I’m a reader. It’s one of the guilty pleasures of my life. I was first introduced to author Isabel Wilkerson when I read her book “The Warmth Of Other Suns”. It was a magnificent book.
This week I started to read Wilkerson’s most recent book “Caste” The Origins of Our Discontents”. The first chapter of the book is called “The Afterlife of Pathogens”. In a nut shell it deals with things that don’t die even when we think they’ve gone away.
After reading that first chapter I though about Americas history with racism. How we though that the end of the Civil War would be the end to Racism. How we thought that the end of segregation signaled the end of racism. How we thought the election of Obama signaled the beginning of a post racial society. We were wrong on all accounts. Racism is like a pathogen that goes dormant only to be waiting to be re energized by some event or force.
The question that came to mind is that if racism and its accompanying hate are like a pathogen always waiting for the next spark is there really any hope for a better world. Maybe I’ll garner an answer as I get closer to the end of the book. The one thing that I know and agree with is that racism and hate perform very much like a pathogen.
THINK!!
EYES WIDE OPEN!!!