December
2005
Racism
and Buddhism
I haven't been writing for a
moment, and there's so much to say. But today I'd like to talk about
racism.
Some might object that this has no relevance to Zen
Buddhism. I believe that, to the contrary it has, and here are my
reasons. But first, I'd like to tell what drove me to it. As you'll
see, it's a series of concording factors.
First of all, a friend from Southern Italy sent me
some information about the way the Piemontese conquered the
Kingdom of Naples and Sicily at the end of the XIXth Century. If such
documents won't change my mind on the democratic deficit of the
Duosicilian Bourbon monarchy which has lasted in the Southern Italian
traditions, I have had to realise that the Piemontese occupation had a
lot to do with the present Italian racism against Southerners, which is
quite sharp. If you know Italian, please give it a look.
Second, the telly showed the other some blatant
acts of racism from the Italian 'tifosi' against the black
players of their
own soccer teams, along with the fascist salute of one of the Lazio's
team. All right, I always stood for the Roma against the Lazio, but
still...
Finally, a book just published in France about Napoleon's
Crime. I have
personally little sympathy for the Corsican Midget, and still less
patience for his incense bearers. (But, dear English friends, I don't
think much either of your Lord Nelson). To know that the Midget had
such fans as Adloph, Benito of Joseph was much for me to give him much
credit, but I actually despised his having reduced women to
non-persons, which they were not in France, prior to the Revolution.
But I'm not having it here with dictatures, nor wars nor feminism. I'm
having it with slavery. It's the Corsican Midget who restaured slavery
which had been abolished by the Convention, and who waged war (and lost
one) against those 'niggers' who resisted him.
Since it is the so-called Renaissance ("Rebirth"!)
which reintroduced slavery, after so many centuries of Middle Ages had
almost succeeded in eliminating it, things were already bleak. But one
has to understand that the Corsican Midget was a hater. A hater of
women, a hater of Corsicans, a hater of the French. No doubt he hated
himself most of all. 5'2" looks like a good reason for hating oneself.
No wonder he'd hate the blacks, starting with Alexandre Dumas' father.
This brings us to the point. Racism's fundamental
basis is paradoxically a hatred of one's own self. Who has a conscience
of one's own worth has no need to humiliate another. This need would
demonstate, to the contrary, that the hater is looking for some way of
compensation. "I'm a piece of shit, but here's an even nastier piece of
shit."
Not that there are no problems in France. Surely
not. But still, social research* has shown that racism and xenophobia
have constantly retreated for the past ten years, and that France,
among developed countries, is where those feelings of hatred are least
virulent. And if that is possible in France, it means it is possible
elsewhere.
What's the relation with Buddhism? We don't live
alone, isolated from the rest. Our quality of life depends on the
quality of life of all. As long as we shan't recognize that to diminish
this quality of life for the poor (included the immigrants and their
descendents), for mere short term greed, means diminishing our own,
we'll be in trouble. This is a selfishness that can give positive
results in the end. The root of racism is ignorance. Ignorance of hte
other and ignorance of self. And the hatred that some feel against this
"other", be he/she Italian, or African, is nothing else that hatred of
self.
If rabbi Yehoshua ben Yussef (the one called "the
nazorene") told to "love thy neighbour as thou lovest thyself", and
that love of self exists not (meaning kindness and not obligingness!)
all you've got is hate; the result can only be catastrophical. If we
are one with the Universe (which is in part what is taught by the
Buddhadharma), logic would that we take care of the whole, rahter than
always of our own specifics. let's think about it.
Mxl
*A poll ordered by a Franco-British organisation
shows that 72% of the young English adhere to the anti-French
prejudices, where only 19% of the young French adhere to the
anti-English prejudices. All recent studies show that racism and
xenophobia are constantly diminishing in France, that France is the
developed country where such prejudice are least virulent and that
anti-Americanism is lesser in France than in Spain or Germany and never
took the almost racist form that has taken anti-French execration in
the USA.
Version française