In our culture, racial intolerance goes back to the early 1700s, and not before. It helped to justify the slave trade, and the descendants of slaves and slavers have both been laden with the scars of that horror ever since. Having your mind warped out of shape by racist ideology is a miserable curse indeed, even though they may not recognise it themselves, being blinded to the contributions of the majority of the human species and even wilfully contributing to their suffering is a wasted existence. The fact is that the idea of a racially and culturally isolated Europe is pure fiction, there have always been a great many people from all across the old world in Europe, across all echelons of society, and they got by pretty well. The concept of race as we understand it is a recent thing. Interesting fact: Britain (except north-west Scotland) as once ruled by a black African: the Roman Emperor Septimus Severus reigned 193-211 CE, and was cremated in York. Okay, not the most pleasant of individuals, but one of a great many instances in which it is clear that black heritage is our heritage too. I'm actually really pissed off about this, all through school and then continuing on with other sources I have been taught a version of our history that is at once incomplete, wrong, and unashamedly whitewashed. And I am furious. It doesn't just disenfranchise our racial minorities from their connection to our countries' pasts, it cuts us all of from the knowledge of the accomplishments, contributions and stories that made our world what it is today.
And now I've got a mixed-race cousin with dark skin growing up in an all-white family in an all-white village and he's starting to notice, and I'm becoming painfully aware of how many ways the world has been set up to be harder for him in ways it was not for me and there is no fucking reason for any of it. It's completely fucked up and unbelievably unhealthy and I cannot fathom how it got this way or how we don't bother to open our eyes to the experiences of those around us. Shit.
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