First, they came for the white cis-gendered hetero-normative males...but I wasn’t male. You can imagine the rest of the verses.

I am white, though; not just any white -- fish-belly white. If that’s a problem for anyone, please go dig up my Welsh, Irish, and Scottish ancestors and have a word with them. Better still, dig up my African ancestors from 50,000 years ago who departed the continent on foot heading north, and ask them why.

I bet their sifted remains will tell you that they were always up for adventure, took greater risks than more settled individuals, maybe even that they had an insatiable curiosity about what was over the next ridge. For some of us, that urge to risk it all for greater knowledge and understanding never goes away. Perhaps that’s how the Pythagoreans (in Italy) came to give us modern math; the Greeks logic; Germans the printing press; and thus onto the Enlightenment.

Anyway, white skin in northern people is a genetic modulation designed to allow for greater production of Vitamin D in locales where available sunshine is limited by the tilt of the earth. Because Vitamin D strengthens the immune system, in areas of low winter light, lighter-toned skin enhanced survival.

But wait, recent research sheds more light on skin pigmentation. UPenn’s article in Nature is explained in clear terms in Big Think. Turns out the near precursors to humans may have had light-to-white skin, covered with dense hair. As hair receded from the species, pigmentation increased. This too is believed to be a survival-enhancing response to the sun.

So, geographically we all started out as African. In terms of pigment, we may have all started out as white. Medically, as we age, the melanocytes (pigment-bearing cells) in our skin decrease in number, and we become paler. Good Lord, in another few years I’ll look like a wrinkled-up Casper the Friendly Ghost.

No aspect of ourselves should be held up for ridicule, denigration, or belittling. There’s no shame in being how we are made in the womb. As Jessica Rabbit said, “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.”

Skin tone is not immutable, however. Who can forget “orange man bad?” Throughout history, the lowest economic classes have labored in the sun, and thus arises one explanation for classic societal bias against the darker-skinned across the globe.

It’s not my fault that I’m white, nor am I responsible for what some other white person did to someone centuries ago, or even yesterday. The New Segregationists take exception to this, of course. For them, the sins of the fathers are to be visited upon the children, or someone who merely looks like them, until the end of time, no forgiveness, no redemption, no existence outside of group identity. We cannot repair the damage done to people in the past, neither to the slaves nor their descendants.

I’m one. My Scottish ancestor was brought to the New World, in chains, on a ship, hundreds of years ago. He was enslaved in his home country by his fellow countrymen. Morally wrong but legal. Native Americans, though actually not indigenous to the Americas, captured and kept slaves for millennia before slavery was outlawed. Morally wrong but culturally traditional.

If we’re going to tell the truth about slavery, let’s tell it all. The hypocrisy of the Left is shown in their failure to address this: The black African slaves brought to this land were enslaved and sold in Africa. Some, most likely, by the same tribes and peoples who traveled to European parts and enslaved whites for trade in Africa and the Middle East centuries earlier. Morally wrong, but an accepted practice throughout these areas.

To the European shipmasters looking for treasure to resell back home, the enslaved were a commodity they found available for purchase. Buying and selling people, whether in Africa, Europe, or the Americas, was morally wrong but also an in-demand economic activity as more land was opened for agriculture.

Until recently, slavery of one sort or another was common among mankind. Now it is illegal in most parts of the world and less commonplace in others. The modern, leftist, pretend historians would have us believe that it is interchangeable with racism and that it is integral to our national identity. However, the founding document of the United States of America, her Declaration of Independence, refers only to all men, that is all humanity, without regard for any attribute, condition, time, or location.

Our Constitution noted a full count as a person, for the purpose of apportioning representatives, to all free men, again regardless of any personal trait. Only those relegated to life-long slavery were counted as less. But not as nothing, and thus the camel’s nose was under the edge of the tent. (Additionally, the three-fifths compromise was to prevent the Southern slave states from having too much power in the House.) It took fewer than one hundred years after that to free all persons and fully count them.

The history of abolition is very interesting, starting as it did a couple of thousand years ago. Some listened to their consciences and did not have to be forced by terrible war to correct this moral outrage.

Our institutions have been repaired and improved, and discrimination based upon skin tone is no longer tolerated in legal, governmental, and commercial activities. Education, however, seems to be the “system” fostering the “systemic racism” the pro-regressives appear to decry. The websites The College Fix, Legal Insurrection, and Campus Reform uncover this plainly.

The human heart cannot be regulated the way human actions are. It must learn to value open, loving appreciation for the other, regardless of how that otherness is constituted. It must learn that inherited biological characteristics are passive. The hearts of children must be guided to see society as a collection of individuals. They must learn to see and judge appropriately; “by their fruits shall you know them.” Remember this one -- Love the sinner, hate the sin?

History of both evil and good must be taught. Children should understand the good that was codified by rejecting slavery. In fact, they should understand the particulars of the influence, control, and oppression exerted by the Democrat Party upon peoples of color throughout the history of this nation. No truth should be withheld, correct?

However, the proponents of Critical Race Theory want to take this in a different direction. They want fear, racism, discrimination, and hatred to abound in our society, and for interracial violence to rule the streets. Let no one dispute this – we’ve seen their fruit maturing over the past little while.

To teach a white child that unmitigated guilt is its only heritage, and a nonwhite child that oppression is its only future is a cruelty that can only result in resentment against the elders that allow this to be, in hatred against the other, and in destructive self-loathing. Our children need to be reassured that whatever evil still remains of this terrible history, their invitation is to join with the larger society and each other to continue to improve the lot of all.

There’s a special place in hell reserved for Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi, Randi Weingarten, that crazy psychologist Aruna Khilanani, their slavish supporters, their mindless amplifiers, and all their ilk. Let us pray that they will be enlightened by the understanding of true brotherhood and turn from this hateful messaging to one of lovingkindness and that their current reservation in the afterlife will result in a no-show cancellation.

Anony Mee is a retired public servant.

IMAGE: Many-colored hands. Rawpixel.

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