From time to time I see various gangs of local boys "hanging out" together just like I used to, except today they are racially mixed and I'm sad I missed that.
My thoughts, no matter how correct, are racist because unlike me, those boys are unconscious of a racial divide between them. Gilbert Ryle, the famous British philosopher, was not a humble man, they said, and not proud as well: the distinction did not apply to him.
Unfortunately racism stalks all of us because we can't escape our past.
So beware when you call someone a racist as you are talking about yourself!
Rudyard Kipling, that arch British imperialist, once wrote that east and west will never meet, but "there is neither east nor west, border nor breed nor birth when two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth".
Racism has its roots in one group looking down on another and, quite frankly, bullying them. I am heartened that so many previously disadvantaged can really stand face to face today as Kipling wanted.
Of interest is the initiation at Parktown Boys' High, which I see as similar because it's bullying. Our school banished this form of activity in 1955 and everyone involved was given a beating with a cane. Nobody at the time saw the irony.
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