Subject: Hmmm...

From: Jack Rowe <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 12:31:34 -0400

Well, dangit, I’ve gone from insulting individuals to entire classes of
people (I used the term white people as a class, and not a race, term... to
paraphrase a friend of mine -- who was talking about fishing at the time --
 “whiteness is a state of mind”). Probably I should stick to the
definitions for words that everyone else uses... nah. This language is
badly in need of overhaul, top to bottom... we’re still using an
“either-or”, Euclidean language in an “all-of-the-above”
quantum-relativistic World. It’s time, perhaps, to suffer through the
seemingly-obligatory intermediary period of confusion. Well, I can
definitely contribute there.

As a kid growing up in the US’s South during the civil rights battles, I
never claimed Caucasian on those forms which asked (true, I was offended by
the very question back then, so my recent remark was probably a little “out
there”). I always claimed to be black-skinned, or on those few occasions
when that more-exotic alternative was offered, Mongolian. Occasionally
Amerindian. I still claim them all -- as classes, or “states of mind”. 

I didn’t mean to actually offend persons of ecological, humane sensibility
("humane"... another class/racist/species-ist term -- an ironic one which
obviously has its etymological origins rooted in narcissistic fantasy)... I
do believe that the class of humans we might in poor taste refer to as
“white people” have excelled at the anarchic, indiscriminate, destructive
use of technology in a way that is so frightening and appalling that the
ethical sense fails to suffice in its capacity for dismay. Well, we all
know that. 

Sorry, folks, I’ll leave my skin with its present pigmentation and work on
the deeper tarnish on the species.

Jack

ADDENDUMB: “a pre-frontal lobotomy (another one?!?) to remove all traces of
Caucasian Western “Civilization”... a step in the wrong direction?