Travels With My Cat

@ausruheulen

Being a plushie I sometimes find it hard to understand the human world. A few weeks ago, I was flying around the block. When I passed the children’s playground, I met our neighbors, little Paulina and her mom. Beaming with delight Paulina showed me her first watch. It was twinkling, turquoise and the clock face showed a picture of Disney’s Ariel. I was blown away. I love mermaids, especially Ariel and when I began to enthusiastically speak about the remake of “The little Mermaid” which Disney is planning to release, I suddenly saw how Paulina’s smile vanished and her mom’s countenance darkened. “I don’t like the new Ariel”, Paulina said defiantly, and her mother nodded in agreement. I was irritated and asked, “Why not?”. And Paulina replied without hesitation: “Because she’s black”.

Virus Attack

At home I felt sick. My chest was heavy. I went to see the plushie doctor and told him that I might be infected with the coronavirus. “It’s not the coronavirus you are suffering from,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s a far more dangerous, sometimes even deadly virus and it has been infectious over millennia. The virus is called racism and there is no vaccine against it”.

Understanding the history

Panic rose in me, but the doctor explained that there’s a far easier way to fight the virus, much easier than researching a vaccine. “All you need to do is read”, he said. “The first step of the solution is understanding the history of racism!” That’s all? Really? So why haven’t more people tried to get rid of racism yet? Probably the world could have already been free at least from that kind of pandemic. Humans are strange. If they know how to make it right, then why don’t they just make it right?

Ariel’s questions

I guess, if Ariel had met Paulina and her mother that day, she would have changed the lyrics of her song “Part of your world” into: “I’m ready to know what the people know. Ask them my questions and get some answers. What is racism? Why does it burn? “. Well, what I know about racism is that different human races do not exist. So, racism is obviously an invention of the human mind. It’s an idea. Not a good idea obviously as it claims that some humans have a higher value than others. Those who created racism created inequality. 

How does the mind of a racist work?

While reading I’ve learned that if were a racist plushie, I would use categories like color, origin, language, religion and culture to divide other plushies into different groups. Then I would label each group with characteristics. What’s important here is that the characteristics which I would invent for my own group are supposed to be positive, whereas the characteristics I’d choose for all the other groups are negative. But there is a hierarchy to be followed. The characteristics of the groups that are similar to my own group should not be as negative as the characteristics of the groups that are less similar to mine. My heart breaks imagining that I’d do this to any of my plushie friends. Also, that racist way of structuring the world does not seem to come from an intelligent mind. It’s complicated. It leads to chaos instead of order. I prefer the minimalistic structure: 1 Human Race = 1 Group.

Why was racism invented? 

Humans created racism to have a clear conscience while acting inhumane. This fact made me lose my trust in humanity. People were aware that in God’s eyes everyone is equal. Developing a racist theory helped them to justify their crime against those who were “no real” humans. Did they really think an omniscient power could be fooled by that predicable story? 

The earliest traces of racism

Well, at least there were enough foolish humans who bought into this long before. As cheap employees were already needed in ancient times, Aristoteles just decided to dislike people who came from a different cultural area. He also claimed that any culture that was different to his own was on a lower stage of development. From this interpretation he concluded that people with a different cultural background were mentally inferior and therefore meant to be slaves (barbarian racism). In the further course of world history people invented a racism based on religious motives and divided humanity into heretics and the chosen ones. Such racist worldviews have also been the justification for the colonial politics of the Europeans and later of the US Americans, the Japanese and the Russians. 

What is colonialism?

I was shocked to read that the purpose of colonies has always been greed. The greed for more power, for more possessions and for the opportunities these possessions held.  Also, already the Greeks, the Romans and the Ottomans had colonies. But when we speak of the worldwide colonialism by the seafarers, we speak of those 500 years of word history where above all European nations conquered, occupied and exploited countries in the so-called global south. The colonial rulers deprived foreign countries of their raw materials (gold, diamonds, ore, cotton, coffee, cocoa and other spices, tobacco and dyes) and exported them into their home countries. They forced their language, culture and religion upon the population, enslaved them to use them for the mining of raw materials, expelled them or even committed genocide. The colonial powers also kidnapped slaves and brought them to America. Due to the genocide against the indigenous people of America and the epidemics the Europeans had brought in the population of the oppressed had become so small (90% died) that there were not enough people left to enslave. 

Happy End

Did the decolonization process which lasted until the end of the 1990ies lead to a happy ending? No. Because history has always an impact on today. After centuries of foreign domination, the plundered countries were left behind in chaos. The result of colonialism that we see in the world today are unstable governments, weak economies and ethnical conflicts up to civil wars in most of the former colonies. Keeping it short here makes me feel bad, but this topic is so wide that it would at least take one or two more articles to only roughly portray the direct and indirect results of colonialism all over the world. 

Can the mind be decolonized?

I wonder what happened to the colonial thinking. Countries can be freed but can thoughts be decolonized, too? Taking a look around the world I get the feeling that the idea of white people being the standard still exists. White people are still more privileged than indigenous people, black people or people of color. The one-sided worldview from the European and Neo-European perspective is called “eurocentrism”. Here are only a few examples: 

1. 1/3 of the world population were colonies of the British Empire. That’s why English became the world language number 1. In Germany speaking English is said to be sophisticated whereas you might hear an unfriendly “Speak German in Germany” when they hear you say something in for example Turkish.  
2. The European beauty ideal is dominant in the movie- and fashion industry. That is why many non-white people use fairness creams, dye or straighten their hair, undergo cosmetic surgery to change the shape of their eyes and nose until they look like their white idols. Racist thought patterns do not only exist in the heads of white people. Internalized racism (racism against oneself as a member of a non-white group) naturally develops in a word where things like eurocentrism exist.   
3. Schoolbooks tell the story of colonialism only from the winners’ point of view and describe it as a big adventure of seafarers who tamed the savage ones and taught them to read and write. 

Racism in everyday life

Racism is not only right-wing-extremism. It also takes place in everyday life in the form of small, thoughtless statements. Such micro-aggressive statements can be racist even without intention.

Racism	Positive Racism
I bet your self-esteem has suffered growing up among all those tall, white, blonde women.	All black people can sing and dance. Please, join our choir!
Unbelievable! I had no idea you guys do also sweat when the weather is hot.	Asians belong to the hard-working race. So of course, you can rent this house.
I always confuse you because you all look the same.	You’ll surely get the job. You’ve got the exotic bonus.

The racism of the future

Although more racist things are being said nowadays, no one wants to be called a racist anymore – not even the racists. That’s why right-orientated politicians speak of cultural identity, ethnicity or nation. They claim that the different cultural identities have to be protected from each other by strictly separating them. This kind of racism is called “ethnopluralism”.  That term somehow sounded cosmopolitan to me at first … but no, it’s just old crap in a new coat of paint. 

How can your human stay a part of the problem? 

• By thinking that it’s not their business because they may not be affected by racism
• By thinking racism can only be solved by the victims
• By thinking there is also racism against whites. There isn’t unless you undo its history. Remember, racism is the ideology of inequality but in every society white people are privileged. Racism against whites is again an invention of whites to play down racism. 
• By thinking structural racism doesn’t exist. It’s always structural as history shows. 

How can your human become a part of the solution?

• By admitting that due to the fact that all humans live in a post-colonial world they have all been racially socialized. That’s neither good nor bad. It’s simply the result of their history. Their responsibility now is to reflect their own thoughts, language and behavior and deal with racism in a sensitive way. 
• By being aware of their privileges when they are white and by being allies to BIPoC
• By speaking up and teaching those who don’t know in a peaceful, inviting way 

This is just a rough summary of what I have learned about the human world. I think, the human world can learn a lot from the plushie world. There is no “the best versus the rest” –mentality among us. Maybe that is why so many humans who long for a world with more harmony love plushies so much.