It is a fact that there is no such group as “white people” that may be judged. This applies to “black people” or “brown people” or any other color. These are abstract creations that do not exist in reality. There is not a monolithic group that share all of the same values or attitudes in any skin color. There is no tribe, nor should there be, based only on the color of a person’s skin. This is a myth that is used to try to judge people based on an attribute (skin color) that says nothing about them. It is a superficial judgment that harms human relations, it does not help to bring people together. It is the worst kind of judgment one human can make about another – that only their color or outside appearance defines who they are as an individual.
Dr Martin Luther King (MLK) stated that he wanted his children judged “not by their skin color but by the content of their character.” This was his dream. He knew that color did not define his children and only their individual character did. He was also opposed to black nationalists who wanted to define ‘white’ people by their color usually using the term of “white devils.” His dream included that all people would consider themselves “brothers and sisters” regardless of color. There is no doubt that he also did some judging based on grouping, but this was not his dream. He wasn’t asking for a colorblind society, only a society where fellow human beings were not judged by their color alone. He promoted the concept that we should see the unique individual in every person.
We have drifted away from the MLK dream of people coming together and only judging each other by character to an obsession with skin color judgmentalism. This is the wrong path because it causes divisiveness, not unity. It harms human relations, it does not improve them. The Jewish people were put into a group by Germans and were dehumanized and judged to be evil. All Jews, including Jewish children, were considered a monolithic block of human beings that did not deserve to live. This type of groupism is extremely harmful.
There is no such thing as a “white” or “black” monolithic group. There are only individual human beings each to be judged by their unique character. Every human being is diverse and there will never be another human being in history that is exactly like anyone else. Human beings must not be judged by group, but by their own individuality. We cannot put people into boxes and assign values to them if we want to improve human relations.
We need to stop obsessing about what color we are and move on to treating human beings as unique individuals. We need to stop grouping people and sitting in judgment of them. We need to stop assigning values to millions of individuals we don’t even know. All of this group judgmentalism is harmful, not helpful. The higher plane of human dignity is to be treated as a “thou” instead of “it.”
Only in this way may we truly learn to love and respect all of our neighbors. If we want human equality for everyone, we must respect their unique individuality.
Center for Individuality 