THE GREAT ILLUSION: ESSAY ON RACISM AND TRIBALISM BY DR AUSTIN ORETTE
Empirical observations have led me to the notion that, in any society, the proponents of separatism are those who are least developed in consciousness.
When the American South decided to secede, they were more backward and still relied on slavery for their economic progress. They believed subterfuge to exist.
When a child is born, he clings to his mother. As the child grows, he recognizes his relatives, his village, his clan and his tribe. More growth prepares him to interact with other people who are different from him.
The ability to negotiate these intricacies is what we call development. Some groups want to negotiate these interactions with subterfuge, domination and oppression. It takes love and imagination to navigate the intricacies of these interactions to avoid creating animosities.
In our present world, the Europeans used violence and oppression to do these interactions. These led to slavery, racism, apartheid and colonization that we are still dealing with today.
It is a sign of immaturity when people cannot get along with others for mutual coexistence. The white people invented racism for this because they lack the ability and maturity to get along with other people.
Apartheid, colonialism and other attendant evils are the results of the immaturity of the white race which they consider as progress and development. But this is a form of immaturity, because it shows the inability to evolve and interact. In Africa we call it tribalism.
Racism and tribalism are nothing but the inability to grow. When people lack the ability to interact with others, they engage in ethnic reductism. This immaturity is what is considered as progress. In actuality; this represents the child who is afraid to go beyond the city limit. It is a mark of inferiority if you have the need to regale others with your superiority.
We need to grow beyond the confines of our tribe. The earth is our garden. True bravery is when we develop the ability to go beyond our tribes to engage other children of God in planting love in this great garden. Love breeds this courage. The lack of love leads to recessions into a familiar abode where our tribe becomes supreme. We become selfish. This lack deprives us of the courage to interact. We become arrested in a primitive state where it becomes difficult to move beyond the walls of the cave. This puts us in a state of psychological retardation. When perchance, we venture out, we are timid and crude and look at every difference as threatening. We raise our guards to police the fear within. We then succumb to the primitive notion that only dwellers in our cave are worthy of consideration. We become loud and vexatious as we try to prove that all the wisdom of God are bestowed on our tribe. We make it difficult for others to live peaceably with us as we tell them we are the chosen ones who are divinely ordained.
The truth is that we are still that child that refuses to grow up and wants to solve every problem with tantrum and subterfuge.
When others push back against our itinerant actions, we stamp them with epithets. We tell the world they are jealous. The truth is that this belligerent child is afraid of its underdevelopment and cannot see beyond his village. He will use any opportunity he gets to hurt others by fortifying himself with members of his clan who are ensconced in primitive materialism, that we have made the definition of our existence. . This is the origin of all our ills.
Racism, tribalism and separatism are considered as progress and civilization, by the practitioners. This is the great illusion of our time. Most apostles of separatism lack the ability to form the common bond that is necessary for progress. They lack love which is the glue that is necessary for any relationship to yield progress. In every situation, they will present mediocrity as progress. When they fail, they use their brute ideology to rewrite history and create a tyranny within. The tribalist or racist has the ethos of a cave dweller. His vision cannot extrapolate beyond the walls of the cave. He finds his security only amongst members of his cave (tribe). Recession to the cave becomes his idea of progress. He may occupy a high station, but he still has the aroma of the cave dweller.
Dr Austin Orette writes from Houston Texas