

And diversity needs to be codified into law, just as white supremacy once was….

As we go into Christmas, that is a celebration of Western Culture, we need to remember that there are other cultures here also, and we need to celebrate that also, because the birth that Christians celebrate, said simply, love your neighbor as yourself…