| It is a university classroom, a square room with rows of seats filled with mainly White students. Often, the White students presume they are the majority. It certainly feels that way; it looks that way, too. I stand at the front of the classroom. For these students, I occupy an unfamiliar space, and I move about in an unfamiliar role. I am not at all what most of them expect and many wonder what to make of this scenario. It makes some of them uncomfortable. Some clear their throats while bolder ones giggle. Some sit still and others look as if they were following the actions of a horror film. I can imagine how their world is spinning. I see eyes look up above and behind me toward the clock. It is the top of the hour. The eyes look down or away from me. How to make them see the horror of this most uncomfortable moment for them? I have to bring them together in something strangely familiar. It is time to start. I tell the students to imagine the classroom across the hall filed with Green-colored people. In our classroom, we are all Beige. Beige is the norm, what we are used to seeing. We experience all things Beige. It is simplistic. There are all kinds of rumors about the Green-colored people next door, I tell my students. I urge them to think about the ones they have heard from family or friends and the ones they have passed on to others. The Green-colored people threaten our economy; they take our jobs. They will then want our homes and neighborhoods and even our daughters and wives! They will one day take over, suppressing our cultural production with their own brand of writing, music, and art. They will ascend to political power and the entire social structure, as we know it, will collapse! In the end, we will lose our way of being in the world, lose our freedom. We will cease to determine and dominate the order of things. With the voice of authority, I tell the students that what they have heard about the Green-colored people is true. Very true and frightening! I pause to pass my eyes from one male student to another. I continue. These people aspire to rule ... to rule us! They are all gays and lesbians ... too! Years pass, I tell them. They are to imagine our meetings in this classroom over time, and we have further extended our knowledge of the Green-colored people. We have been engaged in the business of educating ourselves and the world about the danger these Greens impose on the world, and the possibility that the Greens' inferiority (oh, yes they are inferior) could contaminate the development of civilization. In so many ways, the Greens are a menace, if they are left to roam freely. In the meantime, I advice them to maintain at all cost the social prohibitions concerning fraternization with them. Closer to home, I have designated individuals who will assist me in destroying texts and documents belonging to the Green-colored people. Soon individuals in the class will cipher through these books and artifacts looking for anything with names that identifies Green-colored ones. They stage book burning parties in their dorms and then in their communities among family and friends. Most important, I tell them, they must post flyers with pictures identifying the Green-coloreds. The flyers will feature images of familiar animals and across the top the word GREEN-COLORED PEOPLE will be spelled out. My select group of elite leaders will sport hip uniforms and begin patrolling communities, handing out pamphlets and urging neighbors, priest, pastors, teachers, shop merchants to report the green-colored people to the authorities. Without my assistance, the Beige are nightly reviling in their difference, their favored position in society. It is not long before horns sprout from Greens' heads and tails flap down behind legs. These barbaric Greenies don't even walk upright. No problem sending many of them out to round up the Greens near and far. I tell them that it is easy to build gas chambers and prisons. It is easy to torture the Greens. It has just taken a short five, maybe 10 years! I call for the deaths of the Greens, and my select elite cheer. Then most everyone cheers. It is all an illusion, of course. But it has happened once. In fact, more than once. And my students' knowledge of the world has expanded to recognize that the majority of the world's people look like the Greens. The Greens are the people in the majority. Killing the world's majority seems like a ridiculous idea. It has to become a familiar idea, as familiar as the illusion that a small fraction of the world is the majority. Calling others the "minority" is dangerous and deadly business. |
| Voices/ Dr. Jean Daniels Exploring the dynamics of bigotry |
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